It adds more than flavour to it, that’s for sure.

The standard now is ABS pipe for waste water. What we have here is cast iron, and it’s wrapped with horsehair. When the cast iron breaks, obviously the horsehair gets all wet as well, and it causes a real problem cleaning it up, but it’s in places now where you can’t even get to it.

One of the good parts I’ll say about the age of the building is, we didn’t use asbestos in 1893, so they’re probably not going to find a lot of asbestos when they tear this down, but we don’t know. That’s why it’s going to take close to 10 years for this building to be decanted and then rebuilt. There are so many unknowns when they start taking down the walls, and they have to do it in a way that is going to preserve some of the fantastic, historical artwork that is here.

But it’s not just the physical aspects of the building. There are other things that this building can be used for to represent all of Ontario.

At one of the committee meetings, there was a discussion around art and what art should be here and what should be displayed and what art perhaps shouldn’t be displayed. As the member from Oshawa talked about, there’s some very dark art that’s here. She has said to me a couple of times that one of the pieces of art right beside the member from Sudbury’s office—it’s called The Foreclosure, and you have a farmer who is lying on his deathbed with his family around, and you have the banker foreclosing on the farm because the farmer is too sick to continue on. That is a piece of art that we have here. It’s worth keeping—it’s worth reminding ourselves, because those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it.

So, as we put this back together, we have to make sure that we’re putting in all of those things that remind us not only of the good things that have happened in Ontario, but also some of those dark things that have happened in Ontario. As legislators, one of our jobs is to improve the lives of the people we represent, and the only way we can be assured that we are doing those things is by thinking of and recognizing the mistakes that had been made in the past and not repeating those mistakes. So it’s very, very important that as we put the building back together, we’re putting in those types of things that do remind us of not only the good things that have happened in Ontario, but also some of the darker history in Ontario.

Decisions are going to have to be made on all of that, and the only way that we can make that decision appropriately is to make sure that we have the appropriate feedback from everybody.

I did love the one comment that was made by the Minister of Northern Development and Minister of Indigenous Affairs about the possibility of travelling the Legislature, and what I’ll point out is that, in British Columbia, I had the opportunity to go to the BC Legislature, and they actually did that for the 100-year anniversary. They went back to the original city that served as the capital city and they turned the hockey rink into the Legislature for seven days. So it’s been done before in Canada. That would be a great opportunity for us to take, and I would love, more than anything else, to use the 900,000 square feet of GE in Peterborough and bring the Legislature to Peterborough for a week.

If you recall, when the Seven Grandfather Teachings was put up, there was a smudging ceremony that went on. I would love to see something like that at the beginning of each of our sessions, having a smudging ceremony, because it’s cleansing your mind, your eyes, your ears, your nose, your mouth and your heart. If we were to do something like that to incorporate some of those traditions—not just the physical part of it, but actually some of the things that are done as a ceremony for different reasons by different groups across Ontario. I’d love to see something like that incorporated in what we do.

There are different technologies that we have today that can be incorporated into the building of the building of this building—say “building” three times—that allows for flexibility in the future because it’s easy to remove and put back and no one would know that it had been removed. Having that type of flexibility I think is something we should be looking at.

To the member from Oshawa: The building was first opened in 1893. It has served the people of Ontario very, very well. But one of the things that we see in it—and I know it has been talked about already and some questions asked about it already—is when you look at the grandeur of this building, when you look at the style of everything, no one in 1893 took into consideration that there may need to be accommodations made for different people, whether it’s mobility challenges, whether it is audio, whether they have challenges with their eyesight. None of that was thought of in 1893 because that’s not what the world was thinking of.

Has thought been given to making changes so that we are accommodating a lot of other things that weren’t considered in 1893?

The member from University–Rosedale made comments in the speech about not needing extra lands that we could do infill on. In Peterborough, in 2019, five single-family home building permits were issued. Six multi-unit buildings were put forward, and the NIMBYism blocked it. In fact, they’ve gone to the LTB. Three of those have already been heard and have been found to be in favour of the developer. The city didn’t actually send anyone to defend their position.

The argument that’s being put forward by the NDP is that there is enough land already for infill, that we don’t have to have any other land. Yet the example in my community is that there has been no development done, and the population has grown by more than 4,000 in the last four years. We have not had enough housing for 1,000 of them to actually be put in.

Why does the member think that status quo will work, when it is demonstrated over the last two decades that we’re not able to develop enough housing for the people who are coming to Ontario? The 100,000 new starts last year are 50,000 short of what we actually need. Why does the member believe that we do not need more land, that infill will work?

Wayne Gretzky.

When you want to have a subdivision put in, you go through all of the appropriate processes on it. One of the things that happens, though, is there’s opportunities for individuals, for different groups, to object in different ways. We’re streamlining all of that. Instead of it being a waterfall approach where it was, you can object on this; and then once something comes in from that, you object under this; and then once that comes in, you can object under a third—if you think of it from a project management standpoint, it’s more of a scrum or an agile approach. So we’re looking at the critical path instead.

This is a way that we can make things better for people in Ontario. This is a way that we can streamline this. By empowering the mayors in the two cities that we have, they can look at what’s in the best interests of the entire community instead of just that small group.

If you don’t like the price of rent, the problem is that we don’t have enough rentals. If you don’t like the price of a home, the problem is that we don’t have enough homes. This is something that is going to speed that process up, which lowers the cost and makes it easier for people to have home ownership.

If we speed up development, if we make it easier to build a purpose-built apartment building, it lowers the cost of the build. It lowers the cost of the rent, which means that that individual who is looking for a place to rent can move into a place that is going to be at their price point and more suitable for them.

If we obstruct—which is what has happened over the last two decades—prices rise and people get priced out of a home. We want to reverse that trend.