Mr. Speaker, today I have a very sad statement. Today, I’m paying tribute to deceased OPP officer Steven Tourangeau who was killed in an automobile accident this week. Steven Tourangeau was a native of Essex county. He entered law enforcement and last held the rank of detective constable with the Huron county OPP. He was 35. He is survived by his wife, Danikah, and his three sons, Everett, Luke and Drew.

My wife Jackie and Steven were first cousins. Steven’s mother and my wife’s mother are sisters. And I know this family very well. Steven’s father, Marcel Tourangeau, is a loving pépé with a big heart. Steven’s mother, Kathy Tourangeau, is a dedicated mémé with a heart of gold. They are good people, beautiful people, and this is a tragic loss.

Today, my heart goes out to the family and to all the grieving parents who have lost a child before their time.

I’ll be sharing my time with the awesome member from Newmarket–Aurora.

During my brief speaking time on this particular topic, I’m going to be doing some contrasting and comparing, and that will be my contribution to this debate. With that in mind, I’ll start by referring to what the NDP refer to as their housing plan, and I’m going to contrast and compare that with the government’s housing plan, which we are now in our fourth stage of. The reason I use the words “fourth stage” is because we’ve already introduced three bills, this is the fourth, and we intend to continue introducing more.

With reference to the NDP plan, this comes from page 18 of the NDP plan, and it says this: The NDP will “establish a new public agency, Housing Ontario, to finance and build 250,000 new affordable and non-market rental homes.” That’s the first thing I want to refer to in this practice of contrasting and comparing, and I’d like to take an opportunity to unpack that. I’m going to concentrate on this word “finance.” The NDP say that they are going to finance 250,000 homes. Let’s keep that in mind. Financing means somehow they’re going to get the money for 250,000 homes, and that means, I presume—I don’t want to put words into the members’ mouths, but they’ll have an opportunity to give their interpretation of their own policy. I presume that means they’re going to try to find that money from taxpayers somewhere, because they want to set up something called Housing Ontario, an agency of the government, and they say they’re going to finance 250,000 homes.

I’m just going to use an example. I’m going to use the example of a very modest home, a $500,000 home—$500,000 is different in the riding of Essex, it’s different in the riding of Toronto Centre, but I will unilaterally just choose the number $500,000. The NDP want to build 250,000 homes at $500,000 apiece. That is $500,000 times 250,000 homes, which is $125 billion—that’s billion with a B. That’s 125 followed by nine zeros. That is essentially 62% of the entire annual provincial budget, which the NDP say they’re going to finance to build 250,000 homes. Remember, that number of 250,000 homes comes not from the government’s plan; that comes from the NDP proposal, and they say they’re going to finance 250,000 homes in their own proposal.

Well, let’s imagine that. You can’t build a home for $500,000 in many of those ridings, but, like I said, I’m going to be generous and I’m going to give them that number. Now, they don’t offer any other explanation as to where they are going to get the $125 billion. I’m making a supposition. I admit, I’m making a supposition. I am assuming they are going to get it out of Ontario taxpayers. I don’t know how they would do that, because, as I said, it’s 62% of the annual budget, but I will graciously give them an opportunity to explain how they propose to do that. I have asked this question of NDP members before; I have not received an explanation—

So the Ontario housing agency proposed by the NDP, I presume that it’s going to be a government-run agency. I have asked this question of several NDP members in the House, just like I’m asking it now: What does your agency look like and how is it going to be run? I did not get any answers to that. What I anticipated what the NDP would say was this—

Well, I don’t know if that would happen, but I anticipated the answer would be some kind of provincially owned corporation, the shares of which would be owned by the taxpayers of Ontario and represented by perhaps a minister of the government, who would hold the shares in trust for the taxpayers of the province of Ontario. That’s the answer I was anticipating, but I didn’t get that answer. I didn’t get any answers.

So, I openly invite the NDP to once again explain to this House: What is their agency going to look like and how will it operate? Now I’m going to add a third question: How will that housing agency, proposed by the NDP, raise $125 billion to build the houses they propose? Those are questions that are legitimately asked. I invite them to answer those questions.

Interjection: How will it be staffed? Property expenses—

The question that my colleague put was: How is NDP plan going to do that? Are they going to hire carpenters, framers? Are they going to pour concrete? Where are they going to acquire these resources? Are they going to compete against the Jones Group? Are they going to compete against Nor-Built Construction? Where is the Ontario housing agency, as proposed by the NDP, going to acquire any of this? How are you going to finance your agency? How are you going to raise $125 billion? Those are good questions.

Now the contrast—the contrast and compare, as I spoke about before: What this government is doing is changing legislation to do exactly what I said previously. We’re going to let people like Jones Group, Nor-Built Construction and Valente do what they already know how to do, but they’re going to do it faster and they’re going to do it without taxpayers’ money. They’re going to do it because we’re going to change things like the definition of area of employment. That’s pretty technical. That’s pretty—I don’t know—legal, pretty academic. A lot of people haven’t spoken about that. I’m going to speak about it because it’s in this bill.

So “area of employment”: that’s a definition that’s in the provincial legislation. If your land falls within “area of employment,” that definition, then there’s certain restrictions on it, and it cannot easily be converted into residential land. That’s very hard to do. In fact, in some cases, it may not be converted into residential land.

Let’s imagine—and I don’t have to imagine because I can give you lots of examples in my area of land which is zoned with the definition “area of employment” that is no longer useful for that purpose. It’s either not commercially viable or not industrially viable, and that designation should be removed and a different designation should be put on that land. I would say residential. If you can remove that designation from the land and convert it to residential land, then you can do what you need to do with that land: Give it its highest and best use, which is build residences on that land. That’s how we can get to 1.5 million homes. That’s not the only way, of course, but that’s one of the ways we can get there.

I go back to the proposal by the NDP. Remember, their proposal only wants to build 250,000 homes at $125 billion. That only gets us one sixth of the way to the target 1.5 million.

That is what I have to offer and contribute to this debate today. I have been very specific about two very specific points.

And on that, Madam Speaker, I thank you.

Madam Speaker, I generously invited the NDP to demonstrate how they were going to get to $125 billion. The member from Waterloo has demonstrated how she would get to $3 billion. Okay, you’ve got $122 billion to go, and that gets you one sixth of the way to 1.5 million homes. Great—she did a great job and demonstrated how she would get to $3 billion.

Interjection.

What this legislation does is that it requires an application being made by a landlord to be supported by evidence, which evidence has to be delivered to the tenant at the time the notice of termination is delivered. That’s very useful for tenants. In fact, I can tell you that when I represented tenants at the Landlord and Tenant Board, I routinely represented good tenants and good landlords and routinely defeated applications of termination, on a routine basis. So the assertion made by the NDP that somehow this legislation isn’t working for tenants is flatly wrong.

If I understand the question correctly, the question was about what calculations will bring us to 250,000 homes under the NDP plan and what calculation will bring us to 1.5 million homes under the NDP plan. Of course, it depends on what price you put the home at. I, admittedly, unilaterally selected the number $500,000, so if I took $500,000 and multiplied it by 1.5 million homes, which is the proposal, it is something in the neighbourhood of $750 billion, which is probably a number that none of us can even conceive and probably exceeds all of the combined provincial budgets of all of the Canadian provinces and territories, and a few states in the United States thrown in, as well.

On a point of order.

Following up on my previous question about the Landlord and Tenant Board: This government has taken steps to clear up the backlog. We’ve put $6.5 million into the board, and we’re hiring 40 more adjudicators, essentially doubling the number of adjudicators, to clear up the backlog, because we recognize that needs to be done. My question to the member is this: Number one, does she recognize that that needs to be done? And the second part of my question is, while that member and myself disagree on what created the backlog—I say the backlog was created by the pandemic and the inability of people to meet in person, because that’s the way that those adjudications were done, so we had to introduce a new system and that took time. Although she and I might disagree on that, now that we’ve introduced the 40 extra adjudicators—does the member support that specific measure?

I move that, in the opinion of this House, the government should reject the “defund the police” position and continue funding police, seizing illegal guns, suppressing gangs and supporting victims of violence through the Guns, Gangs and Violence Reduction Strategy.

As I have the tendency to do, I am going to commence my remarks with a very brief story, which will be directly related to the topic of debate for this evening. But, as usual, the full relevance of the story might not be entirely revealed until the very end of this speech.

I live in the town of Amherstburg, as I’ve said many times. Amherstburg is on the west side of the county of Essex. Then, there’s a town called Leamington, and that’s on the east side of the county of Essex. In order to get from Amherstburg to Leamington, you have to drive across the whole county of Essex, end to end. That, at this time of year, is a remarkable drive because of the great canola fields in Essex county. If you’re not familiar with canola, it’s a beautiful plant. It’s golden yellow. When it’s in bloom and you’re standing in a canola field, you feel like you are standing in Elysium.

I drove from Amherstburg to Leamington on a regular basis because, at a certain point in my legal career, I had a part-time contract—it was very part-time; it was only once every two weeks—to prosecute federal offences in the town of Leamington. So I would drive from Amherstburg to Leamington on a biweekly basis. The drive was beautiful. I would pass the canola fields, I would pass the wheat fields, I would pass the cornfields, I would pass the soybean fields—you get the picture. When I got to Leamington, I would go downtown, because that’s where the courthouse was and that’s where I got to work. I met a lot of great people when I was at that courthouse. For example, I met Mark Loop, who was a detective constable at that time. His nickname was Looper. Looper had grown up in the town of Leamington. He knew everybody very well. When he was on the witness stand and we asked him questions, he could tell you practically the entire life story of some of the people who he had arrested.

I also got to work with another awesome police officer. His name is Wayne Parsons. Wayne had a very particular laugh. It made him sound like the cartoon character Muttley, and so his nickname was Muttley.

I also got to work with another excellent officer. His name was Chhieu Seng, and his nickname was Chewy. It was Chewy who pulled me out of a fantastic car wreck one day. You see, I was travelling from Amherstburg to Leamington, it was the wintertime, and I hit a patch of black ice. My car spun out and crashed directly into oncoming traffic. It was a spectacular accident. I was rendered unconscious. When I regained consciousness, it was Chewy pulling me out of my car wreck. The first words that came out of my mouth were, “Chewy, call the courthouse. Tell the judge I’m going to be late for court today.” And Chewy said to me, “Anthony, you are not going to the courthouse today, my friend.”

That was the first day when I started thinking about how the job of a police officer is remarkably different than what we did as lawyers. You see, as a lawyer, our world was the courthouse, and it was the world of rules and procedure and evidence and examination and cross-examination. That was a particular world that had its particular rules. But Chewy’s world, the world of policing—that was a different world. That was a world of car accidents and facial lacerations and confrontation and tension, and these factors made policing more of a life-and-death kind of world to live in, because those are the kinds of decisions they had to make.

That’s why police have to be properly funded. That’s why this PC government has a strategy; we call that strategy the Guns, Gangs and Violence Reduction Strategy. We’ve already put many millions of dollars into that strategy, and this budget puts another $13.4 million into that strategy. We think that’s good funding and we think that’s good policy—to continue funding police. Because when you properly fund police—let me give you some examples of what they can do.

In March 2023, three handguns and over 300 rounds of ammunition and a kilogram of crystal meth were seized by police of the guns and drugs unit of the city of Windsor. Inspector David DeLuca said, “This is just an example of the results of a really good investigation.” That’s three handguns and over $60,000 worth of drugs that will not be around to harm the citizens of Ontario.

Example number two: In April 2023, a multi-jurisdictional investigation involving police forces from Toronto, York, Durham, the OPP and the Canada Border Services Agency seized a total of 86 firearms, 75 of which were handguns, and these were seized in the GTA. Toronto Police Superintendent Steve Watts said, “A seizure of this size is definitely going to save lives on the streets of the GTA and elsewhere.”

Another example: In May 2023, a police drug raid netted a suspect who had escaped while he was on bail awaiting sentencing. He managed to remove his ankle monitor and disappeared. The drugs and guns unit of Windsor picked him up.

As you can see, properly funding the police renders results. Our policy is getting guns off the streets. Our policy is getting drugs off the streets. Our policy is saving lives. And I’m happy to say that Mark Baxter, the president of the Ontario police association, has written a communication of support for this motion and has signed the petition.

That’s our policy in the PC caucus, and that stands in contrast to the policy put forward by the NDP, which I have dubbed the “defund the police” policy. I call it that because “defund the police” is what they say on page number one of their policy. You don’t have to read too far into that policy to find out where the NDP stand. On the cover of that policy, they call it a “call to action”; I say that it is a call to inaction.

My seatmate, the member from Mississauga–Erin Mills, also read the NDP policy. He calls it the “support your local gang” policy. Michael Gendron, the spokesperson for the Ontario police association, said this with regard to the “defund the police” policy of the NDP: “It was never a conceivable idea. It never had widespread support (outside of op ed pages), was rejected by the public in virtually every election where policing was an issue, and set back real opportunities for reform that could have had buy-in from all stakeholders.”

So this is the challenge. We put forward a budget; that budget had a certain amount of money in it, $13.4 million, to continue funding the Guns, Gangs and Violence Reduction Strategy. The NDP have the same response to many of the things that we talk about in this House. They say, “Well, that specific number or thing in this bill, we don’t like it, so we’re going to vote against the whole bill.” We’ve heard the NDP say that so many times. They might agree with 99.9% of what’s in a bill, but if they find 0.1% something they don’t agree with, they vote against it. Well, now I’m giving them an opportunity, because I’ve isolated just one thing—which is in contrast to the PC policy—which is continue funding the police through the Guns, Gangs and Violence Reduction Strategy or, alternatively, the NDP policy, which is the “defund the police” policy. I’m asking this House to vote on that one thing. I have liberated the NDP from having to decide on 99.9% of all the other things. They only have to decide one thing. They can choose to continue promoting their policy—the “defund the police” policy—or they can choose the PC policy, which is the “fund the police” policy.

That brings me back to Highway 3 and the car crash. Chewy pulled me out of the car crash. I was taken to Leamington hospital. I was treated and released, and eventually I took a taxi back to my law office. I completed my workday and then got a ride back to my home. And I walked in the door and my wife Jackie saw me, and she saw the lacerations on my face and said, “What happened to you?” I told her what had happened, and then she said, “Why didn’t you come home? Why did you go to work after that car accident?” And I never really thought about it until today, but I guess it was probably because I had an obligation, a sense of duty, to make sure that my clients were well-served. I didn’t want to skip that day and let down my clients, and I call that a sense of duty. Even though I worked in a different world than the police worked, I think that’s what I have in common with the police: a sense of duty. That’s why I’m promoting this motion and asking all members of this House to vote for it.

First, I want to thank the gentleman member from Timiskaming–Cochrane for his comments. He expressed the concerns he had about policing in his riding, and I draw from his comments that he would like to see more policing commitment in his riding, and based on those comments, I would invite him to vote in favour of this motion because if we continue to fund police, then we might be able to provide more policing for his riding, which is clearly what he would like.

I would like to thank the member from Flamborough–Glanbrook for her comments on this motion. She spoke about the sad reality that there are pockets of our community here in Ontario where people are calling to defund the police, and they’re denigrating our police forces. I’ve said this often in this House, and I’ll say it again, because it’s true in almost every situation: Regardless of how many good people you have, there are always a few bad apples in the barrel, and those bad apples have to be rooted out and dealt with, but that should not cause you to paint everybody with the same brush. We’re very proud of our police forces, and we should continue to speak well of them, promote them and thank them.

I thank the member from Whitby for his comments. He spoke about all of the excellent programs that are available for police officers in the province of Ontario and how this government is making extra investments to promote mental health for police officers and to assist police officers in what sometimes is a very difficult job. As I described in my comments, the world of police officers is a world of confrontation and tragic events, because that’s what police officers have to deal with.

Finally, the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore: I thank that member for her comments. She spoke very strongly in favour of her police forces and police forces across the province of Ontario. She indicated quite well the importance of continuing with the funding of these programs. In particular, we should note that she’s the parliamentary assistant for the Solicitor General, and she’s doing a great job in that role.

So I thank you, Madam Speaker, for this debate tonight and encourage all members to vote in favour of the motion.