I want to congratulate my very knowledgeable colleague the member for Oshawa for walking us through the legislation that’s before us today, the Building Infrastructure Safely Act. She made some comments regarding the locate requests that are affected by this legislation, and those locate requests are other than dedicated locator requests that are related to designated broadband projects. She made some comments about this government’s track record on implementing broadband throughout Ontario.

I wondered if she wanted to elaborate a little bit more on the government’s progress in achieving its broadband goals.

My question to the member is around the proposed Ontario Infrastructure Bank. There was an interesting article from the CBC entitled, “Why Is Doug Ford’s Government Creating a Bank to Finance Public Projects?” It goes on to say, “Questions swirl over Ontario’s plan for luring private investment....” One of the people who was quoted in the article—a former chief economist for the province—said, “The current [financing] system seems to be working pretty well”—the problem has always been around timelines to get projects completed on schedule.

Why has the government decided to move forward with this significant change, and why have so few details been provided about what this is going to mean for the province of Ontario?

Thank you very much, Speaker.

I was highlighting some of the findings of the Auditor General’s 2017 report, which nowhere included a recommendation that 14 of the 34 agencies that manage government-owned property should be consolidated under the auspices of one entity, presumably Infrastructure Ontario. But the auditor pointed out a number of concerns dealing with the design of the RFP approach, 7,500 capital projects across the province, the way that the bids were issued, generated—three bids received by the government, two proponents selected.

The Auditor General recommended better oversight of procurement methods for capital projects. She recommended better incentive structures for project managers to manage costs. She recommended incentives to complete projects on time. She recommended better information on operating and maintenance services for client ministries. She identified a problem that office space per person exceeds the ministry standards.

There were a number of issues that were identified by the Auditor General, mainly dealing with the outsourcing of property management to private contractors and criticizing the uncompetitive procurement process that IO engages in and the poor oversight of these private contracts.

We have heard nothing from this government to explain why they believed that the appropriate response to the Auditor General’s report is to bring 14 of the 34 agencies that manage government-owned property under the umbrella of a single entity. And it’s particularly worrisome that that single entity is Infrastructure Ontario, which has been noted by the Auditor General as being not able to manage its own processes and real estate holdings.

This is a case of the government bringing forward legislation without providing a sufficient rationale for why they are taking these actions, and without providing any evidence that these measures will actually achieve what the government says they are hoping to achieve with this bill.

As I said, it is really difficult to put our faith in the government and give them carte blanche to just take these legislative changes that they are putting out here—and act in the best interests of the people of this province—because that’s not what we have seen from this government. We have certainly not seen this government acting in the best interests of the people of this province on environmental protection. We have certainly not seen it with Bill 23 and the government’s decision to carve up the greenbelt to build more homes, when experts are telling us that the government could exceed the affordable housing task force target of 1.5 million homes in a decade—they could actually build two million homes in a decade—without going anywhere near the greenbelt. That’s what experts are telling this government, and yet they’re plowing ahead with this decision to carve up the greenbelt in the face of tremendous public opposition.

So I think that you can understand and appreciate, Speaker, why we have reservations about the measures set out in this bill, why we would not support any further erosion of the environmental protection process, why we are skeptical of consolidating a number of real estate holdings under the auspices of an agency—Infrastructure Ontario—that has a very poor track record in managing its own properties, and why we have stated that we will not be supporting this bill.

People deserve a government that’s going to protect the environment, that’s going to take concrete and effective action on climate change, and that’s going to be a responsible steward of public dollars and manage public agencies appropriately.

I listened yesterday to the remarks from the member for Essex. I noticed that he repeated some of the claims that were made in the government’s press release accompanying this legislation. The government stated that the purpose of the legislation is to address the 2017 Auditor General’s report on Infrastructure Ontario real estate services. So I looked at the 2017 Auditor General’s report on real estate services, and never once in that report did I see anything about consolidating these 14 properties under the auspices of Infrastructure Ontario. In fact, what the report did was criticize Infrastructure Ontario’s poor oversight of the contracts that it was managing. So can the member explain how exactly this legislation addresses the 2017 Auditor General’s report?