Another fable by the New Democratic Party is being told in the Legislature this morning.

Through you, Speaker: She talks about public commitment for housing. Well, Minister Bethlenfalvy, under the leadership of Premier Ford, tabled a wonderful budget—

We added $202 million to our Homelessness Prevention Program. And I want to thank members from both sides of the House for doing some great announcements last week—in fact, one of the ones was the member for Niagara West, who made a fantastic announcement that the member for Niagara Falls was pleased to attend. So some of her own members are celebrating the public commitment this government has made to ending homelessness by adding that additional $202 million. I don’t know about the Leader of the Opposition, but some of her members have got with the program.

The member opposite has a fundamental difference with the government on creating affordable housing.

We are in the middle of a housing supply crisis, and we’re going to do everything in our power to build more purpose-built rental. We made a conscious decision. We delivered on our promise to existing tenants to protect rent control. In 2018, we made the exemption in the fall economic statement for one reason and one reason only, and that was to incent the construction of purpose-built rental. What happened last year? I’ve said it many times in the House: We had a record of 15,000 purpose-built rental starts in Ontario because of that. And already this year, we’re seeing bright signs in this city. We’re seeing permits for purpose-built rental five times higher than they were at the same time a year ago.

We invoked the cap this year because of the inflationary rate, to ensure that the maximum under rent control was 2.5%.

We delivered in the middle of the pandemic. The Attorney General blocked evictions in the middle of the pandemic to protect the most vulnerable. We capped rent increases in the middle of the pandemic.

We have stood up year after year after year to protect tenants and strengthen the stock of community housing and purpose-built rental housing, and we are going to continue.

The question, though, before the House, with all of our renter protections in the bill before the House, Bill 97—will that member and her party, the New Democrats, support those rental protection measures in Bill 97? Yes or no?

I always say this about the Liberal-Green alliance: They always talk a good game in their questions, but they never deliver on it when the votes come.

Exactly what this member talks about, allowing a young family to have the opportunity to build a home that meets their needs and their budget, close to where they grew up—that’s exactly what the policies we’re consulting on right now will provide.

The member talks about supporting farms and farm families. It’s going to be very interesting to see if he supports our initiatives to allow sons and daughters of farmers to be able to have a property on the family farm—or more importantly, to talk about workers and the opportunity to have a lot on a farm. to upgrade the opportunity for farm workers to have not just employment but a home there.

We’ve put all those policies down in some progressive bills in this House that this member has voted down every single time.