I just want to say something really quick about our leader, who brought this forward. This issue isn’t just about the GTA; let’s be clear about that. It’s happening in Niagara.

To the member over there who stood up and talked about rents—through the Speaker: Nobody in the province of Ontario should be charged $3,003 to rent a place in Toronto. It’s not affordable.

To this member over here—wherever he’s from; I have no idea who he is or where he’s from—he talked about closing hospitals. Let’s be clear: It was a PC government, under Mike Harris, that closed 26 hospitals and laid off 6,000 nurses. I just want to clarify that because he brought up closing hospitals.

I want to talk about Niagara. In Niagara—and this should bring tears to our eyes—we have seniors who are being renovicted. They end up living in hotel rooms on Lundy’s Lane, one-bedroom apartments, when they’ve given their entire life to this province—their entire life. The reason I have the quality of life I have is because of my parents and their parents and their grandparents. Yet what are we doing? We’re forcing them to live in one-bedroom apartments on Lundy’s Lane because they can’t afford rent in the province of Ontario. They can’t afford their groceries in the province of Ontario. They’re choosing whether to pay rent or to have groceries, or to skip breakfast or skip lunch. We’re supposed to be proud of that. Well, I’m not proud of that—I absolutely am not.

I’m not proud of the guy who runs most of the grocery stores, who’s making record profits instead of taking that and putting it back in to reduce the price of groceries.

Our country—whether it be Canada or the United States—was built on sharing the wealth, so when the rich got rich, they shared it in the form of better benefits and better wages so people can live and pay their rent.

I guarantee you, there aren’t people in Toronto who can afford $3,003 for an apartment.

In Niagara Falls, it’s a 20-year wait-list for a one-bedroom apartment—20 years. In Fort Erie, which is part of my riding, do you know how long it is? It’s 13 years for a one-bedroom apartment.

I said to you guys that it should bring tears to your eyes. We have my critic for veterans right beside me. You know that we have veterans in Niagara Falls today—although our Legions are doing an incredible job trying to take care of them, to make sure they’re taken care of, they’re dying in the streets of Niagara Falls because they’re homeless and they can’t afford their rents.

We talk about rent and rent control. It’s what we need in the province of Ontario to take care of our seniors, our veterans, our young families, our new Canadians.

I just want to give the member an example. Peterborough built a brand new hospital. It cost $364 million. St. Catharines, which was a P3 hospital 10 years ago, cost a million dollars—$700,000 more, almost the exact same hospital. That was under the PC model.

Now you listen to my colleague from Ottawa talk about the LRT. And you made a statement which I thought was very interesting. You said the reason why you like P3s is because they’re delivered on time. Well, my understanding is that the LRT is 430 days late. They’ve had three derailments.

So my question to you is, why are we wasting billions of dollars more of taxpayers’ money with P3s when you can invest that money back into hospitals, schools, roads, infrastructure?