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.