I appreciated the comments from my colleague the member for Niagara.

He talked about the fact that one of the schedules in this bill, schedule 3, reverses changes to official plans, urban boundaries, that had been forced on municipalities by this government and were later reversed. So it un-reverses a reversal that had been put in place by this government.

That was not the only reversal that we have seen in this Legislature. A number of bills have been reversed.

I wondered if the member would like to comment on this government’s track record of introducing—

I want to thank the member for his speech and for his advocacy on behalf of the Niagara region.

Yesterday in this Legislature, there was a reception hosted by a number of elected officials and others from the Niagara region, and I had the opportunity to talk to the chief of the paramedic service in Niagara. He talked about the impact that off-load delays are having on the people in that region, both from the point of view of not being able to access emergency transportation when someone is in a medical crisis and also for those paramedics who are stuck waiting in hospital parking lots.

I wondered if the member wanted to comment on whether this budget provides any hope that the government has a plan to deal with the off-load delay pressures in Niagara.

Thank you to my colleague the member for Niagara Falls for pointing out the complete absence of consultation with municipalities and AMO, the organization that represents municipalities.

There’s no question that what this government is doing is downloading the cost of trying to meet that 1.5-million target onto municipalities. Any time that you are increasing density by allowing the construction of granny flats and other units—which is a good thing; that is a good thing, but it means that there is going to be more pressure on municipal services. The removal or the limits on development charges that are proposed in this legislation will mean that there will be even less of a tax base to provide that infrastructure.

Look, there is absolutely no question that we need the federal government, the provincial government and municipal governments at the table to address this crisis, given the proportion of the crisis that we’re facing. But the history of this government has been that whenever federal housing dollars are provided to Ontario, what does Ontario do? They reduce their share of the housing budget.

Speaker, as I had concluded with, when we see this government cutting the housing program by $100 million, we’re not going to be advocating for the province to continue to pull back its budget.

There is nothing in this bill to ensure that even those 50,000 units that are estimated to be constructed—that even those units will be affordable. And we have seen in Toronto, which has already gone with laneway houses and granny suites and secondary units—but those are typically not set at rental rates that low-income people can afford.

We need to do much more to ensure that the housing that is available in Ontario is actually housing that people can afford and is located where people want to live.