I am honoured to rise today to speak about a very important issue that is setting a dangerous precedent here in Ontario: the expropriation of prime farmland in Wilmot township.

Back in March, Wilmot farmers were told of the region’s plans to purchase 770 acres of their land. If the landowners refused to sell, they were told that their land would be expropriated.

Remember that Waterloo region’s official plan accommodated all anticipated growth in the region until 2051 without significant farmland loss.

This government’s current legislation makes it possible for what is happening in Wilmot to happen anywhere in Ontario, with no transparency and no community consultation.

The region is actually, right now, operating under an NDA. There are no answers, no information coming from the regional level of government.

Stewart Snyder, a landowner and farmer says, “Something’s not right. We’re not just being mistreated as farmers and landowners, but the whole community is being left in the dark about what’s going on.”

On Friday, the NDP leader and other NDP MPPs, including myself, held a town hall in Wilmot, and almost 500 people attended.

This is very clearly greenbelt 2.0. We the official opposition will get to the bottom of this, just like we did with the greenbelt, and we will continue to fight for farmers in Wilmot.

I’m so pleased to join in the debate on the official opposition’s motion today. I think that all of us in this House understand that without stable housing, without a strategy to address the precariousness of housing, we will not reach our potential. This is what housing provides to people in Ontario.

I’m going to go through a couple of stats here because it’s important for the government to have their eyes wide open on this situation on housing and homelessness. In fact, this government has refocused their energy on addressing homelessness, and homelessness is a crisis. Homelessness are encampments.

We just met, the leader and I, on Friday with the social development centre, and they described what they’re seeing in encampments as criminal purgatory. It’s where people are not seen; they are not heard; they are the great unwashed. We do not want to acknowledge their humanity.

The normalization of these encampments is a very dark point for us in Canada and in Ontario. We all should agree that people should not be living in tents in the winter on a corner, in a park. It’s almost like this government is content, if you will, that they’re there and they’re not over here. We had a really honest and emotional conversation about the loss of dignity for people in this province. We have to talk about “these people” because they are our people; they are our citizens. They should not be treated like second-class citizens in the province of Ontario.

Now, the government, though, has really been playing a little bit of a shell game with the money on housing, I have to say. We have proposed some solutions here. One of them—it was really interesting. It’s always interesting how many times a member on that side can say, “Bonnie Crombie, queen of the carbon tax.” They’re very consistent in that regard. But I have to say, what’s happening with the commentary around fourplexes—now, the government should remember that it was less than two years ago that they made threeplexes a right of way, not right of way but right of—what is it?

It was less than two years ago that this government made threeplexes as of right. Now it’s the fourplex—this is the line in the sand, right? This is the line in the sand where this government has said, “Oh, forget it.” What do you do with a Premier who says that we can’t have these eight-storey fourplexes? What do you do with that, Madam Speaker? Because this is what the Premier has said, “We can’t have four-storey, six-storey or eight-story fourplexes.” Everybody in this House should fully understand that fourplexes are either two storeys, sometimes they’re three storeys, but for some reason this government has said, “Nope, we’re drawing the line in the sand. The threeplexes are as good as you’re going to get, Ontario.” Maybe they aren’t the whole solution, but they are definitely part of the solution, and we need all of these tools to address the homelessness and housing crisis in Ontario.

It’s important, if you track the money—and I’m the finance critic, so I like to do so. In 2018-19, Ontario spent a total of $1.1 billion on its housing programs. The breakdown is really interesting: $397 million was on homelessness, $693 million was on community housing and $7.8 million on Indigenous housing. My good friend from Kiiwetinoong, this is a familiar story that you’ve heard before. In 2024, the province was planning on spending $1.4 billion, but $707 million on homelessness and only $215 million on community housing. And $422 million was from the National Housing Strategy with the federal government, who are obviously in a point of tension right now with this provincial government, because they want to bypass the provincial government and get money right into those communities.

I will say, they are putting some pressure on this government. Why would you not come together in the face of this housing crisis when money is on the table? We need the resources in the community. This ideological game is such a dangerous place in politics, in my view.

Just to recap, the government has lowered spending on community housing by 70%. For the love of humanity, how do you solve a housing crisis by reducing the funding on community housing? How do you do that? It seems like you’re content to see those encampments. You’re content to spend some more money on the crisis of that moment but not the solution of the moment. This is so short-sighted. To be fair, it’s exactly what the Liberals did.

Timmins Mayor Michelle Boileau states that in northern Ontario, local towns “have seen an increase to homelessness prevention dollars while either seeing status quo or most recently a decrease to community housing funding.”

It is an exercise in futility to acknowledge that homelessness is a crisis, that those problems are complex and require strategic investment, strategic resources and talent and yet not have the solution around community housing, which is supportive housing.

Tim Richter from the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness said that “when Ontario is spending less on housing, they’re going to end up spending more on homelessness....”

This is exactly what’s happening in Ontario right now. It defies all logic for a government that says that 1.5 million homes need to be built. Right now, the homes that are being built, as my colleague from Niagara has pointed out, are unaffordable homes. It is not the solution. The financialization of our housing sector is killing this province. It absolutely is.

I’ll just summarize by saying that in Waterloo region, the number of people who are experiencing chronic homelessness has grown by 129%, but this is going to triple in 2028. This is a community, quite honestly, that does have wealth. We have a very strong religious and social fabric in our region that has really been trying to lift people up, but that net has holes in it. It is frayed; it is tired. There’s no mending it. We need a new strategy.

That is why the official opposition has brought forward some recommendations here to the government. It sounds like they’re not open to the suggestions; you’re not open to the learning part of this. But I have to tell you, when we met with The Working Centre, Joe and Stephanie Mancini, this past Friday, they have described what’s happening to people who are the most vulnerable in Ontario as beyond cruel.

We need to solve the housing crisis. Please contemplate other options, because your plan, the PC plan, is not working.