I want to thank the member from Algoma–Manitoulin for his address today.

This morning, Minister Clark, in his very, very good opening remarks, talked about housing starts being at a 30-year high and rental starts being at an all-time high. Last year, more rental starts—and this year, we’re on target to even exceed that. This year we’re doubling—double, already ahead, from the trend of last year. So our plan is working.

I ask the member from Algoma–Manitoulin, when a plan is working and the most important thing right now that people talk about all the time is building more homes, as the population of our province is up to 15 million people—400,000-and-some came here last year. It’s absolutely paramount that we build more homes.

Are you telling me today that you can’t support our housing supply action plans, when you speak today in this Legislature, or can you support them because it is of paramount importance that we build those 1.5 million homes?

Thank you for the hour leadoff from the official opposition.I first want to welcome—although they have already had to leave for more exciting things, I think—the grade 8 students from McNab Public School in my riding who are here on a school trip. Welcome to the Legislature of Ontario.

I have to point out to the member, it is really hard to sit here and listen to the fantasy that goes on for an hour—dreaming that somehow homes are going to just magically fall from the sky here in the province of Ontario, or the tooth fairy is going to build them as she whistles by, or Peter Pan is coming to Ontario.

I’m not sure what they are thinking over there. We’re doing all of the things that are required and everybody understands are necessary.

She says it’s not about supply; it is absolutely about supply, because supply is what will bring down the price. But, no, they want to artificially invent a housing system in the province of Ontario that simply won’t get it done.

I will ask the member one more time—four different bills that will bring that supply up by 1.5 million homes by 2031. Why won’t you support it?

I want to ask the members opposite, because they keep going on and on and on about what we shouldn’t be doing, yet I never hear anything but—well, we’ll hear a story from some so-called social engineering expert who has all the answers about how we’re going to fix our housing problems. But every time this government has tried to do something—and the one thing that all the experts agree on is that we are not building enough homes to satisfy the needs of the current population, including the projected growth.

When are we actually going to hear a plan from the leaderless, or leaderless contest, NDP? When are we going to hear a plan about how we’re actually going to meet the goal of building 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years?

I want to thank the member for Guelph for his comments today. He talked about having proposed Bill 44 and Bill 45, and he talked about intensification into four-plexes and things like this.

You would have to agree that there are things in Bill 23, in our bill, and between all our housing bills that would provide for expansion—granny suites, driveway suites. There are intensifications in current housing models that would help build those homes.

Have you done any actual analysis of how any of the things that you’re talking about would actually get us to the number of 1.5 million homes here in the province of Ontario—or is everybody else going to have to live in a condo in Toronto or other metropolitan areas, on the 42nd floor? How do we actually get 1.5 million homes built—the homes that the people want and deserve?

I want to thank the member from Newmarket–Aurora. I appreciate her input on this. She has basically said what we’ve heard from so many corners of the province. You heard it in your riding, as well.

As I said—and what the minister has said repeatedly, because we have to reinforce this so people understand—it’s the combination of the steps that we have taken and are taking. The More Homes for Everyone Act, the More Homes, More Choice Act, and the combination of changes with regard to zoning—all of these kinds of things that we are doing as a government, when you put them all together, are creating the environment that is necessary so that we can meet those goals of building those homes over the next 10 years, so that people like your children will be able to afford a home. If there is more supply, the prices will be more commensurate with people’s incomes of the day.

The people of Ontario absolutely supported our view on June 2. We talked about building more homes, and we are going to build more homes, with or without you.

Third reading debate deemed adjourned.

It is a pleasure to join the debate here on Bill 3.

It’s always interesting listening to my friend from Ottawa Centre. I always find him interesting to listen to, but I don’t think we would make good roommates. There could be some discussions that would never end. However, I appreciate the fact that he holds a different viewpoint than myself from time to time. I do believe at some point there’s going to actually be an issue that we absolutely agree on; we just haven’t found it yet—well, maybe there is one, about how beautiful the Ottawa valley is. I think we’ll all agree on that one.

Speaker, I want to tell you—not tell you; you know—that from day one our government has been seized on the importance and our absolute commitment to build more housing here in the province of Ontario. I don’t think there’s anybody here who wouldn’t have heard in their campaign about the reality of the lack of housing here in Ontario and the lack of housing with the population that we have and the population that we expect to have—1.5 million homes over 10 years to service basically six million increased population. Put those numbers into perspective, and you have to ask yourself how we are going to get this done if we don’t have a number of tools in the tool box.

The opposition goes on and on and on because they haven’t got a lot to criticize the bill on, so they talk about what is not in the bill. I’ve been here long enough to know that when you bring in a piece of legislation that is not specific, they’ll go apoplectic and talk about the omnibus bill, and why you’re trying to sneak something in on this bill that some people might like, but you want the poison pill that exists on this side of the bill—so they preach incessantly against bills that cover too many topics and cover too many issues. But now, on this one, they want to talk about all the things that are not in the bill. They’re right; the bill doesn’t talk about the bold climate change action we’re doing with regard to EV vehicles in the province of Ontario, critical minerals, electric arc furnaces in our steel mills, which are going to take the equivalent of 600,000 cars off the road. Of course, that’s not in the bill. This bill is one of the tools that we’ve instituted and brought forward, as government, to follow through on that commitment to build, build, build here in Ontario.

The Premier, right upfront—“We’re going to build Ontario.” You heard that every single day during the campaign. So when they say that we didn’t campaign on this—it is 28 days, and 24 hours in a day, and presumably there has to be some time for sleeping and driving and moving. You can’t try—

You can’t cover every single thought that comes into your head, but what you do is put on the table the big picture of where you see Ontario.

Ontario’s housing situation—let’s face it—is problematic, and it’s because of NIMBYism and people like the folks in the NDP, who have stood against every single initiative that we’ve put forward, such as the More Homes, More Choice Act and the More Homes for Everyone Act. They say we need to build housing, but when some group or some special interest they want to represent says, “We don’t want that housing there,” well, then they’re coming to the Legislature telling us what a terrible idea it is to approve that. “It’s a terrible idea to build that. You can’t do that there, and you can’t do it now.”

The NDP is like a braid in the hair—they’re twisting themselves and twisting themselves—or a pretzel, but only a half-baked pretzel, because they’re not really sure where they are on the issue of housing.

They say, “Build, build, build. We need affordable housing.”

Do you know what drives up the price of anything?

They talk about how nobody can afford a home, and they’re not entirely wrong. It’s pretty scary.

We have four children. One of our daughters just bought a home—they live up in the Northwest Territories. They paid—I have to be careful here—way more than 10 times what my wife and I paid for our first home. In fact, the last truck I bought cost me twice as much as our first home—maybe not quite, but close. So we know that those prices are terribly high, and that’s in the Northwest Territories. Just think about what they are here in Ontario.

So the average person is struggling to be able to afford to buy a home or build a home.

But if there’s more supply of built homes, then there’s more supply of homes.

The NDP keeps talking about what’s not in the bill. We put together the entire suite of bills, the entire package of bills aimed at increasing housing supply, and that’s what you’ve got to look at. And we’re not done, because we are absolutely committed to taking the necessary steps to increase the housing supply. If we increase the housing supply, it’s going to mean more homes for you, and more homes for you, and more homes for you, and more homes for everyone. Well, look at that. My goodness gracious, it’s right in one of our bills—More Homes for Everyone Act. So, yes, there are homes that gazillionaires are going to be buying. We understand that. It won’t be me. But we’re going to make sure that there are homes for everyone, and that’s why we want to remove the barriers to building homes.

I know my friends in the opposition feel trapped, for example, about their opposition to the Bradford Bypass and the 413. They know the people need it. They know the people want it. But they feel their constituencies don’t want it, so they’re going to argue against it. They have to argue against some of things that we propose, because otherwise they’d be admitting they were wrong all along, which is not a bad thing; sometimes you just have to do it. And they’ve been wrong on housing, because they have tried to stand in the way of what we’ve been doing.

In Bill 3, essentially what we’re trying to do, as the minister said—and I have to shout out to my friend Minister Clark. Talk about somebody who is laser-focused on getting the job done—he has taken a great deal of criticism over four years because of that laser focus, but he has withstood the salvos of the opposition and those opponents out there because he understands what the problem is. The first thing you’ve got to do if you’re going to fix something is, you’ve got to know what the problem is. Well, Mr. Clark knows what the problem is, and he’s staying focused on it, because Ontario needs him to be focused. So when the opposition criticizes him, one of the tools—how many times, even characterizing him in ways that are not even kind, on the issue of MZOs, ministerial zoning orders. But he has made it clear that we have a goal: 1.5 million homes within 10 years.

We need our municipalities to be partners with us, and that’s where the strong-mayors act really comes in. Oh, yes, there are mayors and former mayors—let’s talk about the reality of politics, folks. Someone who is not going to be mayor after October but was never a mayor under the strong-mayors legislation—what do you think they’re going to say? “No, it’s a bad idea. I wasn’t a strong mayor. I don’t want him to be a strong mayor. No strong mayor for me.”

And then you get mayors in the past who actually wanted to be a strong mayor, like Mayor David Miller from Toronto.

Dalton McGuinty, I say to my friends in the Liberal Party, actually proposed bringing in strong-mayor legislation, because he believed that a city like Toronto—at that time it was the City of Toronto Act he wanted to make changes to—absolutely needed a strong mayor.

And to his credit, even though he is running for re-election, John Tory has been lukewarm, but he has at least said that this is not a bad idea; there is merit to the strong mayor.

My friend from Niagara Falls is talking about the regional mayors over there. Of course, they’re running for re-election. They don’t want this to be an issue in the election, so they want to neutralize it. “Let’s just go back to what it was before, and we’ll run on whether or not the garbage is being picked up on time or something like that.” Great.

But let’s understand the reality of politics and how it gets played, not just in here, but everywhere. Particularly now, with the municipal election cycle in full swing, everybody is making sure that they do what they think is going to benefit them the most in the upcoming campaign.

Speaker, I really want to talk about what is in the bill. Of course, these folks on the other side are—quite frankly, I don’t know if I can say it, but they’re inventing voodoo circumstances or bogeymen or something that are in the bill or that the bill is going to lead to, which don’t exist. They’re creating this idea that the mayor is going to be some kind of a dictator, that council is going to be rendered irrelevant, but it’s not so. The mayor will be a strong mayor, and he or she will have limited new powers to get through the gridlock at city hall.

We’re building 413 and the Bradford Bypass, and I know, deep down, a lot of you support it; I really believe you do. We’re going to do that to tackle gridlock, which is taking days, weeks, months of people’s lives, if you travel long enough in those areas. We’re going to save you two hours—56 minutes twice a day. It’s almost two hours a day. I’d like to find somebody to tell me in this world we live in today—being polite, you say it moves too fast; being maybe less polite, you say it’s crazy. But who wouldn’t like to get two hours back to spend with their family or their loved ones, or just relaxing?

Does anybody here find it relaxing to be stuck in gridlock? Let me know.

I know that my friend from Ottawa Centre likes to read books. Maybe we could write one together on gridlock and my lost two hours today, and my lost two hours yesterday, and my lost two hours tomorrow. Some would just say I’m lost, but that’s another story entirely as well.

Who would not want to get that time back? I’d love to have it back.

We have gridlock at city hall. A strong mayor, supporting the housing priorities of this government, will be able to get through some of that gridlock that we’re experiencing at city hall which is preventing us from getting things done in a timely fashion.

The clock is ticking, folks. We don’t have the luxury of time. We don’t have the luxury of spinning our wheels and saying, “Well, we didn’t get anywhere today on that one, but maybe we’ll try again.”

As Premier Ford said in the campaign, we need to get it done, and we’re going to get it done. One of the tools in the tool box is the strong-mayors act.

What’s so problematic about the mayor being able to veto a bylaw by council? If it was only that, I might have concerns myself, but there’s a safeguard in there; there’s protection: If the other members of council don’t agree, they require only two thirds—not unanimous, two thirds. Two thirds of the members of council can reverse or nullify the veto of the mayor. I would put it to you that if something the mayor wants to do is so egregious, is so wrong—if I am a member of council, I would like to believe that I am convincing enough that I can get two thirds of my colleagues to say, as my mother-in-law would say, “Not so fast.” Then the mayor has the opportunity to revise his or her position, the bylaw itself might go through some iterations where some changes get made, but council would still function as the body it was designed to be. That is what gets you through gridlock.

What we’ve seen at city hall is a polarization, where the two sides are opposing one another. Essentially, there’s some equality there in the numbers, and then neither wants to give an inch, because if you start to go, then all of a sudden you think you’re going to lose the battle to those other folks.

This would actually encourage people to come up with a workable solution. This would actually encourage people, because they have a strong mayor, a person who was elected a leader, to give some direction and to focus on the goal of getting housing built in the respective cities, Ottawa or Toronto.

I think the clock is malfunctioning, Speaker.

I want to refer to a column that was written by Martin Regg Cohn. Martin Regg Cohn would be widely known as the loudest supporter of Premier Ford in the history of journalism—not. But what did Martin Regg Cohn write about the strong mayor? He wrote things like, “We need a strong mayor.”

Using the reference in the city of Toronto, Mayor Tory received over 500,000 votes directly from the people of Toronto. Councillors received somewhere between a high of maybe around 25,000 and, in some cases, only about 5,000 votes. So the people got to vote directly for their choice for mayor. It’s important to have that reflected in some of the powers—and I don’t have time. Maybe I can get another 20 minutes to go through some of the other things that are in the bill that are so important.

I really believe that the folks in the opposition might take a look at this and actually change their mind and realize that if they want more housing, if the NDP are actually being straight about their desire to get more housing built in the province of Ontario, they will support the suite of bills that we have before them. The strong-mayors act is one of them.

I want to thank the member for her address this morning.

I’ve been here for nearly 19 years, and this is probably the most egregious example of NDP fearmongering since I’ve been here.

Since I’ve been here, ALC patients have been a huge problem in this province. We’ve got our vulnerable seniors in a place where they shouldn’t be, but no capacity was built in long-term-care homes to accommodate those seniors who would be best cared for in a long-term-care home.

This government has acted expeditiously and quickly, since the election, to bring in the proper legislation so we can actually move those patients to a home—

Interjections.

And now we have the NDP inventing all kinds of voodoo scenarios that do not exist.

So I do ask the member, could you please stick to what the bill actually says? No one will be going to a home that they’re not consenting to. Stop with the fearmongering—