I’ve heard this whole song and dance before. Have I ever seen a municipality, have I ever seen a politician—outside of ours—that doesn’t love spending money? You guys love spending money. The municipalities love spending money.

Mr. Speaker, when I went down to city hall, I heard the same song and dance. First meeting with the CAO—“We’ve got to raise taxes 30%.” Well, guess what? We found a billion dollars, did a 0% tax increase, never went once to the province hat in hand.

We’re there to help the municipalities—but isn’t it amazing that they forget about all the new income and revenues up to the city coffers when they start building homes? The tax revenue—they forget about that.

We don’t have an income problem at the city halls across the province; we have a spending problem. That’s the issue.

Speaker, through you to the Premier: Ontario municipalities say they are facing financial disaster due to revenue losses caused by Bill 23.

A recent Peel region report said Bill 23 will cost the region $2 billion to $6 billion in lost revenues. To replace those lost revenues, Peel will need to raise property taxes by at least 25% and more than double the utility rate. And Brampton says it will need to raise property taxes by 80% because of Bill 23.

Last year, the minister promised to make municipalities “whole” for these revenue losses. So why doesn’t his budget include a single penny to do so?

If the minister is really holding off on compensating municipalities for Bill 23 because he wants to perform audits first and make sure municipalities are speeding up approvals, why is he cutting the very programs that fund these initiatives?

Interjections.