New Orleans is in Louisiana, which is in the southern United States. Orléans is a suburb of Ottawa—the eastern suburb of Ottawa, where the sun rises on our nation’s capital, just to correct the record.

In terms of affordability, when this government was elected in 2018, the average cost to buy a home in the greater Toronto area was $787,000. In Ottawa, it was $449,000. This isn’t about interest rates. It’s about the price of buying a home, which the Minister of Labour should understand.

The current average in the GTA exceeds a million dollars and, in Ottawa, it’s above $750,000. The price of homes is demonstrably higher five years after this government took power.

So, first of all, the government needs to decide how they’re going to track new housing, which metric they’re going to use, and then they need to be reporting on it, every year, to the public. As far as I can see, that’s not happening.

What I am aware of is, the last time the NDP was in power, they sent public servants home without pay for two weeks a year.

Liberals have a strong track record of investing in education, investing in health care, and, as I said, investing in home construction across the province.

If the NDP want to go back in time and recall Bob Rae and the infamous government of the 1990s, I’m sure both the government—and, I know over here, we would love to have that conversation over the next couple of years.

One of the major challenges with Bill 23 was the definition of “attainable housing,” the yet-to-be-defined “attainable housing,” and the risk that that provides.

Most cities and most suburban or outlying cities that are building new subdivisions are building with densities that are much higher than in the past. Many of those homes are townhomes, executive townhomes etc., which would be considered attainable housing by many definitions.

If cities lose development charges for 50% or 60% of new builds, that’s going to create a financial crisis within cities.

That was one of the major problems with Bill 23 and the yet-to-be-defined definition of “attainable housing.”