I, along with many of my colleagues, joined the Ontario Nurses’ Association information pickets that were held across Ontario. In Hamilton, it was a very lively turnout—lots of energy, lots of community support, folks honking.

These 3,000 nurses, personal support workers and other health care professionals who work in long-term-care homes will begin bargaining this week. Their demands are reasonable: They’re looking for safe staffing ratios so they can provide the quality of care our vulnerable residents need, and they want wages on par with their hospital counterparts.

ONA provincial president Erin Ariss said, “We are fighting for care, not profit, advocating for the vulnerable residents of Ontario’s corporate-owned long-term-care homes.... Our residents deserve to receive quality care, yet what we see is wealthy corporations making record profits on the backs of our residents and those who care for them. It’s not right, and it’s not safe”—I agree.

ONA members who I spoke with on Friday continue to face pushback from the profit-driven corporations that run many of these homes that they work for. What they said they see are companies prioritizing their bottom line over the well-being of residents.

I, along with my colleagues, stand in solidarity with these front-line workers. I urge the government to start listening to the voices of nurses. Their fight is our fight: to ensure quality, not-for-profit care for our seniors and all vulnerable residents in Ontario.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome students and teachers from Westdale Secondary School in my riding of Hamilton. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

To my colleague, I’ll just let you continue on with that thought process. AMO has estimated that the changes that were in Bill 23, together with some of the other changes, are going to cost “municipalities around $4 billion over a 10-year period and will have a material impact on municipalities’ ability to invest in community housing.”

So now we hear, it’s like all of a sudden, the government finally has understood that, guess what, we need water and waste water. Now, they’re creating a big foofaraw about issuing these big, giant Happy Gilmore cheques back to communities, but it’s their own money. Had they not been taking this away in the first place, do you believe we would be further ahead in building the housing that people need?

I indeed do have a question to the member from Niagara West. I do enjoy our hallway drive-by chats, so I wanted to comment on you quoting de Tocqueville. You will also know that de Tocqueville, his study on the democracy in America, is what led to that quote that I said to you. He also was very concerned and turned the phrase “the tyranny of the majority.” And you will also know that in using that phrase, he was concerned with the impact of a majority government and the well-being and the welfare of minority rights.

I would just like to say to you, your government has a huge majority, and you use it every single time. I would like to share with you my disappointment in the many times—for example, at committee when we or other members bring forward amendments that are there to ensure that everyone has a voice and that bills are reflective of the welfare and well-being of everyone in Ontario.

So I guess my question to you is, what do you think de Tocqueville would think about the fact that you often use this majority to shut out debate or shut down debate on these important issues?

I want to refocus. You touched on this, but the appeals process: We went through this terrible period when the urban boundary expansion and the greenbelt grab showed no evidence that it was following any rational process and preferential treatment was shown to have been applied. Now, we have an appeals process for any developer that wants to build low-density sprawl on farmland or so forth, that if a municipality says no, they can appeal it—but if they say, yes, no one else can appeal this decision.

I just want to say that this is really concerning, particularly given what’s happening in Wilmot—or that we don’t know what’s happening in Wilmot. There’s a perfect example of a process that is undefined, that is not happening in a rational, predictable way, that could result in us seeing the loss of 770 acres of farmland in Wilmot.

I wanted to just focus my question on the removal of the regions in the role of the planning authority. I know that we’re very concerned, as are you, that these changes will allow expensive low-density sprawl on farmland and green lands. Also what’s at risk, though, would be some of the region’s responsibilities for things, particularly in Waterloo region, like source water protection plans. These are important things that the region has done. And the concern that smaller municipalities don’t have the planning expertise that is needed, and that they are more vulnerable to developer pressures—the developers, they can arrive with the plan and smaller municipal councils will not be in a position, necessarily, to challenge or to be able to provide alternatives.

So can you just talk about what is at stake when we’re removing regional government from the planning process?

Thank you to the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills for your speech here today. One of the things that I would say on this side of the House that we’re concerned about is good planning that happens in a transparent way and good planning that puts people at the centre of planning and the outcomes, not developers. One of the things we learned from the greenbelt gravy train, if you will, is that when you put developers at the centre of it, you have to roll back these changes, you’ve lost trust, you’ve lost the progress that we will need when it comes to building houses.

Can you tell me why people of the province of Ontario should trust that this government, when they’re removing planning from regional governments and when they’re allowing developers to appeal directly to the OLT—how is this not going to continue to be a developer-driven planning process in Ontario?

What we had expected to see would be a bill that shows a sense of urgency in the crisis that we’re facing. Well, we are disappointed, and so is the Ontario Real Estate Association. They literally say, “Finally, we are disappointed that two key recommendations by the province’s own Housing Affordability Task Force ... have not been included in” this bill. “We need to build more homes on existing properties and allow upzoning along major corridors if we are going to address the housing affordability and supply ... in our province.”

Finally, they said, “Eliminating exclusionary zoning and allowing four units, as of right, province-wide is an essential key to unlock affordable home ownership.”

Can you comment on the disappointment of the Ontario Real Estate Association with this bill?