On Sunday, residents rallied in Waterloo and their message was clear: Approve the region of Waterloo’s official plan which they participated in, protect the countryside line and crucial wetlands, and stop the needless carve-out of the greenbelt. Citizens know that there is no need to pave over farmland for sprawl.

In fact, a recent report from the Alliance for a Liveable Ontario says that Waterloo region already has the capacity to build nearly 230,000 new housing units within the current boundary.

To that end, will this government reverse the cuts to municipalities by repealing Bill 23 and work with democratically elected municipalities instead of fighting them?

It’s such a pleasure to join this debate on G91 this afternoon. I did catch the one-hour lead by our critic on this bill, and I think the way he started the conversation on the nature of red tape and the importance of having regulations for health and safety really resonated with me.

I’ve heard some members saying that the number one issue they hear in their riding is reducing red tape. The number one issue that I hear in Waterloo, and I’m sure our other members in the official opposition too, is housing. It’s cost of living; it’s affordability; it’s climate change; it’s health care—accessing health care, accessing mental health services. So I just want to preface that, because I’m going to present some examples of streamlining and reducing regulatory burdens, which would be beneficial for the people of this province. Also, I’m really hopeful that the door is still open, and I’m glad that the minister did his opening speech this morning on Bill 91. We have some specific examples where regulatory burdens couldn’t be reduced which actually benefit the people that we are elected to serve, and that’s sort of the focus that we are coming to in this debate on this piece of legislation.

It is worth noting, as our critic mentioned, that we only got a hard copy of the bill this morning. It’s a fast-moving bill, and so we’re still peeling back the layers on it, and of course, doing some stakeholder consultation, which I think is our duty to do and also an important part of holding the government to account.

Now, it will surprise some of the members over there, but we have already heard from some folks that are very concerned with where you are choosing to place regulatory burdens and then where you’re sort of ignoring or setting aside red tape and regulations. My friend and colleague from Oshawa, she just happened to share an economic and development services department planning services report that’s going to Oshawa city council, and as you can expect, municipalities are reeling from Bill 23. The government is actively changing the rules of engagement, and honestly, the relationship that the provincial government has with municipalities in Ontario, and you’ve done it in such a way that it is only breeding discontent and genuine concerns. And I just want to say, 444 municipalities are not wrong on Bill 23.

Specifically, around regulations, this is in 5.3 of the staff report: “The province is proposing that municipalities report planning-approval information quarterly. Staff do not support reporting on a quarterly basis as it is onerous, time-consuming and may overlap with the subsequent quarter’s data collection. This may also prove onerous for the province to disseminate the data on a quarterly basis.... As a result, there is typically a delay recurring on an annual basis when activity that would otherwise would have occurred during the third quarter can only be dealt with in the fourth quarter.”

These are the people who are actually doing the real work in the community to facilitate housing, right? So what is this government doing? They’re providing more hoops for them to jump through, Madam Speaker. The “implementation of the regulation” that is contained in Bill 23 “will take already constrained staff resources away from actually processing planning applications.” If you want to fast-track housing, why would you put another roadblock for staff to facilitate and streamline that process? They say, “This will cause delays in planning approvals and may require the hiring of additional staff to help offset the need for staff to spend more time recording data.” Is that what you want? You want municipal staff to spend more time recording data than approving housing development?

And this also, they point out, would result “in further costs to the city in an already cost-constrained environment.” We are already seeing tax hikes across the province due to Bill 23. Bill 23 is having a cooling effect on housing. It is already happening in Waterloo with the delay of 800 homes because they don’t have the money to plan the community infrastructure that subdivision requires. This report from Oshawa goes on to say, “It is requested that the province provide information on the consequences of not having the data available to provide to the province in the manner proposed.”

And then, finally, “The pace of planning applications is often in the hands of developers”—I just want you to sit with that for a little bit. “The pace of planning applications is often in the hands of developers and their consultants. If a developer decides to not advance their application or decides to alter it substantially it will cause delay.”

This is actually happening in Waterloo region, and I know that my colleague from Kitchener–Conestoga knows this. Applications have been approved. All the i’s are dotted, the t’s are crossed, but the developer is not moving ahead. They’re waiting for the cost of the homes to increase, they’re waiting for the profit margins to increase, and this, then, is outside of the purview of those municipalities.

“The province should develop a reciprocal regulation for the development industry”—this is coming from the planners in Oshawa, which is a very fast-growing community which actually needs housing. This is the feedback on the regulatory burden that the government is placing on municipalities, all the while going through the motions of reducing red tape.

I just want to say, the regulations that are contained within Bill 23, it goes on to say, “do not appear to require information concerning approvals of housing units related to community planning permit systems. Without such information, it is not clear how the province can reliably compare planning approval processes across all municipalities.”

When the minister talked this morning, he was saying that there was a lot of collaboration and communication between ministries. I would urge the minister responsible for red tape to sit down with the Minister of Municipal Affairs and say, “Listen, housing is in a crisis. Bill 23 will slow down that planning process.” We do not need more red tape around housing, Madam Speaker. What we do need is direct investment.

This sort of leads me to this conversation around what is driving the red tape priorities. I was watching the news earlier today, and I’m sure people have heard about a senior couple who were scammed by cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are a huge issue in the province of Ontario. I did write to the Minister of Finance back on September 8 of last year—it does feel like a very long time ago, I just want to say for the record; we haven’t even finished one year of this term. But the fact that this couple was able to be scammed out of $400,000—and just so the House knows, fraud reports in the province of Ontario have skyrocketed over the last decade. Crypto is problematic in that there are not enough regulatory protections around this new sector. In fact, the Ontario Securities Commission is chasing the sector, I would say.

I did meet with a group called the Canadian Web3 Council. I sat down with them. They are a group of folks who are asking the government to establish responsible public policy around crypto, and they’re actually asking for a trust framework to unlock the development—because there’s lots of potential. I’m not going to pretend that I understand everything about it; I don’t think anybody in this House understands everything about Bitcoin, but it is here. It is here in Ontario.

Interjection.

Oh, maybe you do know everything, but then surely you must have some concerns around people being scammed of $400,000.

When I wrote the minister, I said specifically, “CW3 voiced their desire for the government to launch a public consultation to create a new framework specific to crypto assets. The last round of government consultation happened three years ago,” according to this letter, but now we’re at four years. With a sector like crypto, which is changing fast-paced—changing daily, some would say—why would the government not be bringing forward some regulatory guidelines around this specific issue?

I have to also say, “Ontario is falling behind other jurisdictions and this format lacks transparency and results in unclear regulatory expectations”—hold on. Ahem. I have a cough.

Interjections.

Interjection: Do you want a cough drop?

I do want a cough drop. I mean, what does a girl have to do around here to get a cough drop?

So the answer we got back from the finance minister is that we should reach out to the Ontario Securities Commission. Of course, we are going to do that, but I do think it’s worth noting that the council—this is not something that should be driven by the sector, Madam Speaker. Cryptocurrency is here. There are concerns about it. There’s no consumer protection plan around it. Why is this government not doing something around regulating this sector with consumers and citizens in mind?

Going back to my theme of where the energy is going around red tape, it should be also noted that some changes have happened around ODSP and the reporting around ODSP. If I have to say—and I did write the former minister about this as well: “As of February 4, 2023, recipients of ODSP are now required to log into their MyBenefits app to declare that they have not been out of Ontario for 30 consecutive days.”

When this issue first came to my attention, as many issues do come through our constituency—there was a lady who said, “Listen, why do I have to prove that I haven’t left Ontario? Why do I have to do this on a monthly basis? I can’t even get down to the grocery store.” So there is a disconnect here around the overregulation in certain sectors and then the under-regulation in emerging issues like crypto.

In the letter, I said, “We are hearing from constituents who feel they are being over-monitored by the government when they are already exhausted by having to prove they are disabled enough to receive support.” This is a direct quote from a constituent: “Enough of our lives are controlled by reporting into the program.” Our offices have reached out to the MPP liaison to clarify the full impact of this change. To date, we did not receive any response.

Now, considering that ODSP payments are barely enough to survive on—okay? So you’re leaving, like, the Wild West of crypto and Bitcoin just to figure things out and not protecting consumers, but for folks who are on ODSP, they have to prove that they are disabled year after year after year. Now they have to also go into the MyBenefits app and prove that they haven’t gone anywhere. How could they go anywhere, Madam Speaker? And why is this government implementing further administrative and financial hoops for recipients to jump through? We’re concerned about the cost of this added oversight with the addition of red tape that that creates.

It is ironic that the government can bring forward a very hefty red tape bill but then, on the other hand, create more red tape for the most vulnerable people who don’t have that support system in their lives. ODSP is already punitive even without this change. We ask you, are the benefits of this change worth further demoralizing and marginalizing ODSP recipients?

I raise that issue again because Bill 91, which is a huge bill, delves into some of these areas where you’ve decided—you’re picking and choosing certain areas and prioritizing them. There honestly doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why you’ve decided that.

There are some red flags for us, though, with this bill. I just had this really great meeting with the University of Guelph, an amazing institution, and I really learned a lot about how expansive their program is, how they’ve modernized as a university. But they are going to be running a $33-million deficit this year, like many of our public institutions that have gone through a hard time, and these things ebb and flow. One of the areas, though, that they struggle with is around international students, and the fact that private colleges are making promises to those students and providing—I have to be careful about my language, but some of those international students are fast-tracked over to those private colleges.

And then, of course, we see in Bill 91 who you actually are listening to. Schedule 29 of the bill changes the name of the act to the Ontario Career Colleges Act; it removes “private,” which is ironic because they are still businesses, and one could say that calling something a career college has a different connotation, I think, quite honestly. And then, also, the fact that this change in the definition and the request to change the name has actually come from the sector because “operators have raised concerns that the word ‘private’ has a negative connotation and unfairly stigmatizes them and their students”—this was reported in the Trillium. So here you have a piece of legislation and a government that clearly has the ear of some people, and then you have a whole segment, like workers, where safety in the province of Ontario—we’ve never seen so many injuries and accidents on our sites. This is a huge concern for me, especially around the use of accredited tradespeople, because my son is a tradesperson. He’s an electrician. If you have one unqualified person on that work site, that then becomes, in my opinion—not just as a mother, but as someone who follows workplace health and safety regulations—a very unsafe workplace.

So we have some concerns about schedule 29, and I think that the former comments by our critic on schedule 29 warrant some consideration by the minister.

Finally, I want to say that we did hear some really good examples—and I do want to thank the minister who is responsible for red tape for appearing before budget committee when we were up in Kenora. The story goes like this: We heard from some forestry leaders, not surprisingly, up north. They commented that they are really struggling with finding drivers, and perhaps you’ll remember this. Erik Holmstrom and Tom Ratz were really trying to hire a Ukrainian driver. A driver and his family came to the north, came to the Kenora area. This Ukrainian driver had 20 years of experience. He did apply at Resolute, but it took nine months for a licence, so instead, he got a job in Manitoba.

So when you can streamline some red tape and fast-track some licensing requirements for qualified people, you can actually have a competitive edge as an economy. I think that warrants some attention. As I said at the beginning of my comments, which have been cough-ridden, this is something that we should consider doing, especially if we want to capitalize as a province on the talent that is coming into the province.

While we’re at it, let’s reduce the regulatory burden on municipalities so that when those new immigrants come in, when those skilled workers come into the province of Ontario, they actually have a place to live—because I just want to be really clear with this government: They’re not going to be living in the greenbelt. That’s not the destination for new immigrants who are coming to Ontario. And the great irony that I want to point out is that we are actually making the case for intensification of housing within urban boundaries, where the infrastructure is—where the parks are, the hospitals, the educational resources. That’s what we want. We want people to come into our communities, be welcomed in those communities—and then not further add burden to the current tax base by having to increase the taxes to facilitate sprawl. So that’s what the people of Waterloo region want me to really try to get through to this government—that we are arguing for intensification, not sprawl, especially when your own affordable housing task force recommended that you have enough land within the urban boundary to accommodate those immigrants.

Well, it’s really interesting to get a question like that from my colleague, because if you heard my original comments, the entire theme is about what you prioritize over what you don’t prioritize, and that inconsistency in policy application is problematic for us—and also making the case that we support streamlining some regulations, but not when they compromise the health and safety of workers in Ontario.

We would like to see a stronger application of addressing those who are vulnerable in Ontario, like the ODSP example that I gave you. When people are on ODSP, they shouldn’t have to prove every single month or every single year that they still are an amputee. That’s ridiculous. So for us, we are looking at this legislation through a different lens.

As I said at the beginning, we really just got this bill in this morning in hard copy. We’re still doing that stakeholder consultation, and as we peel back the layers, we hope that the government will be amenable to some changes. Certainly on the housing front, we should be doing everything that we can to support municipalities in true partnership, including making them whole, as the minister promised to.

This is exactly one of the examples that I was giving, that in order for us to really see how this plays itself out in the community with the underfunded sector, how this will improve the lives of those who have developmental disabilities—and the entire section for me is actually highlighted, so I think that it warrants further attention.

When you don’t do proper consultation, I’ve often said, then you have a flawed product, and that’s what Bill 23 is. Bill 23 is not working, will not work, in fact, will undermine the goals the government has said they want to see happen, which is more housing. We challenged the government on the assertion that that housing must happen on the greenbelt. That, in fact, is very problematic for the province of Ontario.

I also would like to say to the member, respectfully, that the Conservative Party of Ontario, under several leaders, was the official opposition during those years. You had the opportunity to hold that government to account, just as we did. When it was a minority government, we were able to secure the Financial Accountability Office to increase financial transparency for Ontarians, which I think was time well spent and was worth our energy to fight for.

But we are very focused on solutions to the issues on energy, and $6.5 billion in subsidies is not a sustainable amount of money that this province can afford to address energy costs.

Report continues in volume B.