Exactly. They have the authority to politicize bureaucrats by having the authority to hand-pick the heads of departments instead of having a more collaborative, non-partisan process to decide who these public servants are going to be. And any municipality—any mayor now also gets the authority not just to veto a piece of legislation but also to introduce legislation and get it passed with just one third.

This government, in short, in schedule 3, is giving themselves the permission to introduce minority rule in any municipality they want, whenever they want, just through regulation; it doesn’t have to come back through the Legislature. That is an assault to democracy. It is a shame.

I’m not the only one who’s concerned about this bill. We went to committee. We got 20 minutes of the minister’s time, with some questions on the first day. And then on the second day, we had just 18 people speak. You sped it through so fast. There are over 14 million people in Ontario. You’re rewriting how democracy works in this province, and you gave just 18 people the opportunity to speak—it’s really shocking—but speak they did, and the written submissions that we received and the comments that we received in committee, overwhelmingly, expressed horror at what this government was doing. We had CCLA. We had former mayors. We had thousands of citizens. We had the Anglican Diocese of Toronto. We had the Canadian Environmental Law Association. We had Ecology Ottawa. We had David Miller, Friends of Kensington Market, the Federation of North Toronto Residents’ Associations, the Federation of South Toronto Residents’ Associations, Friends of the Golden Horse-shoe, David Crombie, John Sewell, the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, AMO.

And I know you have all had hundreds, thousands of emails into your inbox about Bill 23 and its sister bill, Bill 39, over the last few weeks. I get those emails too.

You’ve had thousands of people, cumulatively, protest at your offices. It’s December. It’s cold. And yes, they’re still coming out because they’re so concerned about this bill. It is very concerning.

I want to read some of the comments that people expressed.

AMO represents 444 municipalities. They did a survey of Bill 3, which is an extension of strong mayors—Bill 3 and Bill 39 are very related. It’s almost like you forgot, like John Tory called you up and said, “Hold on, what about this,” and you said, “Oh, yes, you’re right. We’ll do Bill 39 too. Thank you. Oh, and that? Okay. We’ll make another bill.” AMO—77% of mayors are opposed to strong-mayor powers. Who asked for this bill, aside from John Tory? And 90%-plus of councillors are opposed to strong-mayor powers. Then, when it comes to Bill 39—they haven’t done a survey yet, because this bill got rushed through so quickly, they haven’t had time—the AMO board is unanimously opposed to this bill. They reached consensus. Yet, still you proceed. No amendments, ram it through committee—“good, good, good.” It’s not good. And your arguments keep changing all the time, so I know you’re hearing it from your constituents, too—they don’t think it’s good either. When you guys start changing your message, it means that something is not going so well—

This is a disastrous bill. It is a terrible, terrible, terrible bill, and it’s got nothing to do with solving the housing affordability crisis.

If this government was serious about solving the housing affordability crisis, you would bring in better rent controls so Ontarians out there living in new homes aren’t faced with a 15% rent increase come this Christmas, come January 1; this government would actually address the homelessness crisis and the mental health crisis, and build affordable housing and supportive housing to meet the need—not some scattershot approach that maybe you’re doing, plan-less.

Have a plan. Implement it. People need homes. Homes are for people.

This bill has nothing to do with providing homes to people; it’s got everything to do with consolidating power to help yourselves.