Thank you to the member for Whitby for his debate.

We’re talking about affordability for housing. I looked up the average price of a one-bedroom in Sudbury, and it’s $1,472; in Toronto, it’s $2,400, and it says Toronto has had a 20% increase in the last year. With minimum wage at $15.50 until October, that means if you work 40 hours a week, four weeks every month, you go home with $2,480, which is gross—obviously, that’s not all the money you go home with. But if it was all the money you went home with, that means in Toronto you would be short being able to pay your rent every month—actually, you’d have $80 in your pocket.

In the housing plan, what is the design to provide affordable housing? I grew up in geared-to-income rent housing; I have never seen more built again. I think the government is ignoring the fact that people who cannot afford to buy a house need a place they can afford to rent.

It’s interesting; we sit in the Legislature and listen to different sides of debate at different portions of time of day. This morning, I was completely attacked for talking about cost of living against seniors. And now, here, again, we see another bill for housing. I believe it’s the fourth one from this government, and yet rents continue to rise.

In Hamilton, a very simple, basic one-bedroom apartment is over $1,800; a two-bedroom is $2,200.

Where in this legislation does the member see the cost of living actually decreasing for the benefit of people who are actually the tenants in these units and not to the benefit of builders who are building housing for, more than likely, people who can’t afford to live in them?

Water and sewer, exactly—to pay for the kinds of things that people need to live their lives. They pay for, really, everything. They pay for waste collection. They pay for water and sewer. They pay to fix our roads. They pay to build our schools and our parks. And now this government has let developers off the hook to the tune of—I mean, it’s been estimated that it’s about a $5-billion hole in municipalities’ coffers all across the province, and Hamilton is no exception. Hamilton, like other municipalities across the province, has had to raise taxes to compensate for this gift that you have given to developers, because in your magical thinking, you think that this is going to create housing that people can afford. People don’t want a house on the greenbelt, on a floodplain. They don’t want a house on farmland. They want an affordable house that they can live in, and they don’t want to then be saddled with a tax bill that’s tripling because you’ve given developers a free ride. Developers, like all of us, need to pay their fair share.

I’m sort of running out of time here, but let me just say that I think it’s important to note that this bill continues on the trend of this government to concentrate power in the hands of a few ministers and to shut out the democratic process. Democratically elected municipal councils are being bigfooted by this government all across this province, and Hamilton is no exception. You’ve forced Hamilton to sprawl; to grow into the greenbelt. You took 1,400 acres of greenbelt out of protections; for what? To build houses where there are no services? I have a constituent who said, “I’m not looking forward to my taxes to go up so that I can pay for the developers’ costs to build on the greenbelt when my road is falling apart,” and that’s what you’re doing here. It’s unbelievable—not to mention the loss of biodiversity, and we talked about the loss of farmland, which is about 320 acres a day that we’re losing. Your thinking is convoluted, and it’s not helping anyone in the immediate, and it’s in fact making things worse when it comes to the downloading of services that municipal taxpayers will have to pay.

So I find it really disturbing that not only are people outraged by this government’s greenbelt grab, by their lack of concern for the environment, for climate change, but we have a minister, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, who was asked directly, would he commit to no more further encroachments on the greenbelt and on farmland? And he would not commit to that.

So I would say to communities all across Ontario, look forward to losing more of your farmland. Look forward to encroachment on green space. Look forward to—

Interjection: More flooding.

I’m going to end it there, but there are many concerns that we have with this bill. We would have expected that this would be a government that, instead of putting this weak bill forward, would have moved seriously to protect the people of the province of Ontario so that they’re not on their own when it comes to their housing costs in this province.

But you also need to be clear with people that this is not just farmers who are going to be able to subdivide agricultural land; it’s anybody who has bought agricultural land under this government who will be able to subdivide. So yes, this is going to accelerate the loss of agricultural land in this province.

Seniors should be our highest priority. We should be ensuring that they have a roof over their heads. We should be ensuring that they’re not priced out of their homes because of the increase in municipal taxes that should be labelled a Ford tax because it’s what your bills are doing: downloading the costs onto property taxpayers all across the province.

When it comes to supportive housing, in the municipality of Hamilton, there are about 10,000 people waiting for supportive housing. It’s something like a two- to five-year wait-list. People are desperate for housing, and this bill is not helping them with that.