There are things in this bill that I think are useful. There is some elimination of red tape. There are also some extremely difficult problems that have been left behind and a loophole that has also been introduced through the provincial policy statement that’s very worrying.

We have actually seen some rolling back of some bad legislation that the government forced through with great fanfare a year ago: Bill 23. At that time, AMO was not provided an opportunity to present to the Legislature’s standing committee on heritage and culture during the review of Bill 23. It was pretty shocking that AMO was not allowed to speak to a bill, and they were very, very concerned. Their submission outlined key areas of concern and recommended that a number of provisions should be removed, including those that shifted the costs of growth to property taxpayers, those that undermined good planning practices and community livability, and those that increased risks to human and environmental health. We haven’t seen any improvements to looking after human and environmental health, but we are seeing some of these issues addressed, and we see that the money is coming back—development money is coming back to municipalities. So that’s very good thing. It’s a rollback of a bill that was passed with tremendous enthusiasm and fanfare. Fortunately, that has been basically rolled back.

What’s also interesting to me is that municipalities are now being consulted in terms of having fourplexes by right, so instead of bringing in fourplexes by right, we’re leaving it up to municipalities. That’s respectful of the municipalities. It’s just interesting how there can be such a flip-flop between all these arguments about how irresponsible municipalities are and they spend too much money—I believe it was the Premier who expounded tremendously on municipalities not being trustworthy with money. But today, we like municipalities, and that’s probably appropriate.

Backtracking on the dissolution of Peel—that’s interesting, too, since we spent a lot of time on that.

There are some good things. Making changes to the building code to allow 18-storey mass timber buildings—I’m very supportive of this development. Developers no longer required to build parking in developments near transit—we’re good with that; a use-it-or-lose-it law that gives municipalities more power to motivate a developer to build a development one they’ve been given the approvals, and so on. Providing standardized, pre-approved home designs—this could be very helpful, and we like the proposal because it will help Ontario build more homes more quickly.

But this is the part that’s very, very worrying: the provincial policy statement. This wipes out settlement area boundaries and municipal comprehensive review processes so new development on nearby farmland can be approved at any time. Let’s be clear about that. We’re talking about easy approvals for expanding onto farmland that needs to be preserved as farmland to produce food. Developers can appeal any municipal refusal to the lands tribunal to amend a municipal boundary and approval—