Minister, Associate Minister and PA, I want to thank you for your address this morning.

Since we were elected in 2018—the Ford government—we and you as the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing have incrementally and in a progressive way brought in legislation to try to address what we all see in this province as a housing crisis, where we need to build the homes to provide accommodation for the people we know are coming to the province of Ontario.

This latest bill, Bill 3—the opposition would have us believe that it is creating the emperor of mayors. And if they would read the bill, there’s all kinds of checks and balances put into this bill to ensure that council carries on as it should, but that the mayor has the ability to get past that red tape and ensure that it supports—

I want to thank the member for Humber River–Black Creek for his address to the assembly today.

I was intrigued by the letter of former mayors—none of them running for mayor today. All of them, with the exception of David Crombie, would have credentials that are anything but Progressive Conservative or Conservative—but David Crombie has certainly identified himself as otherwise recently. David Miller was one of the first proponents of a strong mayor, and now, of course, every one of them would be signing on most enthusiastically to anything that was opposing Premier Doug Ford. This is their mantra: “It’s Doug Ford, so we will oppose it.”

What Doug Ford stands for is building 1.5 million homes in the province of Ontario, and by having the strong mayors, that is going to accelerate and break down some of the barriers.

I’ve got to tell you, the NDP love to take these positions—“There are other ways to build homes.” Every time there’s a protest against a development, if it’s against the developer, the local NDP member will be right there, along with those protesters against the development. They say they want to build things, too, but every time there is an opportunity to be against building, the NDP are there. That’s not how we’re going to get 1.5 million homes built—