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John Yakabuski

  • MPP
  • Member of Provincial Parliament
  • Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke
  • Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario
  • Ontario
  • The Victoria Center Unit 6 84 Isabella St. Pembroke, ON K8A 5S5 John.Yakabuskico@pc.ola.org
  • tel: 613-735-6627
  • fax: 613-735-6692
  • John.Yakabuski@pc.ola.org

  • Government Page
  • Sep/7/22 10:00:00 a.m.
  • Re: Bill 3 

Well, I thank the member for Ottawa Centre. We’ll have to see about that meeting with my mother-in-law. I’ll say to that meeting, not so fast. Anyway, I always appreciate his questions. I understand his passion, and I respect him for that. But at the same time, he doesn’t understand how we’re actually going to get it done. We’re going to get more housing built—more affordable housing, more housing for everyone—by eliminating the unnecessary red tape, eliminating the obstacles, the barriers that keep us from doing things in a timely fashion.

We don’t have 30 years to build 1.5 million homes. It doesn’t matter whether they’re affordable or not. If we don’t get them built, they don’t exist. We have to get them built, and we’ve got to move some things out of the way to ensure that we don’t lose sight of that goal. We can’t get caught up on NIMBYism or BANANAism or whatever. We need to make sure we get the homes built, and we’re going to get it done.

Getting things built is the key. I didn’t reference it in my speech, but I know sometimes that my friends from the NDP—when you mention the word “developers,” I see smoke coming out of their ears because they get so upset with the word. They attach the word “developers” with some kind of evil. But it’s developers who are going to build those homes.

We have to work with developers. We have to work with builders. We have to work with planners. We have to work with municipalities. We have to work with the people. Everybody has a role to play in ensuring that when we hit the 10-year mark, we actually have 1.5 million—maybe even more. If we’re going to accommodate the growth in this province, if we’re going to be able to accommodate the needed people to keep this economy rolling along like it is, keeping us the engine of Canada, we’re going to need those houses built for those folks.

This bill, like every bill that this government brings forward—its genesis is based on where we know Ontario needs to be, where Ontario needs to go, and building more homes to accommodate the people, as I began to say in the last response, to be able to support the people who are going to provide the economic activity of the future, to fill the vacant jobs. We have about 400,000 jobs today already that aren’t being filled. We have to be able to fill them, and we have to be able to build those homes so the people will have them.

I am quite comfortable that our government did what it always—we know we did. Most of the homes that are going to be built are going to be in Ottawa and Toronto. We know that—the biggest number. We reached out to the people and said, “What can we do to help remove the gridlock in these two cities?” For a start—a strong mayor. A strong mayor will help us get those homes built. That’s what we need to do.

551 words
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