I love the passion from the member, but when it comes to building in his own community, an as-of-right four community, a sum total of zero have been built, Mr. Speaker. Do you know why that is? Because the city of Guelph needs infrastructure. They need sewer and water capacity. I hear it from the mayor constantly. I had a wonderful conversation with the mayor, when we were providing a Building Faster Fund cheque, who identified the fact that his additional assistance through the Building Faster Fund would go to building more sewer and water capacity so that he could build even more homes.

The opposition can focus on policies that do nothing because it makes them feel better. We saw that from the Liberals for 15 years: announce all kinds of things, but don’t accomplish anything. That’s all that they care about.

We’ll build the sewer and water capacity so that we can build, not hundreds, not tens, not 70 fourplexes in Toronto, zero in Guelph, but millions of homes in every part of this province, Mr. Speaker, because that’s how we will tackle the affordability crisis.

This is the fallacy of what you hear from the Greens, the Liberals and the NDP: They get up in their place and they fight for policies that they know won’t build homes. What we’re doing is putting in the infrastructure that is needed to build a home.

But you know what else we’re hearing, Mr. Speaker? We’re hearing that the high-inflation policies of the federal Liberal government—a carbon tax, which has led to high interest rates—are stopping people from getting shovels in the ground. More importantly, it is stopping people from being able to afford those homes. So why don’t the members opposite work with us to get the federal government to eliminate the carbon tax, reduce costs, bring down red tape, bring down all costs, bring down interest rates and we will meet our challenges—

Interjections.

The member for University–Rosedale speaks of the fact that she admits that there is a housing supply crisis, a housing affordability crisis, that we need to be on target for building 1.5 million homes. Yet, she sits among members who supported the previous Liberal government in the 40th Parliament.

Steve Del Duca, the current mayor of Vaughan, has admitted that that housing affordability crisis of which the member speaks began under the Liberal government. It began when the member for Waterloo arrived with the mayor for Vaughan. They arrived together in 2012, and in 2012, 2013 and 2014, the NDP and the Liberals were together politically. They had the political will to do something, and they did nothing.

Will the member opposite, the member for University–Rosedale—now having admitted the housing affordability crisis, knowing that this goes back to the NDP supporting the Liberals—support this bill and engage in forward thinking for the good of Ontario?

My question is to the member for Durham. We just did a briefing where we had representatives from Canadians for Properly Built Homes speak, and their biggest concern was that not enough is done to ensure that builders abide by the building code when they’re building a new home or a condo. It’s resulting in people buying a home that’s just not up to snuff, where there are major defects and their dream has turned into this horror show.

What is this government’s plan to ensure that builders follow the building code when they’re building new homes?

I listened very intently to the member opposite. Of course, I know he will be reminded frequently by members on this side of the House that it was a former Liberal cabinet minister who agreed that the housing crisis actually started under the previous Liberal government and went before a committee. Of course, the provincial planning statement talks about building around major transit station areas. That is in there. Of course, he lives in a city that has four units as-of-right that has built next to nothing in that category.

But I wonder when the member became such a fierce advocate for density. Because when he was running for office, he was at a community meeting, and he said he would do everything in his power to stop density in his community around a transit station area. So I’m wondering when he converted to being a warrior for building housing in his community, housing that he vowed he would work to stop when he got elected.

I wanted to ask my colleague from Don Valley East about one part of his speech, and that is the potential exemptions to planning rules given to post-secondary institutions to build housing. The post-secondary institutions that I’m familiar with are not in the business of building a lot of housing. It’s not their key competency. They also don’t have a lot of capital to invest in starting such a business. I could see a post-secondary institution hiving this off to, perhaps, a private company to take advantage of all the exemptions that a post-secondary institution would get to building housing.

I wanted to ask my colleague if he thought this was a wise or even practical course of action.

Mr. Speaker, the member said he doesn’t remember saying anything of the sort when it comes to being against housing in his area. This is exactly what he said: “I am moving to use whatever levers we have to stop this incredibly outrageous proposal from going ahead as designed. I join my vocal opposition to this with community organizations. I will use whatever levers I can and relationships that I can here in the Legislature and in the chamber to try and advocate for the more modest proposal as well.” This is when the member was talking about building density around transit areas in his community. Those are the exact quotes that he said at a community meeting.

It’s just like the Liberals, right? Say one thing there, another thing here. We saw that for 15 years. What part of those quotes and those actions do you not agree with today?

Thank you to the member from Niagara West for his debate here today. I know, like me, he shares the frustration of seeing red tape that slows down the building of housing, and in particular, infrastructure.

I know the member from Perth–Wellington touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to give the member a chance to maybe talk about some projects in his riding that have just taken so long to come to fruition because of the lack of infrastructure and the lack of availability from the municipalities to be able to participate in this. So maybe I’ll give him an opportunity to touch on some great projects in his riding that he’s looking forward to seeing move forward.

Thank you to my colleague for his presentation. In this bill we hear about more wood—to allow more building with wood, which is great, in this bill.

But you did mention a lot about non-market housing and building affordable housing and co-ops and supportive housing, and in my riding, of course, there’s a lot of those missing. We have homes that could be revamped, and we have people that would like to move from their home to have a transitional home after, because now they say, “Well, we can’t afford a big home anymore,” or, “We want something more affordable.”

Do you think this bill addresses that, and will that fix some of the problems we deal with in most communities up north and in the south, I guess, and in your riding also?

The member has talked a lot about building deeply affordable units, building not-for-profit housing, and I think this bill seeks to help that happen. We’re looking at ways that we can streamline the planning process, looking at ways that we can help those builds go faster.

With the remaining time, I’d like to know whether or not the member is going to support this bill and whether or not he’s going to approve of the government’s position as to how we can actually help people he has referred to in his speech earlier today actually find a place to live.

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?

Thanks to my colleague on the opposite side for the good question. I think the main goal here is to accelerate the building. We are in a crisis. We need to build more homes, and having the process of going to local government and then regional government, then OLT—this is three cycles to get something judged on or something decided on. We have trust in OLT to be able to look into a bigger picture and make sure that the projects which are in need and have justification to go are a go.

This is why in this three-year program, $1.2 billion is designed to encourage municipalities to address this housing crisis and build the infrastructure. We even incentivize them if they reach at least 80% and if they exceed their target—

Actually, we have to say that there’s no one-size-fits-all. When we talk about the housing crisis, we are talking about homes, townhomes, condo buildings, affordable homes. It’s many, many aspects of housing. It’s not one type of housing, and each one of them has its own characteristics. As we can see, allowing garden homes, allowing multiple units in one lot is adding. Allowing more density around transportation infrastructure is solving issues. Allowing open heights close to the stations, around the stations of the public transit infrastructure is adding more density. And, of course, affordable homes—we’ve seen that we removed the developer fees for rental and for attainable homes to encourage developers to build affordable homes to meet those—