Unfortunately, Speaker, more Ontarians than ever before are turning to hunger relief organizes because they can no longer afford basic necessities like food and shelter. Hunger in Hamilton is reaching record levels, with the number of people turning to food banks nearly doubling since last year. Almost 50% of households say they would become homeless without food banks.

People, including families with young children and seniors, cannot keep up with soaring food prices, unaffordable costs. It’s heartbreaking that in our communities, hungry seniors are seeking help to find meal programs because they can no longer afford to feed themselves.

This last weekend, I participated in the Salvation Army kettle bell drive, and I was moved by the generosity and compassion of Hamiltonians. There are also many ways you, too, can give back this holiday season:

—the Ancaster Community Services Holiday Assistance Program will provide over 150 holiday hampers and gifts to income-challenged families and seniors in the community;

—Good Shepherd Christmas Wonderland is bringing people together to share a festive meal;

—Neighbour to Neighbour, who have been serving our communities for 35 years through their community food centre, will be providing a free Christmas meal that is open to all; and

—we could consider donating to support free and low-cost programs for vulnerable seniors through Dundas Community Services.

I want to send out my thanks to all of these organizations and volunteers who are bringing joy to people in our communities who are hungry and alone. This holiday season, I want to express my warmest wishes to you and your family for a joyous and healthy holiday season.

Before I begin my debate this afternoon, I just wanted to say a few words about my uncle Adam Shaw. He lost the love of his life, his wife, my aunt Marie. She took sick suddenly and passed just over the weekend. We’re all very saddened by this. My uncle is a hale and hearty 90 years old, but he’s taking this very hard.

We are sending out all of our love to you, Uncle Adam. You know that we have your back. We are so sorry for your loss.

To Damien and Lise: Thank you for everything that you’ve done to keep Uncle Adam fed. We appreciate everything that you’ve done for us as our family moves through this tragedy.

Interjections.

We’re here to debate this bill, the Greenbelt Statute Law Amendment Act, which is essentially a bill that reverses all of the assaults and the unrequested changes that this government imposed on the province of Ontario when it came to the greenbelt.

What I want to say clearly: We are here today because this is a victory for the people of the province of Ontario. The people of the province of Ontario were mobilized like I have never seen before. People from all communities, all ages, all walks of life saw this as something that they needed to speak up and stand up to. We saw that people understood what this was. They were completely outraged not only because there was this greenbelt grab, essentially stealing what they saw as something that was important to them, something that should be preserved as a legacy for our future generations—these two million acres that protect some of our most endangered species; these lands that prevent our homes from flooding, that clean our drinking water. They understood what was being lost or what was being stolen from them. I would say that it’s not only just that they understood what was lost; they were outraged by the way in which this was done. They know that this greenbelt grab is nothing short of insider dealing, and they know that the Premier, when he promised once, twice, three times and looked directly into the people of Ontario’s face and said, “I won’t touch the greenbelt”—they know that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Evidence has showed that he was already planning to do this. Documents show that while he was campaigning, he still had the intention to open up the greenbelt.

People in the province of Ontario may be kind and forgiving, but they’re not stupid, and they knew what had happened to them. So this victory is for all of those people.

I’m going to take the time here to mention some of the environmental organizations, grassroots groups that formed over this, that have done the hard work to hold this government to account, to force this government to do what they should have done in the first place, which is listen to the people of Ontario and do the right thing. So many of these groups also came together and worked collaboratively across the province.

If I omit some of you, please write or call my office as you always do, and I will make sure that I get you on the record.

I’m going to start by reading this list. It’s important that they get acknowledged: Environmental Defence, Greenbelt Promise, greenbelt alliance, the Alliance for a Liveable Ontario, National Farmers Union, Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Ontario Nature, Suzuki foundation, the Council of Canadians, Ontario wilderness committee, Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition, Wellington Water Watchers, Stop Sprawl Peel, ACORN, Ontario nurses for the environment, and regional groups such as Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition, Stop Sprawl Durham, the biodiversity and climate action group, Prince Edward County Field Naturalists—I’m going to just skip over these. Maybe I’ll go back at the end of my speech and finish the list.

I would also like to say my particular thanks to GASP, which is Grand(m)others Act to Save the Planet. Being a grandmother of seven grandchildren, with one on the way, due December 10, I sympathize and I identify with these grandmothers who are acting for those future generations, which is what we all here, as legislators, should be doing—not thinking about the bottom line, not thinking about the first quarter, not thinking about our insiders, but thinking about the legacy that we will be passing on to future generations.

This also comes in the context of what people are experiencing in this province. As we’ve been hearing, people are struggling in this province. We hear about the increased food bank usage and people struggling to keep a roof over their head. We hear, sadly, stories of seniors who are losing their homes, who are actually resorting to meal programs for the first time in their lives.

Unfortunately, this government is focused not on the people of Ontario, if you ask me, but they’ve been focusing, really, on reversing the damage they’ve done, reversing their bad legislation. They have not really taken the time that we’ve had here, and even in the last week that we have here, to move legislation that will in fact help people in the province.

You have a majority. I’m going to talk a bit about that. I’m going to talk about the fact that we have all these time-allocated bills. There’s no reason for that. Every bill that you put forward will get passed. Instead of using that majority to bring relief to people, what has this government spent the last session doing? You spent the last session introducing legislation that then had to be reversed, and now we are—for example, we’ve spent time discussing new, sweeping powers that you’re giving for pet projects like the Ontario Place luxury spa. These are things the people of the province of Ontario don’t understand—why this is a priority for your government, that that’s what you’re doing.

Rather than a government mired in scandal and focused solely on their insiders, we need a government that acts for people. This government has been in power for five and a half years, and in that time, things have only gotten harder for Ontarians.

Interjection.

I also would like to remind the member from Brantford–Brant that he has had more code zeros in the province than any city in Ontario, despite the fact that we brought it up again in the House.

So I think, again, this is proof positive—this is an example of how this government is not paying attention to the needs of the people, that instead they’re focusing on themselves. Whether it’s housing or groceries or transit, none of this is affordable for people. The government, with their majority, has something to do about it.

We put proposal after proposal forward. We put proposals to close loopholes that let unscrupulous landlords gouge tenants. We put forward actions that would prevent seniors like the 90-year-old woman we had here who was being demovicted from her home—we put in proposals to prevent people from being renovicted or demovicted, and this government said no. We tabled a motion that would invest in non-market and affordable housing options, and the government said no. We proposed a smart solution, an innovative solution to help people reduce the cost of heating and lower emissions, and the government said no.

I also want to say that this is during a time that this government is under an RCMP investigation. I am pretty sure, and it has been said, that this is the only time in the history of Ontario that this has happened. That’s spectacular, given that we had some of the governments that we’ve had previously—the fact that this government rose to that height. You are the only government that is currently under RCMP investigation.

Oh, yes, overachievers.

I think that it’s really important to note that the RCMP has identified a special prosecutor. The RCMP has launched a criminal investigation into the greenbelt changes made by the Ford government. Of course, the investigation centres around the controversial decision to open up protected greenbelt lands for housing development, which has sparked quite serious scrutiny.

The role of the special prosecutor, which is really shocking when you read it, is connected to the complexity of working with witnesses who may be bound by confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements—and that they are there to deal with issues of security. This is the special prosecutor. This is serious. The fact that this is what the government has wasted time and energy doing, that this is not over, is really something that this government should take to heart and should—instead of continuing to move bills forward that are not focusing on the people of Ontario, that are focusing on themselves in the light of this special prosecutor, the RCMP investigation, and in the light of what we expect will be revealed tomorrow in the Auditor General’s report.

I’m sorry to say, it probably will be a sad day when we see some of the workings around the MZOs in the province that are under investigation and some of the other things that the Auditor General will reveal. Let’s remind ourselves that that’s how we got to this part in the first place. An Auditor General’s investigation revealed clearly that there was preferential treatment of insiders and developers when it came to the Ford government’s use of MZOs and urban boundary amendments and the greenbelt expansion. Then, of course, we had the Integrity Commissioner’s report. Side by side, those two reports paint a very damning picture of this government. The Integrity Commissioner’s report found, in fact, that the previous Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing broke the Integrity Commissioner’s act. The shocking thing is, he broke the Integrity Commissioner act when it came to insider dealing and when it came to conflict of interest. These are serious, serious charges.

Subsequent to that, we, as the official opposition, have attempted to strengthen the laws for us, as legislators, to follow, but also so that we can begin to build faith and trust in the people of the province of Ontario that what happens here, in their House, is acting above board and with the utmost transparency and integrity. So we did put forward a bill, the Strengthening Members’ Integrity Act, which was an act that would have strengthened the bill. In fact, it was the Integrity Commissioner himself who asked for some of these changes, to allow him to be able to do a more thorough investigation.

We put that forward as an opposition day motion. Many of us debated why this would be important—that as people who represent our ridings and represent the province, we should expect to be held to a higher standard; that given the cloud of suspicion that has befallen this House, we would expect that a government would be more than willing and eager to make changes so that they could show good faith and show that their intentions were to never conduct themselves in the disgraceful way that they had up until this point. But the government, again, said no to these changes.

Then, finally, in order to, again, look at the ways in which we govern ourselves—both sides—we put forward a private member’s bill called Cleaning Up Corruption Act, 2023. Because there are glaring and obvious loopholes in our integrity laws, we thought that it was time for the standard for elected officials in our province to be raised; that we needed a system that values the integrity Ontarians expect from the government, and also a system that allows Ontarians to hold their government accountable and prevent cultures of corruption, preferential treatment and backroom dealings from becoming the norm for those who hold public office. This was a good bill. This was a bill that would amend the Auditor General Act. It would also amend the Members’ Integrity Act. Those are the two acts, again—those are the two independent officers of the Legislature. As you will recall, it brought forward the reports that have put us where we are today. The very fact that we’re standing here today, debating a bill where the government is revoking, rescinding, restoring or repairing what they have done to the greenbelt is because of these reports.

So I think the fact that we have been focused on trying to learn from the lessons from the government’s actions, that we have genuinely been trying to protect the respect of this place and to protect democratic norms in the province—we put those forward, and the government, of course, has voted them all down.

It is stunning to me that, perhaps—we know how this place works. Perhaps the government doesn’t want to support anything that His Majesty’s loyal opposition puts forward. I guess I can go that far—that that’s fine. But where is your legislation? Where are you putting forward legislation based on what we’ve experienced in this province, based on the cynicism, the profound lack of trust in government that is the direct result of your actions?

I ask the members on the other side: Is this something that you want to be associated with? Is this what you want your legacy to be?

It is my contention that if the government moved forward with bills that strengthen some of these provisions that help guide us, people would see that as an act of good faith.

We have here the Seven Grandfather Teachings carving in the Legislature. Really, they are a set of guiding principles for how to conduct an ethical and a respectful life. What we were saying with these two bills that we moved forward to strengthen the Integrity Commissioner’s act and to pass the bill, which was the act to end corruption in this province—what we were saying was that we, too, need to be governed by a set of principles, just like we see there.

I’m genuinely disappointed—I almost want to say “sad”—that we have a government that doesn’t want to take action on this. It is really something that you would think that the government would be moving forward on—that we shouldn’t have to be saying that, and people outside this House shouldn’t have to be saying that this government is not acting in their interests or is acting for the benefit of insiders. But if you put something forward—again, Ontarians are a forgiving people, and they would see that this is a government that has learned the error of their ways and is working to earn the trust of Ontarians. That’s what we have to do every single day when we come to this House. We earn their trust to be put here and to be elected here, and it is our job every single day to earn their trust. Whether you’re in opposition, whether you’re in government, whether you’re a cabinet minister, or independent MPPs, that is your job.

Unfortunately, I have to say that turning down those two amendments, and then the debate that we’ve been seeing in the House shows there’s nothing that’s really changed here.

We’re going to discuss Bill 150, which talks about revoking changes that this government’s abuse, essentially, of issuing MZOs—but the irony of the fact that we have had time allocation on a bill that did not go to committee, which was the Ontario Place bill, which in that bill gives a new minister extraordinary powers to issue MZOs. The irony of it is insane.

So we are here to discuss a bill that is reversing bad actions when it comes to good faith on the part of the government issuing MZOs.

We just passed this morning Bill 154, the Ontario Place act that didn’t go to committee, that had limited debate—because the government again used their majority to stifle debate on this—and then, in fact, we would basically call this bill “passing a law to break the law” because, in this bill, it gives extraordinary powers to one minister. I think it needs to be said that it’s giving extraordinary powers to one minister. It’s so strange to me that this is a government that says they don’t like big government, that they work for the people, but they love to concentrate power in the Premier’s office. Now we see power concentrated in the Minister of Infrastructure’s office, and in this bill—really, this is a bill that’s about the government giving itself the power to bypass and even break multiple provincial laws in order to essentially ram through the Ontario Place redevelopment on behalf of a private luxury spa operator, with near total impunity. Again, I talked about all the things that the people of the province are struggling with—top of mind is not a luxury spa that most people won’t ever be able to afford to go to. But this is the bill that gives this government immunity or writes into the bill, basically, a law to break the law. It prohibits lawsuits against the government or remedies with respect to anything done under the act, including—and here’s a list to beat all lists—government misrepresentations, misconduct, misfeasance, bad faith, breach of trust, or breach of fiduciary obligations.

Isn’t that crazy? Exactly.

So are you anticipating that you will need to protect yourselves from this? It just goes beyond anything that anybody has seen. We know the government has pushed the envelope with indemnifications like this before. We saw that they gave long-term-care operators indemnities. We saw that they give themselves indemnity when it came to some other bills. But these go so much further than any previous legislation. But what for?

Interjection.

Let me just say that this is not normal. Governments that behave like this are not generally democratic, I would say. This kind of concentration of power, exempting themselves from the rule of law, does not speak to a democratic government. Nobody you would ask would say that. I don’t know how you can think that this speaks to a democratic government. There are governments around the world that would pass laws like this that would be called autocratic. People would never expect to see something like this in the province of Ontario, but here it is.

This is not the only assault, I would say, on our democratic norms in the operating of this House with these two bills—not only the Ontario Place bill where debate was stifled on. There was no committee. All the people who were upset—Ontario Place for All—all the people who were concerned about all the things that you were going to do with Ontario Place were not allowed to come to committee to speak to the government to say, “I don’t agree with this. Why do you have to cut down 850 trees? Why is this necessary? Why are you spending, basically, three quarters of a billion dollars of my money to build a parking garage for a private spa?” They don’t get to ask those questions. I can understand why the government wouldn’t want them to ask those questions because none of the answers are a good look at all for this government.

The idea that you are time-allocating these important bills—both the Greenbelt Statute Law Amendment Act and Bill 150, which is the bill to restore the forced urban boundary expansions of this government—is nothing short of an assault on our democracy. There is no other way of putting it. People that I talk to feel this.

As I said, what the government did when it comes to the greenbelt—I have never seen people mobilize like this on any other issue. And the fact that this government had to walk this back is because of those people, because of their work in this province.

But a normal—

Our normal process is, we have second reading debate and then we send bills to committee. If you really concerned yourself, as I know some of the MPPs opposite do, with our Westminster parliamentary tradition, you would know that committee is a vital component of our democratic functioning. People come to committee to speak directly to their government on bills that impact them and their lives. They come with expert ideas. They come with lived experience. They make suggestions to make bills better. But the government did not allow this. In fact, at committee, the government only allowed one hour to hear from the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, who promised that he was an entertaining guy when he gets going. The jury is out on that, I have to say.

When I asked this question in the House—don’t get angry now—about why people weren’t allowed to come and speak to this bill, the Premier stood in his place and said the people of Ontario “don’t give two hoots about” the greenbelt. Come on. People do care. They’ve shown that they care because they’ve written to all of you; I know they have. And despite the fact that they weren’t allowed to depute at the committee—which, again, is an important part of our Westminster parliamentary norms—the committee room was packed. There were people in the hallway. Even if they weren’t allowed to speak, they wanted to hear what was being done with the greenbelt.

So I just have to say that, in all the disappointing things that we have seen when it comes to the greenbelt, the fact that people were shut out from this debate is right up there with one of the biggest disappointments that I share with this government, along with some of the other actions that, again, seem to shut out people from this House and from the things that are important to them.

When it comes directly to the bill itself—I have three minutes left—there were a lot of questions that I have and that residents and stakeholders have, and I have here many, many of the submissions from stakeholders who weren’t able to speak at committee.

One of the things that they were really concerned with is that this government restore some, but not all, of the protections to the greenbelt. Let’s be clear: The greenbelt is not better off. There are still protections for the greenbelt that have not been restored with this bill, particularly when it comes to the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve. That important area had four layers of protection; only two have been restored. We moved amendments that would have restored those amendments, but the government voted those amendments down. As was said by one of the stakeholders, by only returning two of the four prior Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve protections, the Ford government is not keeping its promise to Pickering residents—that’s from Stop Sprawl Durham. They have quite a few things to say, but they weren’t able to say them at committee.

The other thing that I think is important to note is that when it comes to protecting the greenbelt, people were very concerned that there still exists in this legislation a process for removals. So there still exists, in the legislation, a process for this government to continue to remove, at a future time, lands from the greenbelt. First of all, that is in direct conflict with what the Premier and, in fact, the minister has said—that we won’t be making any changes to the greenbelt in the future. Unfortunately, I feel like that’s a dog-whistle signal to developers—“Hold on. We’re doing this now, but there is provision here to allow things to be removed from the greenbelt.”

I also want to say that many questions remain. Will this government, now, that they have returned this—does this mean that the government does agree with their own housing task force, that they did not need the greenbelt to build housing? Many people are not buying what they consider a cover story about housing, because many experts, including your own task force, said that the greenbelt is not needed to build the housing that we needed.

Unfortunately, we have wasted so much time in the province. We’re so far behind in getting people the housing that we have needed. We have spent a year, a year and a half—even longer. The government has been in power for five and a half years. All the time, effort and angst over this greenbelt grab could have been spent developing strategies and developing good ideas to help people with their housing, because we know people need housing.

In our riding, in Hamilton, we have people sleeping on the street, on cardboard. They need to be housed. We have seniors struggling to keep a roof over their head.

I wish, rather than the government carving up and eyeing the greenbelt, that they had their eye on people in this province—

As I rise today, I just have to remark on what we just witnessed in this House, which was a shocking abuse of power.

This government passed a bill, the Ontario Place act. They shut out debate at second reading. They passed what’s called a time allocation motion to short-circuit debate at second reading. They did not send it to committee for people to talk about this important bill that will impact Ontario Place and has given the government extraordinary powers to protect themselves and to issue MZOs. Then they short-circuited third reading debate. We were not allowed to debate this at third reading. These are key components of our Westminster parliamentary democracy—key—and we just witnessed this government abuse that.

I would say, you know, there’s a famous philosopher—his name is John Stuart Mill. He wrote on things that this government—it might fit with their philosophy on government. John Stuart Mill talked about the tyranny of the majority, and that’s what we’ve witnessed here. This government has the majority and they used it to further their own ends, and they shut out the people of the province of Ontario when it came to what they’re doing at Ontario Place.

My question would be, Madam Speaker, why have they done this? To build a luxury spa for a foreign company—it’s a remarkable question. Why would they use this extraordinary use of power and short-circuit democracy for a luxury spa for a for-profit, private company? That’s the question. You know, eventually, all things come to light—the light of day, as we see with this legislation. The question is, what has Premier Ford signed Ontarians up for? Why are we not allowed to debate this bill? Why can we not see the details of the 99-year lease given on behalf of us? What we just witnessed here is nothing short, as I said, of another nail in the coffin of what we used to think was a democratic province in Ontario, and it really has been shameful, shameful behaviour here today in this Legislature.

I also want to respond to the member from Perth–Wellington, who said they’re going to codify in law these changes that they’re making to the greenbelt. But follow with me: We are here debating a bill that is putting in place restoring a bill that this government already overturned. It’s a bill that they passed; they overturned the bill, and now we have a bill before us to do that. So it doesn’t matter what you codify in law. You said your government has said they won’t open the greenbelt, but you did do it and here we are with a bill before us that’s simply trying to overdo what you’ve done, which is to overturn a previously existing bill.

It used to be, again, in the province of Ontario, that statutes and laws warranted a certain amount of respect. They’re weren’t just obstacles, as this government likes to say, the laws of the province of Ontario. Things that were debated and voted in this esteemed House are not just things you can overturn. They’re not just obstacles for this government to get its way. They used to command a certain amount of respect, but unfortunately I don’t see that here. So the idea that we’re passing a new statute to reverse the repeal of another statute—the irony is unbelievable in this House. I’m sorry to say, Madam Speaker, it is, to me, really disappointing and—what is the word I want to say?—a disappointing and disgraceful moment here in this House.

Again.

I also want to go back to saying that the reason we are here debating this bill that is going to revoke/reverse the things this government did when it came to forced urban boundary expansions on municipalities across the province—the reason we are here: We are sharing this victory with all of the people that came together, the grassroots organizations that worked together to push back on this government. They attended rallies, they took signs, they signed petitions, so they were united in demanding that this government—you know, they were asked to protect the greenbelt in perpetuity, and then they understood that the second part of the greenbelt scandal, greenbelt scandal 2.0, if you will, was this forced urban boundary expansion and the issuing of MZOs all across the province. This is the second piece of a land grab scandal that has seized this House, that seized the government for at least the better part of a year.

It’s also the reason that we have, for the first time in the province of Ontario, a government that is under criminal investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It’s stunning. I just want to make sure that we understand how serious this is because the division—the special prosecutor that is looking into the actions of this government is the sensitive and international investigations unit. This unit looks into high-risk matters that cause significant threats to Canada’s political, economic and social integrity of its institutions across Canada and internationally. Those are some serious matters.

So I would like to think, as I have been saying, that the government, the minister and the Premier understand where we are in the province; that this is a government that has learned the error of their ways, has learned that we are in a situation like this because of acts of this government that disrespected the laws, that disrespected the will of the people of the province of Ontario. But as we see with the bill that was just passed, it would be apparent that they have not learned the lesson.

You know, it’s been said many times, and I’m of this sentiment: The Premier said he was sorry, and I agree with people across Ontario who say he was sorry that he got caught and it only just looks like this. All the evidence, all the bills that keep coming forward confirm this is not truly sorry; this is “Sorry, but if I hadn’t got caught, where would we be?” If he hadn’t got caught, where would we be? If we hadn’t had an Integrity Commissioner’s report, where would we be? If we hadn’t had an Auditor General’s report, where would we be? If we hadn’t had excellent investigative journalism, where would we be?

If we hadn’t had the Leader of the Opposition, Marit Stiles, who wrote to the Auditor General, who wrote to the Integrity Commissioner, who filed FOIs, all of this would have remained hidden. The government would be going on as business as usual, working not for the people of the province of Ontario, but working for their developer insiders, donors to the party, friends and family, guests of the Ford government, friends of the Ford government. That’s what we would still be doing. And I submit that the bill that we’ve just passed, the Ontario Place bill, that’s the same behaviour. That’s the same behaviour. And the truth will out, as they say in Shakespeare. I believe that is the case.

Let me speak to this bill, Bill 150. This is the Planning Statute Law Amendment Act. Really, what this does is it reverses the harmful, unilaterally imposed urban boundary expansions that this government forced on municipalities in the past year. We have been saying this is the right thing to do, to reverse it, but we were also saying it was the wrong thing to do in the first place, that you’ve done this. But it did take an Auditor General’s report, an Integrity Commissioner’s report and, as I said, an RCMP investigation and extraordinary advocacy from the public to get the government to begin reversing its preferential treatment of favoured speculators.

And even after these extraordinary reversals that we’re seeing here in these two bills, this bill still does not reverse many other planning policies that continue to make rich speculators richer and that harm the public interest and that still fail to deliver the housing that Ontarians need. Despite what the government does, despite what the minister of housing says, this does not come close to delivering the housing need in the province of Ontario. You’ve set us back, so far back when people are in such, such desperate need.

It’s interesting; I would say that we were clear. Experts have been clear, and we’ve been saying that this government didn’t need the greenbelt and they didn’t need this forced urban boundary expansions to build the housing that we need. The government’s own affordable housing task force said clearly shortage of land is not the cause of the housing crisis.

So really, honestly, again, why did this government waste a yearplus with greenbelt grabs and forced urban boundary expansions instead of implementing policies that might actually get homes built? Why didn’t you introduce inclusionary zoning? Why instead of investing in a luxury spa—sprawl, pardon me; I almost said “spa” again. We’ve been saying “spa” a lot, but I meant to say “luxury sprawl.” Instead of investing in that, why didn’t you invest in non-market housing that we’ve talked about? The solutions are there: co-op housing—

Interjection: Supportive housing.

Really, I can only conclude, if the government agrees that it was a mistake to give preferential treatment to speculator friends with the greenbelt grab and the forced urban boundary expansion—it agrees, obviously, that it was a mistake to give many of those speculators arbitrary MZOs who are now under investigation by the auditor. My question is, if they see this as a mistake, if they agree that it was wrong to give preferential treatment, if they agree with the Auditor General’s investigating these MZOs and the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing clearly saying they will be looking at all of those MZOs that were issued, why are you giving a new minister the unilateral power—one minister, one person, the power to issue MZOs without public scrutiny? That’s the mess you got into in the first place, but you’re doing it again. It defies logic.

So let’s just take a leap of faith now and say that the government has seen the error of their ways and that they’re reversing these MZOs and these forced urban boundaries because they see that that was not the direction to go in. But then, the question is, if you see that we don’t need the greenbelt land—you’re putting those back—and we don’t need those forced urban boundaries, do you now agree with your own housing task force recommendation that we don’t need these lands to build housing? Is this signalling that you now do not agree that we need to encroach on farmland, that we need to lose more prime agricultural farmland, that we need to build on heritage natural spaces to build the housing we need? I can only assume that’s what that means.

Going forward, we will be keeping an eye on you to see what changes you continue to make. As I said when we discussed the greenbelt reversal bill, there still is a provision in that bill that allows for the government to remove lands from the greenbelt. The minister was very clear and the assistant minister for housing was very clear to say that they reserve the right to use greenbelt land to build infrastructure. So this greenbelt land is not protected in perpetuity. This bill reverses some of the harmful decisions, but you’ve left loopholes in there that will allow the greenbelt and farmland and urban boundaries to be expanded at the signing of the pen of a minister.

The urban boundary expansion has been called “greenbelt scam 2.0,” because as we know, this unilateral grab of greenbelt lands was not put in the public sphere; people weren’t given the opportunity to consult on it. And then, when it came to forced urban boundary expansions—let’s be clear: This is a government that bigfooted municipalities and regions all across the province. These are municipalities and regions that put forward official plans, and this government just overrode them, just unilaterally decided—“Thank you, councillors; thank you, local planners; thank you, local citizens, for all the effort you put into coming up with your reasoned, well-thought-out official plans, the ways that you were going to build your own communities. Thanks anyway, but we’re just going to take all of these and we’re going to override them. We’re going to rewrite them in the minister’s office.” That is an incredible, incredible, heavy-handed action on the part of this government. The regions that had this happen to them—they were mentioned before, but this government ignored councils in Waterloo, Barrie, Wellington. There were also significant changes made to Hamilton.

I want to talk a little bit about what happened in Hamilton. In Hamilton, on the same day that the government opened up greenbelt lands for development, the government also forced the expansion of Hamilton’s urban boundaries by 2,200 hectares of land—again, overriding city council and overriding the will of the people of the city of Hamilton. And I need to be clear: This is almost three times as much land with an urban boundary expansion as was lost during the greenbelt grab. Again, the people of Hamilton, who had been advocating for a frozen urban boundary, spoke up. I will say that, in Hamilton, we had a referendum, and something—90% of the people, I think; there was an extraordinary number of people who filled out their referendum and returned it to council. Of that, it was an overwhelming majority—I think it was perhaps 90% of the people who said they wanted a firm urban boundary; they didn’t want to expand. That was the will of the people of Hamilton. It was the decision of Hamilton city council, and it was the decision of Hamilton’s city planners. Despite this being submitted to the province, the previous minister, Mr. Clark, overrode it, just like that. He threatened that he would in an op-ed—an extraordinary, unusual op-ed that he wrote to the city of Hamilton in the Hamilton Spectator, saying that he would overturn it, and sure enough, he did.

This is a government that not only overrode democratically elected councils, but they abdicated their duty to consult with First Nations.

We know that so many of these deals happened in the back rooms. We also know that the vast majority of the developers that benefited from the urban boundary expansion were the same speculators that benefited from the greenbelt grab.

So we have, again, the Integrity Commissioner and the Auditor General to thank for some of the records that show what happened behind the scenes.

I think it needs to be made clear that in the Integrity Commissioner’s report, developers from Hamilton were invited by this government to a meeting where they were shown the changes that were going to be made to Hamilton’s official plan; they were shown before Hamilton city councillors were, before Hamilton planners were. These developers were in a meeting and said, “Are you comfortable with the changes we’re going to make to the official plan?” These are developers and lobbyists. It turns out that they are one of the same developers that bought tickets for Doug Ford’s stag and doe. This is no way to conduct business. It’s shocking that insider developers would be given a heads-up on the changes that were going to be made to Hamilton’s official plan before Hamilton was. And if that isn’t evidence of preferential treatment, if that isn’t evidence of insider dealing, I don’t know what is.

I want to go on to say that there was a court challenge, as there always is with this government, and records were revealed. In these records that came directly from the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, these records revealed—they were internal documents that showed that this government knew the decisions they were making around urban boundary expansions were not needed. The documents said clearly that in many municipalities, including in Hamilton, the Hamilton frozen boundary expansion would have been sufficient to build the houses that we need. It showed that there was no understanding of the cost that would be incurred by municipalities like Hamilton—which actually means Hamilton taxpayers. They didn’t take into consideration the cost that would be downloaded to taxpayers when this forced urban boundary expansion required the city of Hamilton to build infrastructure—roads, schools, fire stations, fire hydrants, sewer, waste water. All those costs are not on the developers; they’re on the city of Hamilton, also known as the taxpayers. The ministry’s own documents revealed that they didn’t know what those costs were going to be, and they still went ahead.

The ministry’s own internal documents said that they knew that this would impact prime agricultural land, which we all know—farms feed cities. We’re losing agricultural land at an unsustainable pace—that wasn’t a concern—and that the environmental impacts would be significant, but they weren’t taken into consideration. This is the information that the ministry used to make their decision when they went ahead with these forced urban boundaries. It’s unbelievable that that would be okay, that that’s part of the decision.

Again, was this about housing? I would just say that no one actually is buying the line that it was about housing—and the line is the point that I want to say, because Ryan Amato was quoted in these documents telling bureaucrats and telling assistant ministers, “Hold the line. It’s all about housing.” And that came when the heat was on. So they even said it was a line: “Hold the line. It’s all about housing.” That was their cover story. Ford’s hand-picked adviser was saying, “Hold the line.”

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing’s own documents showed that the 77 individual changes that were proposed to Hamilton’s municipal plans were requested by unnamed parties, third parties. We don’t know who made these requests, so it’s like the province is governed by Mr. X and unnamed third parties who had direct influence in changing how land was used in the province and in Hamilton. So, absolutely, this was another sketchy backroom deal that benefited well-connected speculators and, as we say, has done nothing to build homes for our community of Hamilton.

I would just want to make sure that you are aware that Hamilton is meeting the housing targets that we agreed on with the province—actually, we’re exceeding those within our existing urban boundaries. It’s proof positive that these lands, this greenbelt grab and this forced urban boundary expansion that made people rich was not needed to build the housing we need.

I also want to talk a little bit about the MZOs. Again, this extraordinary number of MZOs that have been issued in this province is like an albatross around the neck of this government. We know what you’ve been up to, because of the extraordinary number of MZOs that have been issued.

This is an insane fact: Guests at Doug Ford’s daughter’s wedding received 18 MZOs—more MZOs than the Liberal government issued in their time in office.

Interjection: And we thought they did a lot.

A lot.

Our MPP from Oshawa has made clear—she just had a wedding, and she gave out bottles of maple syrup. So there is another way. Gifting MZOs, which is gifting land in the province, is not the way to go.

An Ancaster councillor, Craig Cassar, said it best: “It’s entirely undemocratic for the province to accommodate for-profit interests that are in complete contradiction to the public’s interest.”

We also know that many of these changes came directly, word for word, from speculators.

So it is well and good that the government is reversing this, because certainly it was a messy business indeed.

Again, the fact that we are here in this House, just having rammed through legislation and rushed legislation, giving the power to issue MZOs to a minister—it’s in stark contrast to what happened with issuing these MZOs and what happens when you shortchange a process, when you cut the public out, and when you don’t fulfill your duty to consult Indigenous First Nations. There are consequences. I’m standing here, right now, as a consequence of this, while you’re rolling back and revoking this bill.

I’m just going to talk about some of the stakeholders and some of the consequences of what you’ve done by rushing MZOs.

Let’s start with everybody’s favourite, if you will—an article from Colin D’Mello that says, “Ford Government Forced to Fix Rushed Zoning Order That Put Tower on Flight Path.” Well, how is that for a headline, Speaker?

“The Ford government was forced to scale back” an MZO “after the developer was given permission to build a skyscraper right in the middle of the flight path of Pearson International Airport ... after a rushed process....

“The gaffe is likely to draw more scrutiny to the province’s use of ... MZOs a controversial tool that allows the province to overrule and replace ... decisions made by local councils....

“Sources with knowledge of the provincial process told Global News the request for one building included in the zoning order—a 50-storey tower—come from the developer and was turned around by the Ford government in less than two weeks.

“The order to allow the building near Toronto Pearson airport came through the Premier’s Office and was given to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing....”

They turned this MZO around in two weeks, put a tower in a flight path of Pearson airport—if that is not evidence of a rushed process that needs to be reversed, I don’t know what is.

Also, consequences in Hamilton: We know this government is under RCMP investigation, I would say justifiably. But Hamilton city council moved a motion to request the RCMP to investigate the province’s changes to the official plan and urban boundary. Hamilton city council is requesting that the RCMP investigate not only the province’s greenbelt land removal, but also its decision to expand the city’s urban boundary and make other surprise changes to its official plan.

As reported by CBC, Hamilton and the province “copied a developer’s exact request into the official plan so he could move forward with building condos in Ancaster. The developer’s representative had attended Premier Doug Ford’s daughter’s stag and doe in the summer of 2022.” Again, it’s a consequence of a process that is rushed.

That you are still continuing on with your Ontario Place shenanigans has consequences.

I never in a million years thought that I would get elected to this esteemed House to represent the people of Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas and I would be talking about a developer and an MPP having couple massages in Vegas. I never thought that we would hear planning decisions made on massage tables in Vegas. It’s funny, but it is not funny. It’s a sad state of affairs.

Finally, what I want to say is that these things have consequences, and there are questions that remain. I mean, the minister—we want to know, was he going to abandon his plan to make lower-tier mayors responsible for his decisions? Will the minister confirm that no further changes to these official plans will be imposed? Will the minister promise not to slow down or complicate housing plans by allowing sprawl developers to appeal official plans themselves? And will the minister promise to maintain and respect the settlement boundary system and the ban on avoidable boundary expansions from now on? These are the questions that remain.

While this bill is here because of the community that saw through the actions of this government and rose up, and while it is important that we are reversing this here, I hope that we all understand the importance of good planning, the importance of democratic processes and the importance of why we’re here as legislators, which is to do the right thing the first time, and not spend time reversing decisions that shouldn’t have ever been made in the first place.

And with that, Madam Speaker, I cede my time. Thank you.