Good morning, Speaker. This question is for the Premier. After the previous Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing resigned in the midst of a scandal and, of course, this ongoing RCMP criminal investigation, there was a real opportunity for a new minister to actually take the housing crisis seriously. But last week’s bill was weak, it was unambitious, and it lacked the vision that we need to actually get housing built. Among other shortcomings, the bill doesn’t legalize fourplexes and as-of-right, which means they’re going to remain illegal in many, many parts of this province.

A single detached home is out of reach for about 80% of Ontarians, but a fourplex apartment could be an affordable option. So why is the Premier ruling this out?

The former Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing made only about 20 minutes of calls using his government-issued phone last November. Now, think back, Speaker: This was the month the minister announced changes to the greenbelt, as well as the forced expansions of the urban boundaries of Hamilton, York, Peel, Ottawa and other municipalities. There is evidence the government gave preferential treatment to the favoured speculators who benefitted from these changes.

To the Premier: Did the minister stay off his government-issued phone to avoid leaving a record of who he was talking to?

Interjections.

My question is for the Premier. Has the Premier, or anyone in his staff, been in contact with the RCMP regarding the investigation into the greenbelt grab?

Earlier this month, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing confirmed that the RCMP has been in touch with his ministry. They are already sniffing around the cabinet and other members of government caucus who have deep connections to these land speculators. This scandal has already cost the government two cabinet ministers and multiple staff members, not to mention a full year wasted on speculator-friendly policies that had to be reversed because they did not meet the needs of Ontarians.

My question is for the Premier: How many current or former cabinet ministers or political staff have been contacted by the RCMP?

Interjections.

Speaker, to the Premier, what is it going to take for you and your government to come clean with the people of Ontario? My gosh.

Interjections.

Speaker, my question is for the Premier. Yesterday, newly uncovered documents provided even more evidence that it was Conservative political staff, not civil service experts, who directed changes to municipal official plans that favoured very specific land speculators in Niagara, Hamilton, Halton, Waterloo, Peel, York and Durham regions.

It’s clearer than ever that the Premier was looped into decisions regarding urban boundary changes from the start. So I have to ask the Premier, were these specific changes made to benefit the Premier’s friends, just like the decision to remove sites from the greenbelt?

These revelations bring the Premier’s and the former minister’s testimony to the Integrity Commissioner into question. Why is there such a discrepancy between the Premier’s testimony to the Integrity Commissioner and what’s revealed in these documents?

Speaker, the Premier told the Integrity Commissioner that he had “no recollection” of meeting developer Sergio Manchia about removing his lands from the greenbelt. The Premier repeated that just this morning, but the documents uncovered yesterday tell a very different story. In fact, they indicate that the Premier did meet with Mr. Manchia on September 20, 2021—with the same Mr. Manchia whose staff members said the Premier “needs to stop calling.”

I’m going to ask again, why is there such a discrepancy between what the Premier testified to the Integrity Commissioner and the revelations in these documents?

Speaker, it’s not about what this government says is going to be built or not. It’s about who has access to this government to get these favours. That’s what this is about.

Shortly before that June meeting, Luca Bucci, the chief of staff to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, left the ministry and took a job as the new CEO of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association. The president of the OHBA at the time was Bob Schickedanz, whose company owned the King township property that would then be sold to Michael Rice on September 15, and then removed from the greenbelt less than two months later. Follow along here, Speaker.

Did Mr. Bucci or any other government official know about any of the greenbelt removals prior to September 15, 2022?

Last week, the Narwhal reported that officials in the Premier’s office were aware of the changes to the greenbelt as early as August, and Michael Rice was pitching a development proposal for his soon-to-be-acquired greenbelt land as early as June or maybe even January of last year. The timeline here doesn’t make any sense.

Why did the Premier and the minister tell the Integrity Commissioner that they only knew about the greenbelt removal scheme in November, when the Premier’s inner circle clearly knew long before then?

Do you know what they’re teaching in Waterloo, Speaker? They’re teaching quantum physics in Waterloo.

Look, this is about this government giving their insider developer friends a free ride. Municipal governments keep doing more with less, but at every turn they’re met with nothing but disdain and blame from this Premier.

Some municipalities are estimating that by limiting their ability to charge developer fees, this government is bilking them out of tens of millions of dollars over the next five years. Toronto alone is anticipating $2.3 billion in lost revenue. Local governments run the buses people take to work. They maintain our local roads, and they try to build the affordable housing units we so desperately need.

When is this government going to commit to stop off-loading their costs onto municipalities and partner with them to build stronger, more caring communities?

Interjections.

Back in 2018, one of the first things this government did was take away permanent paid sick days from working people. What a cruel way to start their term, and terrible public policy too. People should not have to choose between putting their co-workers, customers and community at risk or losing a day’s pay. We have tabled three times now, since then, the Stay Home If You Are Sick Act. It would give people 10 permanent paid sick days, but you vote it down every time.

Will this government give workers the time they need to recover and keep people safe by backing the NDP plan for 10 permanent paid sick days?

The Conservative members must be hearing the same stories that we are from people in communities all across this province who are exhausted. They feel abandoned by this government, parents living in constant fear that if they or their kid gets sick, they won’t be able to pay their rent or afford the groceries. And the Premier can stay home when he gets sick.

Why do these workers deserve anything less? Will this government finally side with working people and make sure everyone has access to 10 permanent paid sick days?

Speaker, it took COVID for this government to give even anyone the three paid sick days. Only for COVID, only for the first time you get COVID, and even that ends at the end of March. Get out there and listen to people in communities across this province—they are struggling—people like parents who can’t take time off because they need to put food on the table. It is not a laughing matter; it is not something you should be applauding yourselves for.

Government could do something about this. Will you give them the paid sick days that they need?

The Premier has repeatedly claimed that his carve-up of Ontario’s greenbelt is simply about providing the land we need for housing. But a new report released just yesterday found that there is more than enough land to build two million homes without punching massive holes in our greenbelt. So if it’s not about land for housing, what is it about?

Will the Premier admit that this is about paving over protected land so a select few people can make a lot of money?

Speaker, the report that was released yesterday shows what the people of this province already know: We don’t need insider schemes and torching of the greenbelt to build the housing that people need.

We need 1.5 million homes in Ontario, and it’s only getting worse. But I haven’t talked to one municipal leader—not one—one housing advocate or one regular Ontarian who thinks that the problem is that there aren’t enough mega mansions. That is not the problem.

Why won’t this government work with our municipal partners to build affordable homes on the land we already have available?

Planning experts, municipalities and the government’s own task force—despite his creative quoting from that report—have said that land availability is not the problem.

Again, will this government—and I’d love the Premier to be able to answer this question—listen to the experts, use the land we already have available, and reverse the decision to remove 7,400 acres of protected greenbelt land?

Can the Premier explain how, after four years of his leadership, things have only gotten worse?

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.