My thanks to the member opposite. I appreciate her bringing this forward. I’m happy to hear her ideas around potential future pieces of legislation and obviously more than willing to hear about what particular changes she recommends.

I lived in a condo for some time when my wife and I were first married. We were in a condo in Smithville in my riding and so I understand of course that there are always different things. One of the pieces that I understand is so important in this legislation is to allow for that option for virtual meetings. I know for myself, as someone who spends a lot of time on the road doing consultations, community outreach and stakeholder outreach, and for my wife as well who’s very business with our son and with a lot of different community events, to virtually be able to call into these meetings, to ensure that we save time and be flexible—sometimes you just can’t be there in person. I think we’ve all had that experience where there’s just an unavoidable conflict. So to be able to call in quietly on a Zoom and still listen to what’s going on and not hear about it second-hand, I think is a great way of saving people time and money.

I can assure the member opposite, as I mentioned earlier in my remarks, one of the things we do is we listen to every single Ontarian out there. I also want to remind the member opposite: Whereas the previous Liberal government, obviously, in some parts where it was supported by the NDP, spent decades drowning our province in red tape—but for the first time, we now have a ministry that is fully dedicated to eliminating red tape for all Ontarians.

How do we do this? Obviously we do this in consultation; we do this making sure that all of our partner stakeholder community-members—businesses, non-profits, charitable organizations, you name it—are part of those discussions, including First Nations, to make sure that, hey, we’re not doing something that’s going to benefit the downtown elites of the province or the city of Toronto, but we’re addressing the issues and concerns that impact real people out there. How can we help them succeed? How can we make their lives easier? How can we reduce the cost of doing business?

I am proud of the fact that this is our 10th piece of legislation that we’ve introduced as a government, and through the previous nine packages, we’ve helped eliminate nearly $700 million annually from the backs of Ontarians. And we recognize we have a lot more to do. Assuming this piece of legislation makes it through the Legislature and goes on to become law, this will be another—hopefully—over $100 million, and we have far more work to do.

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.