I understand that in Bill 185, the government’s bill around building more homes, developers are no longer required to build parking in a development near transit. I can understand theoretically where that would be a decent thing. In fact, we didn’t necessarily mind that feature of Bill 185.

But listening to some constituents yesterday—or was it yesterday or the day before? When the housing critic, the MPP for University–Rosedale, hosted a bit of a conversation to get feedback from constituents and community members on this bill, we heard folks who said that there may be an ableist lens in that part of the bill. A lot of tenants, a lot of folks who live in apartments, even if they’re near transit, need a PSW to come to their home, and there is no parking, or they need a vehicle in order to get groceries, or they need a vehicle so that family can visit when they come over.

I’m wondering, will there be any minimum at all of parking for these new developments to ensure that folks who need those with cars to support them can have that?

I want to thank the member for that question. I look at my area of Port Credit and Mississauga–Lakeshore. We have the Clarkson GO train station; we have the Port Credit GO station. Projects have been refused because they weren’t building enough parking for those buildings. By removing that, that will let the market dictate.

Especially today, when we look at people trying to buy homes in our community, you can save $50,000 to $100,000 for a parking spot. We can help these young families buy into these communities and be able to take transit.

If we believe in protecting the environment, like we say we do, getting cars off the road would be your prime issue here. So that’s what we’re trying to do, get more vehicles off the road and get them into transit. That’s why we’re spending $71 billion into transit to get people into transit right across Ontario.

I look at my own riding of Mississauga–Lakeshore. We had the Lakeview Generating Station. It’s 177 acres of land. It was a brownfield—

To be honest, to the member: I saved the Credit River bridge, which was a heritage bridge. We’ve twinned the bridge right now. And I’ll tell you the truth: You do not see the heritage bridge anymore because there’s a bridge in front of it. So, we have to keep heritage, I agree—

I’m a big fan of the advocacy organization Strong Towns. I admit they don’t always fall in line with this government, but we did on parking minimums—or, rather, getting rid of parking minimums. I know that that’s something that a lot of the urban planners in Hamilton have been very in favour of. I’m wondering if the member will comment on the impact that this bill has on parking minimums and what she thinks the impact will be on the ongoing urban revitalization and business development in Hamilton.