We’re now nearing the end of our spring session, and June is right around the corner. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of my colleagues in the House for their service to the province, as well as take a minute to highlight the great work that our government has accomplished in the past months.

Speaker, our government, led by Premier Ford, has made significant strides as we combat the housing crisis, improve Ontario’s health care, enhance our children’s education, make Ontario safer and strengthen our economy.

We’re building on our progress to speed up housing starts. From January to April, we saw over 27,000 housing starts, which represents a 16% increase over the same period last year. On rental, that’s almost 7,000 starts, double where we were at this time last year.

We’re also breaking from the status quo on our health care system that has stifled innovation and struggled to respond to growing challenges and changing needs.

On the education side, we’re taking action to boost literacy and math skills and ensure the province’s public education system focuses on what matters most: important, life-long skills.

We’re taking action to crack down on criminals and make Ontario safer, whether that’s on auto theft or ensuring that high-risk and repeat violent offenders comply with their bail conditions or helping address the rise of hate incidents against religious and minority groups.

As we’re continuing to spur job growth and build a strong economy for Ontario families, more than 600,000 people are working today than they were before this government.

Speaker, I promised my riding that I would work my back off on their behalf. This spring was no different. Let’s continue to get it done.

I have a petition here.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the federal government is increasing the escalated carbon tax by 14%, on April 1, 2023;

“Whereas carbon tax cost increase will put more pressure on consumers who are already struggling with inflation;

“Whereas we call on the federal government to stop the carbon tax, which is a tax hike that Ontarians and Canadians cannot afford;

“Whereas the government of Ontario is helping to reduce the cost of living by keeping taxes low, freezing and eliminating licence plate renewal fees and scrapping the requirement to have licence plate stickers for passenger vehicle, light-duty trucks, motorcycles and mopeds and building on these measures in Bill 85, Building a Strong Ontario Act ... 2023, the government continues to help Ontarians with the cost of living;

“Whereas we call on the Ontario government to urge the federal government to halt the carbon tax increase, that will raise the cost of everything;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To support the passage of Bill 85, Building a Strong Ontario Act, 2023.”

I couldn’t agree more with this petition. I will give it to page Milan and affix my name to the petition.

I want to thank my colleague for his thoughtful, in-depth hour-long speech on the bill that we have at hand. Being a Brampton boy, we always thought that when you have somebody coming to your home, you want to do everything you can to make them feel welcome, and from a provincial perspective, this means that we’ve got to build roads for people to drive on when they move here. That means we’ve got to build homes for them to live in and make sure that they have an opportunity, that when they come to Canada for a better life, they’re actually able to work towards and have that better life.

We know we have half a million new Canadians coming in 2025, as the federal government targets, many coming to Brampton. The city of Brampton signed on 113,000 new units as a housing pledge, and we think Brampton can control its own destiny. Does the member have any thoughts on whether the city of Brampton should be responsible for its own planning and its own destiny?