I have another group to introduce—and it is our powerful page Lazo Kasekas. His family is here today in the chamber: Kate, Konst, Vanna, and Eleanor Kasekas.

Welcome.

I have a number of people here today with the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce. They’re here for meetings with various members. We have Hugo Chesshire, Mishka Balsom, Grady Peller, John Peller, Del Rollo, Richard Linley, Debbie Zimmerman, Aaron Dobbin, Paul Speck, and Carolyn Hurst.

Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Please welcome a dear friend of mine from law school, Michael Sullivan, and his son J.J. Sullivan.

It’s shocking, Mr. Speaker, that somebody was talking about building a new hospital in York region—the new Southlake hospital.

In fact, we were actually talking about building a new Southlake hospital before the last election. It has been no secret; we’ve never made a secret of the fact that the people of York region, especially Southlake, need it to be rebuilt. I just don’t understand how it is that the Leader of the Opposition is not aware of this, because we’ve not tried to hide the fact.

In fact, we went into an election telling the people of the province of Ontario that we were going to make $50 billion worth of investments in health care because we had to rebuild a health care system that was left so sorely lacking by the Liberal and NDP coalition, which ignored health care for 15 years.

It is no secret, but welcome to the party. Perhaps now you will consider voting in favour of this massive investment, now that it’s no longer a secret to—

I would like to recognize the Lung Health Foundation of Canada. Folks are here today advocating in a very good way—CEO Jessica Buckley and policy lead Riley Sander.

Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge Dominic Cadotte, one of our current pages and a constituent of mine. Dominic is one of only a handful of pages to represent Scarborough–Rouge Park during my time in office, so I want to extend my tremendous thanks for his service to the Ontario Legislature.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent that, notwithstanding standing order 40(e), five minutes be allotted to the independent members as a group to respond during statements by the ministry and responses today.

I’d like to welcome members from the youth civic engagement initiative organized by the women’s focus group organization. They’ve joined us here today to gain some insight on the functions and structure of our great Legislature. It’s great to see them here—and all the youth they brought with them. They will be hosting a reception for us in room 228, and all are welcome to join.

I would like to introduce—and thank you for coming—wonderful youth from Thornhill: Nicholas Chernyakhovsky, Eric Dobre, Jaian Dhebar, Ethan Ulman, Delan Mete, Denis Averbukh, Noa Fishbain, Jonathan Yagudaev, Abdul Wajid Ishaq, and Alan Annenkov.

I would also very much like to thank a faithful provincial servant from the Ministry of the Attorney General, Mr. Peter Dewar.

I don’t think they’ve made it in the chamber yet, but I want to welcome the member of Parliament for Lambton–Kent–Middlesex, Lianne Rood, as well as one of the staff members, Dalton Holloway, who is going to be here shortly.

That concludes our introduction of visitors.

I understand the member for Ottawa–Vanier has a point of order.

My question is to the Premier.

Any dissolution of Peel region will require serious thought and care from this government. There are a lot of moving parts and billions of dollars at stake for taxpayers in Brampton, in Mississauga and in Caledon. But as we’ve seen, whether it’s with Bill 23 or the cancellation of Peel chair elections or the ending of regional planning responsibilities, this Premier has a record of imposing sudden, massive changes on municipalities without consultation or careful review, leaving municipalities and taxpayers to deal with the resulting chaos. How can the people of Peel trust the Premier to get this right?

But the minister seems to forget all about his promise to make municipalities whole. The Premier even compared Peel municipalities to beggars seeking a handout.

How can Peel residents have any confidence in this restructuring process when the Premier and the minister have shown them such disrespect?

In 2019, the government announced a regional government review—three months of consultations, and the review received over 8,500 written submissions. But then the government suddenly dropped the whole idea, and the report and the recommendations have been kept secret ever since.

Just so Peel residents and other Ontarians have access to all the relevant information, will the Premier order the release of the 2019 report?

Interjections.

On September 15, 2022, a company controlled by Michael Rice of the Rice Group bought 687 acres of protected farmland in King township. Less than two months later, the government announced that this property would be removed from the greenbelt. But now we have learned that Mr. Rice discussed the development of this land with King township and Southlake health officials in June, before he bought the land, and perhaps even as early as January of last year.

It makes no sense for Mr. Rice to propose the development of protected greenbelt land he did not even own yet, unless—and my question is to the Premier: Did someone in the government tip him off about the greenbelt plan?

I disagree with the Leader of the Opposition. The Premier has been clear on this issue and what our shared intentions are. We’re committed to working with all of our municipal partners to ensure that they have both the tools and the autonomy to deliver efficient and effective services to their constituents. This is an issue that has long been discussed within Peel region.

As I said earlier, the Premier has been very clear on his intentions, and we’ll have more to say later in the day.

We recently appointed an auditor for all four Peel communities, with a very clear vision that we want to set those municipalities up for success. All three of the municipalities—Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon—are part of our expansion of strong-mayor powers. All of them have been very, very clear back to us: They’ve committed to our housing target,s and they’re ready for success.

We will continue to work with our outstanding Peel region MPPs in the government. We will continue to work with our three great mayors and those great councils in Caledon, Brampton and Mississauga.

And we want to give a clear message to the people who live in Peel region: No matter whether you live in Caledon or Brampton or Mississauga, we want to ensure that the process results in those same front-line services that those people expect today and will expect in the future.

Speaker, it’s not about what this government says is going to be built or not. It’s about who has access to this government to get these favours. That’s what this is about.

Shortly before that June meeting, Luca Bucci, the chief of staff to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, left the ministry and took a job as the new CEO of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association. The president of the OHBA at the time was Bob Schickedanz, whose company owned the King township property that would then be sold to Michael Rice on September 15, and then removed from the greenbelt less than two months later. Follow along here, Speaker.

Did Mr. Bucci or any other government official know about any of the greenbelt removals prior to September 15, 2022?

Last week, the Narwhal reported that officials in the Premier’s office were aware of the changes to the greenbelt as early as August, and Michael Rice was pitching a development proposal for his soon-to-be-acquired greenbelt land as early as June or maybe even January of last year. The timeline here doesn’t make any sense.

Why did the Premier and the minister tell the Integrity Commissioner that they only knew about the greenbelt removal scheme in November, when the Premier’s inner circle clearly knew long before then?

Meegwetch, Speaker. Remarks in Anishininiimowin.

My question is to the Premier.

The leadership and the members from the Ojibways of Garden River First Nation travelled here today to enforce a long-overdue promise of the 1850 treaty to their people. That treaty promised them land that Ontario and Canada took back for mining, timber and farming.

Mr. Speaker, will this government honour the 1850 treaty and give back the land Ontario owes to Garden River First Nation?

Interjections.

Speaker, First Nations in Ontario are founding partners in the development of this province. We know that. You know that. The future prosperity for all of us depends on implementing the spirit and intent of the treaties. Again, the prosperity of northern Ontario depends on the respect of those treaties.

Does Ontario agree that this means respect for the environment, so any agreed-upon development in the north can happen sustainably, responsibly and with the full involvement and the full consent of First Nations?

Interjections.

The supplementary question.

Members will please take their seats.

Interjections.

Start the clock. The next question.

Government House leader.

Government House leader.

Mr. Speaker, as important as it is that you follow along, I think it’s very clear that the people of Ontario followed along in the last election.

She says it’s not important about what gets built and what doesn’t get built in the province of Ontario. Well, I disagree. It actually is important what gets built and what doesn’t get built, because under the Liberal and NDP coalition, nothing got built. That’s why our hospitals were crumbling. That’s why we didn’t have subways for over 30 years. There is a delegation here from Great Britain; they managed to get subways built in London—we had to wait 30 years for Toronto, for crying out loud.

But do you know who got the job done? This Minister of Transportation, this Premier; they got subways built in Ontario.

So I would say to the Leader of the Opposition, it does matter what gets built and what is not built.

Under this government, things get built. And when they’re in charge, nothing happens.

We went to the people of the province of Ontario and said that we were going to continue to build prosperity in the province of Ontario by building roads, highways, new long-term care; by investing in our auto sector; by bringing jobs back to the province of Ontario. And what we have seen is record growth in the province of Ontario.

This is an opposition party that went to the people with the message that she’s delivering now, and the people of the province of Ontario massively turned their backs on that particular party. In fact, they returned the Progressive Conservative Party with a larger majority than when we left; they reduced the opposition by 10 seats.

This is a Leader of the Opposition who ran unopposed for the leadership because nobody else wanted to lead the party.

I think we got the narrative right. The economy is showing that we’re getting it right, and the people of the province of Ontario—

Interjections.

Let me, too, welcome the delegation—the chiefs and the entire members of the community who have come here.

We have, I think, a very good tradition of working with Indigenous partners. In fact, I think this government has secured more agreements than any other government in the past. But that doesn’t suggest that the work is done by any account.

I know this is something that is before the courts right now, and as you can appreciate, Mr. Speaker, when something is before the courts, there’s very little more that we can say on the matter.

As the Premier has said and as the minister has said, we remain committed to working with Indigenous partners to not only settle land claims across the province of Ontario, but to ensure that Indigenous communities participate in the economic growth, because they are the leaders who will help us shape the Ontario of the future. They’re such an important part of it. We owe them that. I know that they are as excited to work with us as we are to work with them.

We will continue to work with our partners—not only First Nations communities, but across the province of Ontario—to ensure that as the economic riches of the north, which have become so important in the economic development not only of southern Ontario but all of Canada—it is those relationships that we have with First Nations communities to help guide us and help lead the way to that economic prosperity that is so important to all Ontarians.

My question is for Minister of Finance.

Much like the rest of the world, Ontario is experiencing the effects of global economic uncertainty. Ongoing supply chain disruptions, inflation and increased interest rates have created financial pressures for people across Ontario. Individuals, families and businesses are looking to our government for help during these challenging times to provide them with much-needed support so that life is more affordable. They need to see that our government is continuing to focus on legislation, investments and other initiatives that will provide real relief financially, and that our government has a strong plan for the future.

Speaker, can the minister please explain how our government is continuing to work on behalf of Ontarians during these challenging economic times?

Supplementary question?