We know. But if they really want to see this spa built, then the city of Toronto mayor, Oliva Chow, has graciously proposed an alternative: the Better Living Centre, which would also, I think, perhaps be a better fit.

All the people of this province want to know is, how much is this really going to cost them? The official opposition NDP care as well about public accountability for their hard-earned tax dollars.

But Ontarians also want to know why, since 2018—that’s five years of this Premier’s government—an annual report for Ontario Place has not been published once, not once—all of a sudden, no published reports. They’ve kept secret how much revenue has been brought in from tenants like Live Nation or expenses that Ontario Place has incurred during this time. These reports are supposed to be published around the same time as public accounts every year. Ontario Place Corp.’s financial results are consolidated annually by the government of Ontario. Let me be clear what that means: This government knows. They know, but they aren’t going to tell us. Why? Why is this government so bent on hiding facts and the truth from the very people who pay their salaries, from the very people who will be paying for this absolutely nonsense deal? We see absolutely no transparency, no responsibility from this government, and I think the people of Ontario are asking, “What are they hiding?”

We’ve got them under investigation by the RCMP right now for a deal that was bad—a bad deal. I want to say, the people of this province have said enough is enough. They want to know what this Premier has signed them up for, why he won’t release the terms of the 95-year lease of our public lands, our waterfront, that he is gifting to a private foreign company. Why the secrecy?

The questions just keep coming. Who stands to benefit? Who stands to benefit from this backroom deal? Because it certainly isn’t the people of Ontario. This deal shows us that, once again, insiders are everywhere when it comes to this government. I’ll let you connect the dots, Speaker.

We have Mark Lawson, Therme Canada’s highest-profile executive, who worked in Premier Ford’s office and, guess what, before that, as chief of staff for the Minister of Finance. Then there’s Edward Birnbaum, a new hire announced about a week ago, who came from—also a friend of the Premier—Mayor John Tory’s staff. Finally, there’s Simon Bredin, a Therme spokesperson, who has worked formerly for Navigator, connected to the Conservative Party. Spacing magazine has noted that Therme’s top strategy consultant is John Perenack, another Conservative Party insider whose clients have included EllisDon, the general contractor for the Ontario Place site services replacement project.

Through freedom-of-information requests and questions before the legislative committee, the NDP has learned that there was no fairness monitor for the Ontario Place procurement. I want to remind the people of Ontario: This is standard practice for large procurements, because it’s there to ensure fairness and integrity. Why wasn’t there a fairness monitor?

The government has also been unable to show any scoring criteria used to assess the bids, or the scorecards for each bid. Without the scorecards, we don’t have any way of knowing whether the contract was awarded based on evidence or preferential treatment. Preferential treatment, Speaker: I suspect that’s going to be the real issue here.

Journalist John Lorinc—who, I think, actually is a resident of my riding, a constituent—was writing for Spacing magazine, and he found that the procurement process “lacked ... detail about project financing and public information on other proposals for the site.” I wanted to quote him here. He’s an award-winning journalist, and he writes, “What’s more—and this seems like a highly salient detail—the 38 other bidders were told, in the Call for Development document, that the site had adequate parking, and that they should fashion their proposals accordingly. It was only after the government (via Infrastructure Ontario) selected Therme that it announced the construction of a massive five-level parking garage—an unambiguous commercial benefit to Therme that was never made available to the other bidders.”

Speaker, none of this looks right. It doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t smell right. This government is tanking in trust and accountability—

This MZO was first requested by Rice Commercial Group. Just to remind everyone, that’s the same developer who bought $80 million of protected greenbelt land just two months before the Conservative government opened it up to be paved over. In January 2022, the developer asked Caledon for an MZO. By September, without the support of the town council, they had it.

I’m going to give the Premier another chance to clear the air right now, and if he won’t do it, maybe at least the minister will stand up.

To the Premier: Were there any conversations that occurred between anyone in his government and the Rice Group before the mayor requested this MZO?

Interjections.

Interjections.

To the Premier: Will his government support my legislation for much stronger integrity rules?

Interjections.

Speaker, I am truly honoured to rise today to pay tribute to the late Honourable David C. Onley, who served faithfully as the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 2007 to 2014. Mr. Onley was, among many other things, the first provincial Lieutenant Governor with a physical disability and the second-longest serving since Confederation, a father, a grandfather, a husband, a change-maker, a broadcaster, a public servant and an advocate.

I’d again like to welcome Mr. Onley’s wonderful family: his wife Ruth Ann and Robert his son who are joining us here today. Thank you for being here.

David Onley is remembered as one of the most extraordinary figures in Ontario’s rich political history. He contracted polio at the age of three, which made walking a mammoth task. As his family shared with us recently at his funeral, that also left him with a lifetime of pain. Yet when he was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor, he walked up the stairs in front of us today and sat in the Speaker’s chair. That determination and grit transcended to all areas of David’s life. When David saw closed doors, he opened them, and when they couldn’t be opened, he made sure they were made accessible—not just temporarily, not just for him, but for everyone who passed through after him.

Former Toronto mayor David Crombie and I were speaking recently about Mr. Onley, and he reminded me of his son’s reflection at his father’s disability and desire to live a full life. He said, “He lived a life of courage every day,” something we should all aspire to.

Mr. Onley lived a life dedicated to service and continually fought to make this province work for the disabled. He once remarked that accessibility was, “much, much more than just the curb cuts and wheelchair parking spots and automatic doors and ramps.... It’s that which enables people to achieve their full potential.” He shared the joy in the passing of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and was dedicated to using every tool he had to sound the alarm when he felt the province was lagging in fulfilling its legal obligations, and in 2018 he was asked to do the official AODA review.

I was speaking with disability advocate Sarah Jama yesterday—she’s a disability justice advocate who, yes, is running for a seat in this House—and I couldn’t help but ask her what stood out for her about the legacy of David Onley, as somebody who is a disability justice advocate and also a person who uses a mobility device. She said she felt it incumbent on all of us not to let his incredible work pass with him. She says, “We owe him and the millions of disabled people in this province the implementation of every single one of his 2019 recommendations.” Tough words—and she’ll have tougher words too, but I leave her to bring them to this place. And I would say that, if she were to take her seat among us here, or the next person who sits here with a physical disability, she will have been well served by the path that he forged.

I want to share, Speaker, that I was honoured to attend Mr. Onley’s funeral just a few weeks ago. It was an extraordinary event. It was held in the very church where Mr. Onley and his wife Ruth Ann met and was attended by a who’s who of leaders of all levels of government, past and present; former colleagues in the media; of course, his beloved family; but also hundreds and hundreds of disability advocates, people with disabilities.

I spoke yesterday with Anthony Hylton, his chief of staff when he was Lieutenant Governor, about the time and effort necessary to ensure that that church and service would be truly accessible for this occasion: larger font in the programs, an area for people in mobility devices, the book of condolences had to be accessible to everyone, programs in Braille, screens with captioning and on and on.

Mr. Hylton called David Onley “one of the greatest people I ever met”—and he’s met pretty great people—and he shared that he would receive a call from Mr. Onley every January 30, the anniversary of the day he asked him to be his chief of staff, becoming the first Black person to fill this role anywhere in Canada.

Anthony Hylton also remarked that Mr. Onley was a deeply religious man. His family and his pastor talked about this throughout their service. It was fitting, then, that his coffin was led out of the church by his pastor, now himself needing a mobility device, on David’s scooter.

As Mr. Onley had said often, most people are one fall or one accident away from really understanding how inaccessible places were for him. He lives on in his immortalized words in Hansard, in the results he achieved for the people of Ontario and in the lives and memories of his loving family and the friends who had the pleasure of knowing him. Thank you for sharing him with our province.

My question is to the Premier. Five former mayors of Toronto have joined the chorus of people speaking out against Bill 39 and this government’s latest attack on a fundamental democratic principle: majority rule. Majority rule is a core value in council chambers and legislative assemblies, not just across this country but around the world. But instead of respecting the voice of voters in Ontario, this government is doing an end run around democracy, shifting power away from people and into the hands of wealthy developers.

Speaker, why does the Premier think our democratic institutions can be swept aside whenever they’re just inconvenient for him?

But I’ll tell you, if Ontarians thought that we were dealing with a changed Premier, they were mistaken. This government was willing to use the “notwithstanding” clause to suppress the wages of the very lowest-paid workers in our province. They’re willing to change the law to carve up the greenbelt for sprawling development. And now, they’re willing to undermine democracy again, letting just eight people of 26 pass laws that affect over three million people in Toronto.

Does the Premier recognize how dangerous and how reckless this government’s actions are to our democracy?

In Toronto and in Ottawa, voters just elected new councils, including new councillors who were elected to take on the housing crisis that’s facing our cities. These elections happened, actually, while this government was in the process of changing the rules to give mayors these veto powers on unnamed provincial priorities. But now, just as those elected councillors are rolling up their sleeves and getting to work and being sworn in, this government is again moving legislation to further disempower those newly elected councillors.

Madam Speaker, I would like to understand from this government how they think, and how this minister thinks, that moving and shifting power from elected officials to essentially a minority rule in the backrooms of power is going to help Toronto.

Wow. Well, I didn’t expect that from the member of the Liberal caucus, but that’s fascinating. I’ve got to say that this member should look to the current mayor of Ottawa, who doesn’t support this legislation. I hope this member who just asked that question—I would have hoped they would have stood up and said they’re not going to support this legislation. That’s what I was hoping to hear.

You know what? We in our communities are looking for a different kind of development, right? Development that is dense—we know that density has to be built. I haven’t met one person who I’ve spoken to—who I’m supporting, certainly, in this election—who doesn’t support greater density. But we need, as I said very clearly, to make sure that that density includes affordable housing, truly affordable housing, community benefits. That is not NIMBYism. That’s not NIMBYism. That’s the bare minimum that we should be expecting in every development that takes place in every part of our province.

I will add, Speaker, our mayor actually goes along with a lot of what they say, so maybe not the best example. But what does it take? What’s coming next? Are they going to be attacking the people of Newmarket–Aurora? Are they going to be attacking the people of Brampton, who are now represented by a Conservative, because they suddenly don’t like what their mayor is saying? What’s next?

I didn’t even get a chance to talk about it: This government has done nothing to support all of those families across this province that rely on renting. We have rental rates going through the roof, along with inflation, and this government has done absolutely nothing to support tenants. You want to talk to me about supporting legislation? Come talk to us. Come talk to us about bringing in inclusionary zoning or ending exclusionary zoning or building more affordable units. Come talk to us then, and we’ll support you.

Who is harmed when we’re not actually working together? We’re all harmed. We need to work together. But at the same time, communities themselves have priorities. They have things that they know about their own communities and cities and stuff, and that’s why it’s really disturbing when you hear that the government is holding up or tearing up official plans, because that kind of work takes years.

I would say that one of the things that’s most concerning about this legislation is that the government is going to allow a mayor to unilaterally hire—

They may all be the same mayor. But at the end of the day, that’s why we have councils and we have checks and balances. And that’s why all of our constituents elect city councillors—councillors to represent their interests, their needs, their desires at city council. Taking away the power of those city councillors and giving it to this mayor is a system that’s going to mean that those voters’ voices are no longer heard. And it’s going to end up meaning worse outcomes for cities. I think that’s pretty much guaranteed.

We do need to fix things. We need to fix democracy, but that’s a whole other conversation. I’d love to get into it. But here are some things that I think this government, if they were interested in really building more homes and tackling the affordable housing crisis, would do. First, move forward to end exclusionary zoning. This, I have to tell you, is an issue that aligns just about everyone: right, left, centre, academics, politicians, planners. To build more affordable housing, we could be building more affordable townhouses, more duplexes, more triplexes in existing neighbourhoods in order to meet the existing housing demand. It’s a win-win. The government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force recommended this. End exclusionary zoning. This is something we could work across party lines to get done. Let’s do it.

We could also—we could and we should—move forward on addressing the issue of what kind of homes we are building, because right now, what we’re seeing are mostly condos, purpose-built rentals and multi-million-dollar single-family homes. The average condo being built today is 600 square feet. We need 1,400- to 2,000-square-foot townhomes and condos, purpose-built rentals at the three-bedroom, four-bedroom range. You heard the member from Toronto Centre already say that. We need truly affordable housing with space for families. If you go into these apartment buildings in my riding, these condo towers that are mostly rental now, they are young families. They’re living there and they want to raise their families there. I’ve had people who don’t live around here say to me, “Well, you know what? When they have families, they’re going to try to find a house to buy somewhere else.” Really? Where?

Also, is that what we really need? Is that what we want our cities to become, just places where people live up to a certain point and then they leave? No. We want people to raise their families there. But to do that, we have to make sure we’re also investing in the things that will make their quality of life good. That means that in a family of four, maybe those kids share a bedroom. I shared a bedroom most of my life, of course. My family just had one bathroom. We survived. But we’re talking about 600 square feet. We’re talking about families crammed into a one-bedroom—many, many, many families. We can do better than that. We can do better for those children. We can do better for families that can’t afford to buy a $1.5-million home right now.

What about the young people? I was just talking to some folks in my community today who work in affordable housing, particularly in supportive housing, and one of the things they were really highlighting for me was the need for more supports for youth, but also for young people. So when you’re talking about whether you’re a student or young person just starting out, you cannot see anything beyond living in a 500-square-foot unit at $2,500 rent. It’s outrageous. How can you afford to do that?

People in our communities are saying very clearly—folks who do own their own homes are saying, “My gosh, I never imagined a world in this province, in this wealthy place, this province of Ontario that I came to because it was a land of plenty—I can’t imagine that now my grandchildren will never be able to have the kind of status of living that I have, the quality of living that I have.” That’s so tragic to me. That’s a real shift. That’s the first generation in many, many, many generations that are feeling that way. It’s not a good sign.

We could—and this is the third thing I want to mention—introduce legislation that focuses on inclusionary zoning so that when there is a new development built, there are community benefits. That’s parks. What is a community benefit? Parks, daycares, as well as supportive and truly affordable housing incorporated into developments. We have seen some of these things emerge, but they only come about when developers are pushed to include them, because they won’t unless they’re pushed. We’ve seen it over and over and over again; communities have very little power.

We saw what the government did to the OMB and, I would say, the very late-in-the-day attempts by the previous government to make some changes to that. This government scrapped it and made it even worse, and now we as community-members have very little say in anything.

People in my community—I want you to know—they’re not NIMBY at all. They’re not saying, “We don’t want towers.” They’re saying, “More towers, and also more of that kind of mid-level rise—and we’d like to see, by the way, that our already crowded park that we have to all cram into doesn’t get more and more crowded. And if it’s going to, build us a new community centre. Build us some child care so kids don’t have to go somewhere else.” These are things that are community benefits.

Make sure there’s some truly affordable units in there. Move to properly invest in community and supportive housing. I cannot stress that enough. In Ontario’s worst homelessness crisis in decades, right now, people are still sleeping in parks and they’re still unable to find supportive housing that they desperately need. Hotels are being contracted long-term. Those contracts are running out. Where are those people going to go? And this government chose instead to cut $246 million from municipal affairs and housing, at this time.

Finally, I would wrap up and say, Speaker, the other thing this government could do is to actually put in place a plan to build affordable and non-market housing on public land, on land that the public already owns, instead of always selling it off to the highest bidder. Properly fund school boards so school boards—instead of having to tear them down like they had to do in my community and sell them off to condo developers, at a massive loss in the end, give them the okay to lease out that land. Build affordable housing in those properties. Build the things that our communities need, that people really need and that are really going to solve the homelessness crisis, and stop playing games with the people of this province.

What this legislation is really about is taking away power from Ontarians. It’s shameful, and this government can be assured I will not be supporting this legislation. I hope that they make a decision to repeal it before it’s too late.

I’m very pleased to speak again here on this bill that we’re discussing today. This is the so-called strong-mayors bill.

I’ve got to say, it’s been interesting this afternoon listening to some of the debate in here. I really appreciated the comments from the member from Toronto Centre about their experience as a city councillor in some really difficult times, I would say, for the city of Toronto, and the reality of actually how planning changes are made, where the real issues are and of course about the need for truly affordable housing.

Madam Speaker, the last time I spoke in second reading, I covered a lot of areas and I want to go back to some of them today. I think that the overall theme of my comments last time is something I want to reiterate here today: We have a government that continues consistently to show absolute disdain for local democracy by unilaterally interfering with municipal politics, in both cases, in the middle of municipal elections with absolutely zero consultation, and this will, in fact, have the impact of disenfranchising voters.

I also want to reflect for a moment on the fact that this government said nothing about this idea, this legislation, this policy, during the last provincial election, so that all of us who were elected here would have had an opportunity, had that been in the platform to at least have the conversation with voters about whether this is something they really wanted to adopt, that they thought was necessary, but that never could happen because this government didn’t even run on it. They just secreted it away. In fact, there was nothing from this government that was spoken about during the Housing Affordability Task Force that this government actually brought about—nothing along the lines of this need or this necessity or this policy being reviewed.

I want to say that that really is extraordinary because there were some ideas that came forward that were good ideas that came out of that task force—not everything I would agree with, but there were some things there. The government had an opportunity, surely, to come out of that and put forward some real solutions that would work for Ontario in our cities, for so many people in this province, and they chose not to. Instead they chose this bill that only mentions housing once in the title. It doesn’t actually address housing at all. Once again, Ontarians are left thinking, “What is this legislation really about? Why would this government want to hand over such enormous and extraordinary powers to mayors in at least two of our largest cities and potentially more?”

Before I get into some of my comments, I want to take a moment to appeal, as some of my colleagues have done previously, to the members of this Legislature who were elected to the government side in this last election in June. Some of this will be new to you, but it ain’t new to us. I think some of you have perhaps heard already from some of your constituents with concerns about how the government lacks transparency and accountability, how they refuse to share their mandate letters again. Maybe you thought to yourself, “This wasn’t exactly what I signed up for. I would like to have to be able to respond to my constituents. I would like to be more beholden to my constituents and less beholden to a Premier who just wants to dictate the way everything has to be”—based on what I think are just generally—I’m just saying; I don’t know—maybe past personal issues with their successes as a municipal representative. I don’t know. But why are we all being weighted down with that?

I’ve got to say that when I was elected in 2018, I really thought this was an opportunity to make Ontario better, and, at the end of the day, that’s what we all want. I think we were all elected to try to make life better for people. That’s what this is about, and I really do believe that that better is possible, but we don’t get there unless we listen to each other. Majorities come and majorities go, and many would say that our political system does not actually serve the people of this province very effectively because it’s this first-past-the-post system that so many people would love to see changed; there are much more effective ways to run government and elections. But the way that it operates right now even, there still should be opportunity to try to make things better, and one of the ways we do that as legislators is to actually look carefully at legislation, listen to each other, listen to critiques of legislation, make that legislation stronger, amend that legislation—learn. That’s what we were elected to do: to pass good laws.

So I would ask again, because I know that the government put this piece of legislation through some committee hearings—very limited, unfortunately, again—and there really was no prior consultation at all. Let’s be clear. But there’s other legislation we haven’t seen any consultation around, like the budget or the very egregious Bill 7 that just passed in this House. And again, just because you may not like what you’re going to hear, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen and hear it and, hopefully, take into consideration what people, especially experts in these fields, have to say.

That’s one of the things I want to talk about today, Speaker. I want to talk a little bit about some of the comments that came up in the committee hearings. I wasn’t there, but I’ve been reading through Hansard and looking at some of the comments that came from committee from many of the experts who appeared—experts from academics to elected officials to planners. There were a lot of experts there. One thing that really struck me is a comment that a lot of the municipal associations said, which is—basically, I’ll sum up it with, “Why isn’t the government exercising powers they already have? What is this really about?”

In fact, I want to also mention that the five living past mayors of the city of Toronto—there are Tories, there are Liberals, there are New Democrats, there are independents—have all said they’re opposed to this legislation and to this idea of a strong-mayor system, and I think that should say something, because they’ve all been in these boots and they don’t think it’s a healthy approach to governing.

I wanted to go through a few of the things that other people said, because one of the comments that I thought was particularly interesting was from Mayor Sendzik of St. Catharines, who had written in some really interesting comments, especially about the official planning process. One of the things that he said is: “The idea that giving more powers to mayors will magically lead to more housing is too simplistic. If this is all it takes to address the housing crisis, why not give mayors more powers to end homelessness and tackle mental health issues and addictions? Add in more powers to end climate change and mayors will become superheroes.”

I think he said that sarcastically.

“But that is what Ontario Premier Doug Ford is attempting to do as a means to solve the housing crisis through his government’s new sweeping legislation.... In essence it follows this line of thinking: We have a housing crisis, therefore if mayors had more powers, the housing crisis would be solved. The press release announcing the legislation even proclaimed it as ‘empowering mayors to build housing faster.’”

Then he goes on to say, “The sweeping set of new powers for mayors includes the abilities to hire ... chief administrative officers and senior staff positions.” It goes on to say that the point here is, there would be the ability, then, as well—let’s just consider it—if a very NIMBY mayor was elected, they could hire people to support that position.

He said, “After eight years as mayor of St. Catharines, I can confidently state I didn’t need special powers to build more housing. In St. Catharines we have approved more housing developments, of all types, over the last eight years than any time in the last 30 years. We achieved this because of a progressive city official plan, approved in 2012.”

Now, Speaker, I want to point out that, as my colleague from Toronto Centre mentioned, this government’s approach to official plans—official plans which are developed after a great deal of consideration and consultation, with experts and planning coming to the table, much discussion and debate. Cities end up with these plans. This government came in in 2018 and immediately tore up one of the official plans of the city of Toronto, and the city of Ottawa has yet to receive, as I understand it, approval for their official plan. So who’s holding up the processes? It’s this government. It’s this government that sets us back every single time. So it’s not about improving the efficiency of the process or moving forward to build more affordable housing quicker. It’s just simply not about that; it can’t be, because if that was the case, this would not be the route you would take.

I want to also mention—just because I’m going to run out of time mentioning everybody who did provide written comments on this—the Association of Municipalities of Ontario was not consulted at all on this legislation. It’s unbelievable. And when they appeared before the committee, they were pretty careful—not everybody is opposed or in favour. There’s a variety of opinions there. But they did ask the government to please engage in a broad consultation with the public and with the professional and political municipal associations. They were obviously very, very frustrated by this decision because they’ve put a lot of time and work into engaging with us as elected representatives, into engaging with this government over really important issues. And to have this kind of thing, then, just come in, have this government just roll right over everything they consider to be a priority has got to be pretty frustrating. I would ask the government to consider, certainly, the concerns that have been raised and what a difference it would have made if they had consulted properly.

I want to talk a little bit about housing and what would fix our housing crisis. Speaker, it’s true that there will be bad mayors. We’ve seen a few. There will be bad mayors. There will be inept mayors. There will be corrupt mayors. There will be mayors who just want to give a green light to their favourite developers.