Revisionist history over there. ODSP maxes out at just $1,300 a month—just $1,300 to cover housing, utilities and food in the middle of a housing and affordability crisis. Food bank use is at an all-time high for working people. It’s up 40% from last year. The federal benefit was always supposed to be a top-up to the provincial program to help people make ends meet, yet the Conservatives want to use it as an excuse to make more cuts.

To the Premier: Why is your government taking away vulnerable people’s safety net at a time when things are more expensive than ever before?

To the Premier: Will you commit to doubling the ODSP today?

Interjections.

This question is for the Premier. Early last year, the government’s own hand-picked Housing Affordability Task Force made 55 recommendations to encourage new housing supply. The task force said that a shortage of land was not the cause of the housing crisis. They recommended, in fact, that the greenbelt and farmland be protected.

Instead, the Premier and his government went ahead anyway and they tried to make their friends richer. Now they’re being investigated by the RCMP.

To the Premier: Why did his government rig the system to benefit a select few insiders instead of the people of Ontario?

Here is another thing that this government is trying to convince Ontarians of: They’ve put a lot of effort into trying to convince Ontarians that building luxury mansions on expensive sprawl is the solution to our housing crisis. They’re even ordering municipalities to create more sprawl on prime farmland. They’re risking regions’ drinking water.

The truth is that no one out there is buying it. No one thinks that bulldozing species at risk or adding to municipal servicing costs and driving up property taxes is going to get a single affordable home built.

Speaker, my question is to the Premier. How will lower density and more sprawl make housing more affordable to Ontarians?

As rents are reaching all-time highs and corporate landlords are turning record profits, you know who aren’t affected? Those who live in co-operative housing. Co-op residents don’t have to worry about excessive rent increases because co-ops are non-profit. Co-ops are a key solution to solving the affordability crisis for low- and moderate-income households in this province, the people who are feeling the very real effects of this government’s housing crisis. Yet this government’s budget offers absolutely nothing to create more affordable co-op homes.

To the Premier, will he reverse course on his failing housing plan and start investing in co-operative housing to bring some relief to Ontarians who are truly struggling?

Interjections.

They do not seem to even understand history, Speaker. The last time a government made investments in co-op housing in this province, it was an NDP government. We helped build 14,000 co-op homes. And do you know what, Speaker? We readied 17,000 additional homes for construction, and, guess what, the Conservatives came in and they cancelled them all—17,000 affordable places to live, all gone.

But let’s look at the here and the now. If this government still refuses to build more co-op housing, the least they could do is to bring back real rent control for the people of this province.

Speaker, back to the Premier: People need homes they can actually afford to live in. So will he take action by supporting the NDP’s motion today to bring back real rent control?

Interjections.

Speaker, that’s all a bit rich, because last week’s budget has no new funding to build new social housing or even to protect the ones that are already built. And the Premier’s own Housing Affordability Task Force said that a shortage of land was not the cause of the housing crisis. They said we need to make better use of land already available. The NDP supports this principle, but this Premier does not. He ignored his own task force and targeted prime farmland and the greenbelt for destruction. Now, the budget shows that housing starts are going down instead of up.

Speaker, to the Premier, will he admit that his housing policies are failing?

Speaker, my question is to the Premier again: Will he protect tenants by bringing back real rent control and invest meaningfully in affordable and non-market housing?