I thank the member for that question. I’d like to take this very brief opportunity to wish him a happy 27th wedding anniversary, as he mentioned it the other day. And now, answering his question--

Getting back to the question on building hospitals: There are several ways of building hospitals, and one is to put 100% of the cost on the shoulders of the taxpayer. That’s one way to do it. Another way to do it is to seek partners and perhaps shift some of that cost burden onto a non-government agency—and “non-government,” of course, means a “non-taxpayer” agency. So there are several ways to do these things, and several of these experiments and some of these have been tried over the years. There are a lot of government projects and non-government projects and hybrid government/non-government projects that have been tried over the various decades.

To his question: Centralizing the decision-making authority for real estate is actually a very good idea. As I stated in my impromptu remarks yesterday night, there are currently, to my surprise, at least 14 various agencies that are juggling real estate files for the government right now. I suspect that there are actually more than 14, but perhaps the Auditor General might have something to say about that. To have 14 different agencies juggling real estate files all at the same time is inefficient, so we are going to reduce that inefficiency by putting them all under one authority, which will now have the ability to fill empty spaces and move oversubscribed spaces over to empty spaces. That will be a good thing, because it will, as the title of the act says, reduce inefficiency and, consequently, save the taxpayer money. Of course, I have absolutely no hesitation whatsoever in saying that all 124 of us should be looking for ways to save taxpayer money.

My question to the member from Essex: How will the centralization of real estate under these agencies help the government achieve its priorities?

Thanks to the members opposite for their comments on the bill.

I want to follow up with the member for Don Valley West about real estate. I value her commercial experience and perspective on this.

Your perspective was, let’s let the agencies themselves manage the real estate under their mandate. You could equally argue, and I have sympathy for the argument that says, that if you’re in government—that means there are 14 or more different agencies, all with their own portfolios, all with their own objectives. That can result in conflicting approaches, inefficiencies, on and on and on. Gathering them together under one ministry, which undoubtedly will consult these agencies, seems to me a much more efficient and effective way to manage a portfolio.

I’m curious about the member’s thoughts on the real estate elements of this bill that you mentioned.

Thank you to the member opposite for the question. I appreciate his kind words.

I certainly do believe there are times to centralize. Again, at the moment, I’m not particularly saying no to this. I think other members in the official opposition have asked, why these 14? Under the rationale you’ve just provided, you might say that all 34 agencies should be done this way. I would just like to understand the actual specific goals. For example, will this save a million dollars? Will this save $10 million? Where do those savings come from?

I’m open to learning more. I do hope to learn more from the minister next week, and I look forward to further debate on this.

I will point out to the member that in the news release—again, from the government—it mentions that they will manage the real estate portfolio more effectively through centralizing authority and decision-making. I might be mistaken, but I was not able to see those words in the Auditor General’s report.

Again, I think if we had some transparency around the number of dollars that this bill is planning to save for the taxpayers of Ontario, I think that would be great transparency, and I think that would then actually tell us exactly where those savings are going to be achieved, and that would be very helpful.

Thank you very much, Speaker.

I was highlighting some of the findings of the Auditor General’s 2017 report, which nowhere included a recommendation that 14 of the 34 agencies that manage government-owned property should be consolidated under the auspices of one entity, presumably Infrastructure Ontario. But the auditor pointed out a number of concerns dealing with the design of the RFP approach, 7,500 capital projects across the province, the way that the bids were issued, generated—three bids received by the government, two proponents selected.

The Auditor General recommended better oversight of procurement methods for capital projects. She recommended better incentive structures for project managers to manage costs. She recommended incentives to complete projects on time. She recommended better information on operating and maintenance services for client ministries. She identified a problem that office space per person exceeds the ministry standards.

There were a number of issues that were identified by the Auditor General, mainly dealing with the outsourcing of property management to private contractors and criticizing the uncompetitive procurement process that IO engages in and the poor oversight of these private contracts.

We have heard nothing from this government to explain why they believed that the appropriate response to the Auditor General’s report is to bring 14 of the 34 agencies that manage government-owned property under the umbrella of a single entity. And it’s particularly worrisome that that single entity is Infrastructure Ontario, which has been noted by the Auditor General as being not able to manage its own processes and real estate holdings.

This is a case of the government bringing forward legislation without providing a sufficient rationale for why they are taking these actions, and without providing any evidence that these measures will actually achieve what the government says they are hoping to achieve with this bill.

As I said, it is really difficult to put our faith in the government and give them carte blanche to just take these legislative changes that they are putting out here—and act in the best interests of the people of this province—because that’s not what we have seen from this government. We have certainly not seen this government acting in the best interests of the people of this province on environmental protection. We have certainly not seen it with Bill 23 and the government’s decision to carve up the greenbelt to build more homes, when experts are telling us that the government could exceed the affordable housing task force target of 1.5 million homes in a decade—they could actually build two million homes in a decade—without going anywhere near the greenbelt. That’s what experts are telling this government, and yet they’re plowing ahead with this decision to carve up the greenbelt in the face of tremendous public opposition.

So I think that you can understand and appreciate, Speaker, why we have reservations about the measures set out in this bill, why we would not support any further erosion of the environmental protection process, why we are skeptical of consolidating a number of real estate holdings under the auspices of an agency—Infrastructure Ontario—that has a very poor track record in managing its own properties, and why we have stated that we will not be supporting this bill.

People deserve a government that’s going to protect the environment, that’s going to take concrete and effective action on climate change, and that’s going to be a responsible steward of public dollars and manage public agencies appropriately.

Change for the sake of change doesn’t make sense. I think we can all agree to that. But change for common sense, change for good financial sense and change for good governance do make sense; at least, it always has in my life. To me, when you read this bill and understand what we’re trying to accomplish, centralizing the oversight of 14 different agencies I believe will help optimize space and efficiency and reduce red tape for the province of Ontario and the people of Ontario.

We’ve got one of the largest and most diverse real estate portfolios in the nation, and we need to manage it more effectively. Giving the Minister of Infrastructure the ability to oversee and manage real estate property previously under control of different entities is not efficient. But with that comes accountability. I think we all agree that we need accountability in this House and in this government—any government. That is in keeping, in fact, with the 2017 Auditor General’s report and other third-party reports that have identified opportunities for real estate improvement.

To the honourable member: Measure twice, cut once; do you agree?

I thank the member for Essex for the question. It’s a good one. I don’t know what the optimal number is. I do know that the agencies that are listed, generally speaking, have negligible holdings. And I do know Infrastructure Ontario in 2017 was the object of a scathing report by the Auditor General on poor practice.

So if you’re in fact moving real estate holdings, and maybe relatively small ones, to an agency that has been found—let’s be generous—wanting by the Auditor General, I have to ask, why on earth are you doing it? Why are you not taking steps in this bill to set standards for management of real estate so that we aren’t paying millions of dollars for vacant properties, so that we aren’t over-housing our workforce, so that we aren’t mixing our capital on our operating funds? If you were doing that, I think that would be a far more interesting debate. I don’t think 14 or 20 or five is the critical thing; I think the critical thing is, do you have good management practice? I have no assurance that, in fact, is what will come out of this bill.

You may well be aware, Speaker, that within the past few years, in New York City, a very severe storm caused about a dozen people to drown in their basement apartments. So if you do not actually pay attention to environmental standards, environmental issues, you put at risk life and property—and health, may I add. So undermining those protections that, over decades, we’ve built up makes no sense at all.

I’ll just note, again, if I have time, the recent example in East Palestine, Ohio, where the railroad disaster, in many cases, is being attributed to deregulations by the Trump administration. Environmental assessment, health and safety regulations are all part of the same package. If you neglect them, you put people’s lives, property and health at risk.

I was talking to a small landlord last night. He’s got a condo on Carlaw Avenue in my riding, and he can’t get a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board. Why is that? Because you guys didn’t appoint people at the level necessary to have proper functioning of that board. That’s not efficiency; that is neglect. That means tenants are getting beat up. That means that small landlords are getting beat up. That’s not efficiency. You know what that is: That’s chaos.

When you bring forward a bill that says that you’re going to sort out the real estate issues, do you actually have standards within the bill saying that you can’t have a huge portfolio of vacant buildings that we’re paying for? That we’re going to have a standard for space per employee that doesn’t mean we’re overhoused and, thus, wasting money—which is what you’re doing. You’re not setting a standard. You’re turning it all over to an agency that the Auditor General raked over the coals.

If you want efficiency, set smart standards and enforce them. When you actually start doing that, I might think that you’re trying to deal with efficiency. Right now, all you’re interested in is deregulation, and making some people incredibly wealthy and making other people eat that in terms of risk to their lives and property and in terms of their health.

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to address this bill on an impromptu basis yesterday. I was really struck by the long list of different government agencies that had real-estate-making authority. In fact, the list was so long that somebody had to actually write it down for me and pass it to me so that I could read the list. It was so long I couldn’t remember it. There were 14 agencies on it, and it really struck me, gosh, that’s a lot of organizations, all that have real-estate-making authority for the government of the province of Ontario.

So my question to the member from Toronto–Danforth is the following: Is 14 different government agencies making real estate decisions too many, is it too few or is it just the right amount?