Thank you very much to the member across for the question. The challenge that we have is that there are some municipalities that have already strong and stronger rental replacement bylaws, and what the government is proposing in this bill actually is less than what some municipalities have. The city of Toronto has had a rental replacement bylaw empowered by the previous governments so that we can develop our own, so we can meet the needs of Torontonians. This bill actually is going to undo that or looks like it’s going to muddy those waters.

As you try to lift the boats around other municipalities in Ontario, you’re actually sinking the tenant protections in Toronto. That’s certainly something that needs to be clarified and fixed at committee, and I really urge you to do that because it’s going to make a huge difference in the communities that I serve and, I suspect, in the communities that you serve as well.

Businesses and BIAs and the most prominent downtown business owners are all calling on the government—this government, in particular—to lead. They know that municipalities can’t do it themselves, which is why the biggest cities in Ontario have called on this government to convene a meeting with the Premier to specifically address homelessness, mental health and addictions. And as far as I know, that meeting with the Premier has never taken place.

My question is to the Premier. When Torontonians went to the voting station 29 days ago, they had no idea that Bill 39 was going to be tabled or that John Tory personally requested the steroid-injected, supersized mayor powers from you, enabling him to create new bylaws with only one third of city council votes. Many, including the mayor’s own supporters, are now having serious buyer’s remorse. Among others, local constituent Samantha wrote to my office stating, “Although I voted for Mayor Tory, I would not have if I was aware of his position on Bill 39.

“Democracy may be difficult at times to work within”—but it is possible—“majority plus one ... that is democracy and we all love it in Canada.”

Will this Premier respect Toronto’s local democracy and withdraw the undemocratic Bill 39?

Thank you for the question. I do not know the answer to that. I really wish that I did. Unfortunately, I don’t think anybody really knows the answer to that, which is why the mayors at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario were asking the minister, “Can you answer a basic question: How is this going to work?” My understanding is that not only was the room quiet, but the minister—and oftentimes the Premier—didn’t even show up. So no answers were provided—lots of questions. We’re still looking for it. I don’t want to wait to see the regs. I think that information should come out now.

However, you do ask a good question about whether or not I would support the bill. I told you I would if it had anything to do with housing, and there’s not a stitch of language in here that actually produces more housing, and definitely nothing on deeply affordable housing.

Who stands to lose is literally everyone else, including the three million residents of Toronto, who now have to go to the one mayor as opposed to working with their city councillor, who becomes a little bit rudderless, and perhaps disempowered. But you’re not disempowering city councillors, you’re actually disenfranchising the voters. So who is this bill disadvantaging? It’s Torontonians.

It’s an honour to rise in this House to speak on behalf of the great people of Toronto Centre and specifically to this bill, Bill 3, which will give the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa more political power than the 48 other municipal councillors combined in the two cities.

It should be no surprise to those in the House that, given my history of championing local government, urbanism and my love for the city of Toronto, I have many thoughts to share about this bill. I want to start by calling a spade a spade. This bill has nothing to do with housing and everything to do with a revenge plot. The Premier has clearly not gotten over his anger at Torontonians for refusing to make him their mayor in 2014. The counsel I would suggest that the Premier seek to process his residual anger is that from a therapist and not legislative counsel. This bill again demonstrates the Premier’s disregard for Toronto’s democracy and Toronto’s city council. It’s simply a power grab.

We can have a conversation about the merits of a strong-mayor system—that I would welcome—but that is not what the government is proposing through Bill 3. But the Premier doesn’t want to hear from Torontonians; or, even worse, he’ll do exactly the opposite of what they want. Case in point: After a multi-year consultation with Toronto residents, in 2016 Toronto city council adopted an independent report to amend the ward boundary review to achieve voter parity. Even the Ontario Municipal Board sided with city council. In 2018, the Premier ignored Toronto residents to collapse our democratically determined districts into double-sized mega wards. Now a city of nearly three million residents has 25 councillors, which is nearly the same number of councillors as the city of Ottawa, which only has one million residents.

Toronto is the fourth-largest government in North America, with an annual operating budget of $15 billion, the most diverse city on the planet, where nearly three million residents speak over 200 languages, and the Premier wants to centralize power into the hands of one man.

The Premier is not interested in making life better for people in Toronto; he is, however, interested in perpetuating a political system that only allows people who are almost always rich, almost always white, almost always male and almost always incumbents to run and win political office. When 52% of Torontonians belong to a visible minority group and yet only 20% of city councillors do, there is something tragically wrong with that. I’m going to dig into this flaw a little bit further in the legislation, as someone who has had the experience of running both in a municipal city election as well as now running for a political party in the provincial system.

Running for municipal office, as many of the colleagues here will know, is an individual endeavour. It is not going to be accessible to all residents. There are many systemic barriers to overcome, and this discourages diverse voices who deserve to see themselves represented from running because they are not able to. As a councillor, you have to build an organization team from scratch. You have to network and strategize your path to victory almost by yourself. And then you better have the financial means to be able to put your life on hold for the next five to eight months, let alone to fundraise for a political campaign.

Nothing about the demands I describe are structurally favourable for the leaders our city truly and honestly needs. Our city is full of these leaders who are Black, Indigenous, women, people of colour, queer, two-spirited, trans, low income, people living with disabilities and working-class people. They should have a chance to run for political office. A strong-mayor system will actually deter that.

If we were discussing a bill that actually did anything to strengthen Toronto’s democracy, it would actually allow cities to implement ranked ballots, repeal Bill 5 and empower Toronto’s democratically elected government to have a say in the size of their council and the size of their municipal wards. It should enact proportional representation provincially so that cities could also have predictability and long-term plans that persist through changes in government through their provincial counterparts. It should also limit this government’s ability to enact MZOs that undermine public faith in the planning process.

But if this government was actually proposing a bill to get more housing built, I can offer you some advice on that. After all, I was appointed by Mayor Tory and I served eight years on the planning and growth management committee and another additional four—eight altogether—on the planning and housing committee, when I only resigned on May 3 to run in the provincial election.

During those eight years on the planning and growth management and planning and housing committees, I sat directly across from Toronto’s chief planner, the housing secretariat, the director of urban design, the general manager of heritage planning, the director of transportation planning, the director of strategic initiatives, policy and planning, and others. This was led by our chief planner with our professional planning division of 477 full-time employees, staff who oversaw one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing likes to patronize Toronto from his town seat in Brockville. He often boasts that Toronto’s mired in red tape and repeatedly insults city council for their inefficiency. The minister seems to conveniently ignore that in the first quarter of 2022, Toronto had 252 cranes working on construction projects, far outdistancing even the second-place city in the crane index, Los Angeles, which had 51. Seattle was next with 37 cranes; Calgary had 31; and Washington, DC, had 26. Toronto has led in the crane index count every year since 2015.

Meeting provincial growth targets has not been a challenge for the planning and housing committee; nor has it been a challenge for city council. I was constantly, and we were constantly, reminded of this by Toronto’s chief planner, whom I had the distinct honour of working with. Toronto’s chief planner, Gregg Lintern, wrote in his recent Development Pipeline 2021 report:

“The city continues to be an exceptionally attractive” place “for development in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). There are more residential units and more non-residential GFA proposed in the current Development Pipeline than in any other Pipeline over the last five years. Given the scale of this proposed development, comprehensive planning frameworks that link infrastructure” to comprehensive planning that allows us to manage the city’s growth is what we need to determine how we improve the quality of life. The pandemic has not deterred development activity in Toronto.

The city of Toronto’s population growth is firmly on track with the forecast supporting A Place to Grow: Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. As the city’s urban growth centres develop, they are progressing towards or exceeding the province’s density targets set out in the 2020 growth plan as amended by this House.

In Toronto, our professional city planners know this government’s strong mayors bill posing as a housing bill is an absolute farce. Councillors and city planners representing avenues, urban growth centres, especially in midtown, North York and downtown have individually approved more housing than all the MPPs in this House combined together—mathematical fact.

Here’s the receipt from the 2021 housing report from our chief planner: In total, over 503,000 residential units were proposed in projects with development activity from 2016 to 2020. Of this, only 93,000 were actually built. There are more than 162 residential units that have been approved but not built. Again, 246,000 units still under active review, which means that there are about 409,000 residential units that are either under review or active, indicating a continuation of strong development activity in Toronto. In the coming years, what we will see is that the residential units, if all realized over time, will increase the total number of dwellings in the city by over one third.

The next point I have to share with this chamber, Speaker, is that having a strong-mayor system sounds vaguely like a positive thing. What this bill’s title and framing are is fundamentally misleading and unfair. So allow me to frame it more simply based on the recent experience that we’ve had in the city.

What happens when your strong mayor refuses to take basic steps—