After six years of this Conservative government, the housing crisis has gone from a fire to a raging inferno. People are struggling, and yet Conservatives made new roadblocks for municipalities to access provincial housing funding. Conservatives even admitted that, to the government, building affordable housing is like “taking power away” and would “destroy the integrity of the free market.”

This Legislature is full of words about housing and little action. Speaking of words, at a time when no one can afford housing, would the Premier please provide a definition for his term “attainable housing”?

Back to the Premier: Across the province, the finance committee heard from municipalities who are breaking under the burden of providing affordable and supportive housing, yet this government has spent 18 months trying to figure out what their own words meant. It’s pretty embarrassing that this government uses slogans that literally mean nothing—literally nothing, even to themselves. It kind of reminds me of the kid who tries to give themselves a cool nickname, and nobody—and I mean nobody—actually uses that name.

When will this government stop using empty words and make good on their promise to make municipalities whole?

My question is to the Premier. Speaker, 30 years ago, the Harris government got us out of the business of building housing. If governments had continued to build at that rate, we would have built 1.2 million homes since then. Instead, Ontario needs to build 1.5 million homes to meet the current need.

Why doesn’t this government think it has a responsibility for building truly affordable homes?

This government has routinely given laundry lists of projects that did not work. Now is the time to think big. Private developers have said they can’t solve this crisis alone. The Canadian Housing Statistics Program recently revealed that housing supply slowed last year—slowed under this government.

Why won’t this government join us and get Ontarians back to work in good jobs, building the truly affordable housing that Ontarians need?

I’d like to thank the member from Brantford–Brant for his comments and his discussion about the history behind this building. As we look around, everything that is within here has been created by artisans, has been created with a tremendous amount of craftsmanship. It has been created with meaning, with purpose, and it has also significance.

I wanted to ask, though, with this tremendous history that our building has, how does the member think we can protect the heritage aspects of this building while also incorporating new ideas and telling the stories of future generations?