In fact, we’re not cutting funding for affordable housing.

Do you know who’s cutting funding? The Liberal-NDP government in Ottawa. That is who is cutting funding, by billions of dollars, for the people of Ontario. It’s an agreement that they signed in 2018 with the previous government, that we have honoured. We have overachieved, thanks to the actions that we have taken and our partnership with municipalities across the province of Ontario. Speaker, 426% of renovations have been completed under this government—because we inherited a mess from the others—11,000 of the 19,000 units that had to be built over 10 years were already there. But unilaterally, the NDP-Liberal government in Ottawa has decided to cut billions of dollars from the people of the province of Ontario for affordable housing.

I ask the member opposite—they have an opportunity to call their federal cousins in Ottawa to say that they will not support the federal budget unless the federal budget includes the restoration of the billions of dollars in funds that were unilaterally removed from affordable housing in Ontario.

There’s one—one—government that is opposed to affordable housing funding, and that is the federal Liberal and NDP government, who unilaterally decided to cut funding to the province of Ontario. They didn’t cut funding anywhere else, just Ontario. And do you know who’s staying silent? It is the NDP in Ottawa. They have an opportunity to vote against the federal budget or to say, “Add the funding back in for the province of Ontario and then we will support the budget.” But they’ll stay silent, because they’re just like the NDP here: irrelevant.

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. New government documents obtained by Global News reveal that this government continues to underfund affordable housing. The Conservatives have cut funding to community housing programs even though the wait-list for an affordable home has ballooned to well over 65,000 people.

My question to the minister: Why is this government cutting funding to affordable housing at a time when the homelessness and housing crisis has never been worse?

The minister can spin all he wants and deflect blame, but documents reveal that this government is spending less on community housing and is making the homelessness crisis worse. The goal should be to prevent homelessness, which is better for people and costs less in the long run.

Will the minister do the right thing and restore community housing funding?

My question is for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

The Liberal carbon tax continues to make life more unaffordable for the people of Ontario. It’s driving up prices and making life more expensive on everything from grocery bills to the cost of filling up our cars. But it goes well beyond that. The carbon tax scheme is negatively impacting the very people who have a critical role in building our province. The carbon tax is increasing the costs for building materials and the transportation of these materials, adding significant burden for the home builders of Ontario. It’s not right.

The people in Chatham-Kent–Leamington and across Ontario who dream of home ownership should not be punished by the federal carbon tax scheme.

Can the minister please explain how the Liberal carbon tax is making it more expensive to build housing in Ontario?

It’s encouraging to see how our government, unlike the NDP and Liberal members in this House, is supporting families and individuals across Ontario and fighting back against the Liberal carbon tax.

In the middle of a housing crisis, this tax grab is impacting every person looking to buy a home. Home builders in Chatham-Kent–Leamington and Essex county have told me personally that this carbon tax is dramatically increasing the price to transport building materials. This is truly devastating to young families hoping to enter the housing market and seeing prices go well above what they can afford.

The federal Liberals need to do the right thing and scrap this tax today.

Can the parliamentary assistant please share how this Liberal carbon tax scheme is increasing the prices of new homes across Ontario?

Bob Rae was decades ago; the Conservative Harris government was also decades ago, but one of the things, I know, with the Conservative Harris government piece is, they cut ODSP and they cut OW, and we’re still seeing the effects of that. There are people living in apartments that right now are low rents, and there are landlords pushing them out of those units because of renovictions. They want to get them out so that they can charge more. But where are people going to live when they’re on that fixed income? Building housing is so important, and keeping people housed, who have limited resources and income, is so important, or you’re going to end up with more homeless people who don’t have access to affordable homes.

So the government should be building—and under Bob Rae, we did that. We built housing geared to income, under Bob Rae. We built co-operative housing. And every government should always have that built into a future housing plan—the present and the future—so we accommodate the socio-economic differences and demographics for everyone, whether you—

I’ll use an example: We lost the Via service from London to Toronto years ago. And then, this government put in the GO train, but they’ve cut it back to the point where you can’t even use it; it’s very limited.

Having transit when it comes to trains, from southwestern Ontario—it’s a hub, and people want to come to Toronto. Making sure that we build transit inside urban boundaries, as well, and having buses—we lost Greyhound during the pandemic. That was another piece. The Northlander—that was another one, under the Liberal government, that we lost.

So there are a lot of projects where we have let things go to the point where now we’re looking at building mega highways and taking our bulldozers and using good, fertile land that really doesn’t need to be used.

The other thing is the 407—we can improve transit rather than building highways by having no tolls on the 407 for transport trucks.

I appreciate my colleague across the floor from London. I find interesting your talk about fourplexes. It’s a sincere question. I agree, they can look good in certain situations. London has as-of-right four now. I think you’d agree with that. They didn’t meet their housing targets last year. In fact, fourplexes across the province, those that have it, have not shown any meaningful success in utilizing them.

What do we do with our municipalities—and they have the right, every municipality, to go as-of-right four. What do you think we need to do with these municipalities to get them done? They’ve got it; it isn’t working in London. What do we do differently?