Today is Peterborough Day at Queen’s Park, so I have the entire contingency up in the public gallery. I won’t name everyone, but I will name a few: Warden Bonnie Clark, Mayor Sherry Senis, Deputy Mayor Ron Black, Mayor Heather Watson, Mayor Jim Martin, Mayor Terry Lambshead, former member and mayor of the city of Peterborough Jeff Leal and Deputy Mayor Gary Baldwin. From my office I also have, in the Speaker’s gallery, Andrea Dodsworth, Jenna DePaiva, Sally Carson and Halle Kunjal.

Christmas is the season where we can pause and reflect on all the good from the past year that will provide us with hope for the coming year. As I pause and reflect, I’d like to share some things that I hope will be found in the stockings of some of my friends:

—for J. Murray Jones, the now-retired mayor of my home community and longest-serving warden of Peterborough county, a gift card from the classic car mechanic so Ruby will run smoothly enough this summer that he and Anne can enjoy some long drives throughout God’s country;

—for Mayor Carolyn Amyotte, a very simple request, photo radar;

—for Mayor Jim Martin, a very large excavator to dig a big hole, big enough for 128 beds on Smith Drive;

—for Mayor Senis, a round table filled with friends who enjoy the southern part of Lakefield;

—for Mayor Terry Lambshead, a season void of LDD moths so all of us can enjoy hikes throughout some of Ontario’s most beautiful foliage;

—for Mayor Heather Watson, the long-awaited high-speed broadband to be completed on time, eliminating the last dial-up in our township;

—for Mayor Leal, 11 paddles to be shared with his council so they can move the canoe smoothly through the Otonabee River, even when they hit the rapids; and finally

—for Chief Keith Knott, a return to good health so that all of Peterborough county can enjoy the wisdom and experience that he has brought to Curve Lake for so long.

From my family to yours, however you celebrate, Merry Christmas.

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.

This is the first time, actually, I’ve risen to speak in this Parliament. I want to thank the people of Peterborough–Kawartha for giving me the honour, again, to be their voice, as I have been for the last four years.

One of the challenges that Ontario faces is a growing population over the next 10 years. We’re expected to add more than 2.5 million people, and we have seen over the last two decades really, a lack of housing that has been built and challenges in doing it. There have been a number of changes that have been made by different governments throughout the years to try to address this. And every time a change is made, it seems that someone finds a way to weaponize one of those changes to make it possible to delay.

I’m going to talk specifically about some of the challenges in Peterborough. I’m very close to what happens in Peterborough, coming from the riding there. I don’t necessarily experience the challenges that you see in Toronto or that you see in Ottawa, and the strong-mayors legislation is specifically for these two cities to make some adjustments. But I think that if you take a look at, historically, what my community has been, my community has always been seen as a microcosm of everything that’s happening in Canada.

For more than 40 years, we were a test market for everything. When a company wanted a new product, when they were going to introduce something new, they would introduce it in Peterborough as one of the test markets, because we had that mix of individuals. We had blue-collar workers. We had manufacturing. We had knowledge base. We have a college, a university. We have a great, diverse population. We have a strong arts community—

We’re also the centre of the lacrosse universe in Peterborough as well. And, as everyone knows, I refer to it as God’s country, so how could it be bad? But I digress.

Whenever something was being introduced, it was being introduced in Peterborough, and they took a look at what our market would do and how successful something would be. I think if you take a look at what has happened in Peterborough over the last number of years, it represents what has happened all across Ontario.

In June 2018, when I was first elected, the average home price was $314,000. Last month, it was $760,000. We have a shortage of housing. In 2019, in the city of Peterborough, only five single-family home building permits were issued. The population in Peterborough proper, the city itself, has grown by almost 4,500 people in four years, yet we’ve had just a shade over 1,200 new residences added, whether that be a house, condo, apartment—only 1,200. Our vacancy rate is 1%. Rental rates have increased significantly because we don’t have the inventory. Housing prices have increased significantly because we don’t have the inventory.

Kate Kidd, the former president of the Peterborough–Kawartha area realtors—her term just ended in July—said to me about a year ago that we need an inventory of 1,400 to 1,500 houses for sale at any given time to make sure that we have enough inventory. We had less than 100 this past January. In February, we were averaging about 127 listings. Right now if you go to realtor.ca, there’s a little over 400. We’re still significantly lower than what we should have to have the proper inventory.

There are lot of pressures that have been put on my community, in particular. Yes, I am talking about Peterborough, but Peterborough is that microcosm of everything else that’s going on in Ontario. When the 407 opened all the way to Highway 115, a great addition to the transportation network, what it meant was—those individuals who were being priced out in the GTA, who could not find a home in the GTA—it was easy for them to commute from Peterborough, and we’ve had a number of people come in. There was a time when it made perfect sense to do that.

My colleague from Oakville, who was my seatmate early on in the last session, had talked about home prices in Oakville. Actually, prior to being elected, the house beside me sold to somebody from Oakville. At the time, they had sold a two-bedroom home with a 30-foot lot in Oakville for $1.2 million. They moved to Peterborough. At the time—this is prior to 2018—they bought a five-bedroom home with two bathrooms on a 65-by-130-foot lot that backed on to environmentally protected green space. I’m painting a beautiful picture of it. Who wouldn’t want to live with wildlife right behind your home in the city? They paid $418,000 for it.

So we saw an influx, when the 407 opened, of individuals who were able to sell their property in the GTA for a very large sum—and it’s gone up in the GTA—and move to Peterborough for a significantly lower price and have more home, a better lot and a higher quality of life. That raised the price in Peterborough to what it is today, $760,000 for the average home in Peterborough, whereas just over four years ago it was just a shade over $300,000—$314,000. That’s a massive jump.

Why am I focusing on that? Peterborough city council has made a number of what I would say are poor decisions around housing. I’ll go back to 2019: five single-family residential home permits issued—five, that’s it. More than 4,000 people moved into the community, 1,200 homes, apartments or condos is all that we’ve added, and the previous council used some of the tools to delay, to not make decisions.

In my old neighbourhood, just around the corner from where my house was, a developer had a piece of property. Originally he wanted to have a single level of commercial and two storeys above that of residential. He was not able to find someone to move into the commercial property because there weren’t enough people in that general vicinity to make it worthwhile for commercial activity to happen. There weren’t enough people. It wasn’t convenient enough for a professional office like a dentist, a lawyer. There weren’t enough people in the area to put in a retail outlet, a convenience store or a small grocery store, just because of the nature of where it was. But it’s not far from Trent University. It’s a walkable distance to Trent University, and there’s actually a walking trail that goes right to Trent.

That was blocked by council because the developer wanted to change it to a six-storey apartment building, and council said no because of some pushback—not because it didn’t meet the requirements of the community, not because the transportation study wasn’t effective, not because there wasn’t the demand—they were afraid they were going to offend someone and they were going to lose votes. And when you have councils that are doing those types of things, then you’re not serving the needs of your community. That developer took the city to LPAT and won, because the city chose not to send someone to the LPAT hearing to oppose it.

On Sherbrooke Street, another development: 164 homes, 164 apartments to be put in. A few city councillors lobbied to say no to it because they had some pushback from some other individuals in the area. On Lansdowne Street, two developments: The developer originally wanted 14 storeys, came down to 10, and the city came back and said, “No, six is all you could do.” They couldn’t build them then and actually make it work. The city was taken to LPAT by the developer on all of those, and the developers have won. And in each case, the city chose not to have a delegation come because they knew they were going to lose. They were doing it for political reasons, not for the right reasons.

And that’s happening in a community like Peterborough. As I said earlier on in my speech, Peterborough is the microcosm for everything that happens across Ontario. If you want to see what’s going to happen in this province, look at Peterborough, because it will be emulated or replicated in other areas. The cost of housing has gone sky high and councils have continually made decisions to block development—not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they’re concerned about gaining votes or losing votes.

What we have to do is take a look at what is in the best interest of the entire community, what’s in the best interest of the city. We have 2.5 million people coming into Ontario over the next 10 years. We set a record last year in housing starts of just over 100,000—100,000 units built last year, the most that we’ve had in more than 30 years. That will not get us to 2.5 million over 10 years. It will not get us enough bedrooms for the people who are going to be coming into this province. It won’t. And it was a record year.

The problem is we have councils who are saying no to development. “No, we don’t want a house over there.” “No, we don’t want this.” “No, we don’t want that.” And what I find interesting about it and almost hypocritical—