Some of the stuff with the environmental assessment, the processes were put in place 50 years ago. Fifty years ago, we used the IBM 360 computer. It was a four-bit processor. What we have here is a two-bit party that wants one bit of discernible progress, so I’m really confused by this. Could the member from London North Centre please give me an idea of why the NDP loves red tape so much, why they want to keep so much red tape in there and why they don’t want any progress over 50 years?

What could go wrong?

The member for Carleton will come to order.

I apologize to the member. He may continue.

Would the member for Carleton please come to order. Thank you.

You may continue.

—“that unsuccessfully bid on P3 projects up to $2 million per bid to cover some of their costs.” That is an amazing consolation prize.

So these few companies that bid on these projects can actually receive a cash windfall for simply putting in an application—not even for being successful, for just simply putting in an application. Toby calls it “a cozy fraternity of lucratively paid P3 companies and consultants getting wealthy at the public’s expense.” That is not fiscally prudent. That is not good business.

Back in the day, the Conservatives, as opposition, were quite critical of this sort of spending, yet now that they’ve changed to the other side of the House, they’re quite happy with the status quo. In fact, they have become the status quo.

I’d also like to take a look at some of the Auditor General’s report on real estate services. Now, the Auditor General states—

Interjections.

The Auditor General said that the agreement, the enterprise realty service agreement, between Infrastructure Ontario and the Ministry of Infrastructure—here are the problems: “The agreement does not set out any mandatory, minimum standard of performance for managing the costs of capital projects. It does not set out timelines for meeting.” And it does not make sure that government properties are being “used efficiently.” These are all the buzzwords that we hear from this government all the time, and they’re not doing it. It’s abundantly clear that this is not being upheld. They are not doing their due diligence. They are not participating in what is a good business model.

So if we take a look at the request for proposals, the RFP approach, the Auditor General pointed out that that attracted only a few bids for the management of 7,500 capital projects. These were projects worth about $900 million over five years. There was not a broad range of companies that bid on this. It’s very curious.

She also criticized—it says, “Better oversight of external projects—

Interjection.

She also states, “Better oversight of external project mangers’ procurement methods for capital projects is needed.” She goes on—she believes in competition. She believes that things should be fair. And on the side of the official opposition, that makes sense. She states, “Infrastructure Ontario does not track how many vendors bid on capital projects and which vendors are winning the bids.” They actually don’t track what they are responsible for—wow. Where’s the accountability? Where’s the transparency?

The Auditor General talks about the vendor rotation process, which is supposed to be an electronic bidding service that’s supposed to provide these contracts in a more fair manner. “However”—this is where it’s interesting, Madam Speaker—“since 2013-14, Infrastructure Ontario has allowed its external project managers to select vendors from its ... list and manually add them to the list of bidders.” So they cherry-pick the ones they wanted to get the contracts to make sure they got the contracts.

Speaker, as we look at Bill 69, the Reducing Inefficiencies Act, there is far more that this government needs to do in terms of reducing inefficiencies. On the side of this official opposition, we hear this government with all of their buzzwords, we hear them with all of their rhetoric and their language, but we’d like to see actual action that is reducing inefficiencies. We’d like to see a better business model where there is true transparency, accountability and actual efficiency.

Let’s see the government do this. Let’s not hear them talk about it; let’s see it reflected in legislation. I look forward to the briefing, and I want to thank the Minister of Infrastructure for providing that.

This program showed great promise. It cost about $18,000 per person per year, rather than the cost of a mental health bed. It was great cost savings. It was efficient. It was amazing. And it was also something to be prescribed by a doctor. The device and the program would be prescribed. It was to be added to the Assistive Devices Program. I heard lots from this government about how ADP is 30 years old and it’s for mobility devices and sensory aids and that’s it. They had the opportunity to modernize ADP and they chose not to, so I’m tired of hearing—

Further questions?

Further debate?

I certainly get concerned when this government, any time, talks about the environment. We see their attack on the greenbelt, where reports are now saying that they could build two million homes without touching the greenbelt. We are losing over—this is important. I know they’re not really listening over there; they’re playing on their phones. I guess you can do that in here.

We are losing over 315 acres of farmland every day in the province of Ontario. The cost of our food is going up 12%. My question: Do you trust this government to protect the greenbelt?

I’ll tell you a quick story, because I’ve only got a few seconds left. The Peterborough hospital, which was built with 349 beds that were publicly built—it cost $349 million. And he knows this story. In St. Catharines, when they did the new hospital, almost the exact same size, do you know what it was under a P3? It was $1.1 billion. So you could have taken that $700 million, saved taxpayers’ money and put it back right into the community, right back into health care—

This government was elected on a mandate to clean up the mess after the 15 years of Liberal mismanagement. Under the previous government, hydro rates skyrocketed, taxes soared and taxpayers’ dollars were mismanaged.

Bill 69 is about good governance, cutting red tape and streamlining oversight. Why does the NDP want to add red tape and slow down the government?

I’d like to thank the member from Niagara Falls for his excellent question. No, I don’t think that anyone in Ontario at this point trusts the government on the way in which they’ve handled the greenbelt. They’ve talked about this swap where they’re actually adding lands that already had some protections on them. They’d like to pretend that they are doing this thing where it’s an equal exchange, but if we look at the greenbelt as a chain, if you weaken any links of that chain, such as a watershed or something else that is contributing to the filtering of our water, then that entire chain is weak.

What they’re doing to the greenbelt is odious. They’re making sure that it’s going to be easier for these developers to make McMansions, which is not what we need more of. We need more inwards and upwards development, we need affordable housing, we need rent control, we need vacancy decontrol, we need protections for tenants—none of the things that this government is doing, because they do not care about tenants.

They, on the side of the official opposition, said that they were going to change things. They agreed with the Auditor General. And now that they’re on the government benches, we see a completely different change in attitude. They’re upholding many of the things that they criticized the Liberals for, including Infrastructure Ontario, including Tarion. Now they’ve even created yet more government bureaucracy with things like HCRA.

But this attack on the greenbelt is absolutely odious. They’re also taking money away from municipalities when they need it the most. The government should be having a public builder building housing, not expecting private, for-profit agencies to—

The government has a responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to clean drinking water. The fact that there are places in this province which do not have access to that basic human right in the 21st century is unconscionable. It’s completely unacceptable.

There are areas close to my riding that have been under boil-water advisories for 25 years. If that were to happen in any large urban centre, it would be corrected immediately. It would get government attention. But we’ve seen governments, past and present, who simply want to kick the can down the road. They want to finger-point for jurisdictional change, and they simply don’t want to do the right thing. They could get clean drinking water there; they just choose not to.

With the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs, we travelled the province and we heard about the people who are struggling. And yet we see bills like Bill 23, which are just actually—they wrap that bill with the word “housing,” but really what it’s about is McMansions, and it’s about seizing land from the greenbelt.

Instead, what we should make sure is we should have a government that’s actually looking at how Infrastructure Ontario operates. We should have a government that looks at how Tarion operates. When people make the largest purchase of their lives, they deserve to have some—

For many years, we criticized the Liberals for this. But this government is doing it almost on steroids. It is unbelievable what they have achieved with Bill 23, with Bill 7, with so many different things and ways—

This act before us right now, the Reducing Inefficiencies Act, is about being fiscally prudent, saving taxpayer dollars and cutting red tape. The proposed legislation is a step towards modernizing government process and oversight.

Currently, Ontario has one of the largest and most complex real estate portfolios in Canada, and we seek to centralize the management of this real estate portfolio under the Ministry of Infrastructure where it belongs. The government can reduce unnecessary administrative burden and costs and, ultimately, save the taxpayer money.

My question to the honourable member is this: Does he support saving taxpayer money or not?

Another member of this House, the member from Peterborough-Kawartha, made the observation with regard to one of the items being treated in this bill—that is, the Environmental Assessment Act—and he made the statement that it is, in fact, a very old piece of legislation. Without revealing exactly the date I was born, it’s my conjecture that this Environmental Assessment Act is actually older than I am and hasn’t been amended since. Now, I’m of the opinion that things that are old aren’t necessarily bad—in fact, they might be quite good—but it’s not a bad idea to look at these things every once in a while and decide whether or not that which is old can be dusted off a bit and improved.

As a matter of reflecting on that particular act and the experience that people have had with that act, I can inform the other members of this assembly that once upon a time, in the not-too-far-distant past, I used to serve on a municipal council. When I was first elected in the year 2000, I served as a councillor from 2000 to 2003, and then I was elected as deputy mayor from 2004 to 2006. Having served as a member of an elected council, I had the opportunity to learn up front and close and personal on how environmental assessments are done at the municipal level.

Now, I’m going to describe the environmental assessment at the municipal level, and it’s going to be a simple description. It’s not going to be 100% reflective of what the legislation says, but I’m just going to give a simple explanation of it.

If a municipality is going through an environmental assessment, the first thing they might do is tender the contract. So they have to put it out for tender, which means they advertise, people bid on it, and then they have a meeting and they select somebody to do the environmental assessment and pay them for doing that. That’s the first step. Maybe that takes some months.

Then they issue public notices. Notices are put in newspapers; maybe they’re put online. You might see one at town hall. And the public notice might say that consultations have begun.

Then there’s an interim report to the municipal council, and the interim report might report on what has been done so far, what kind of consultations have happened. The municipal report might also propose what the project might look like and provide various alternative projects.

Then the party conducting the environmental assessment will make a recommendation. It will be the preferred option. That will be put before a municipal council to be considered. When it goes to the municipal council, it will be a public meeting, and that’s when the NIMBYs come out—“not in my backyard.” Everybody comes out, and they say, “I don’t want this built in my backyard.”

Then the municipal council deliberates on it and hems and haws, and if they are intimidated, they might turn it down. If they’re intimidated by the NIMBYs, they’ll turn it down. Or they might vote on it and pass it, or they might say, “Let’s defer this for more information from administration.” And all that time is going by, Madam Speaker. Time is going by, and it’s going by and it’s going by.

Then, finally, a decision gets made. A municipal council finally votes on and approves a project. Sometimes these processes take months, sometimes years, and that’s not unusual. It’s actually quite typical. Then after the decision is made, there’s a 30-day period.

Now, after hearing that very simplistic description of the environmental assessment process, you might naturally ask this question: After all that time, do we really need another 30-day period of nothing happening? You might ask that question.

I think the MPP for St. Catharines touched on it a bit. I want to be fair to the MPP from St. Catharines; I don’t want to try to exactly quote what she said, but the MPP said something along the lines of, “In some situations, that 30-day period might not be necessary.” And that’s exactly what this act says. Not in the same language, but in colloquial language, that’s what it says.

In some situations, that 30-day period is not necessary. So why not just let the minister move things along and avoid the 30-day delay, which, as we’ve seen in my brief and very simplistic description of the EA process, might actually add cost if you add those 30 days. You might save some money if you process or bypass those 30 days. A municipal council might save some money.

It’s also true, as the member from Renfrew stated earlier, that if you allow the 30 days to be truncated, you will allow to start the project earlier, thus avoiding winter weather. As we all know, there are two seasons in Ontario: winter and construction. That’s what we all say.

There could be a very, very positive result in allowing the minister to truncate those 30 days and giving permission to a municipal council to proceed with the project that’s been considered. Because, as we all know—at least those of us who have served in the municipal field or have done this type of work before—the process is already very long, and there’s lots of public consultation. You can be consulted online. You can submit your consultation online. You can go to the public meeting in person and you can deliver your comments in person. You can write them down and send them in a letter to your municipal council. You can send them in an email. There’s lots and lots of opportunity for public consultation.

To add the extra 30 days is really not necessary in most situations, particularly when you’re talking about a very simple municipal project, which might involve something very simple like building a road or something of that nature. It might not even be 30 days; it might be longer than that.

With respect to how this might operate, in the event that this legislation gets passed, I think what we need to do first is perhaps take a look at how things are operating right now. I’m sure there are many, many members of this House—there’s 124 of us—who probably were not aware before. But we’re aware now, because the Minister of Infrastructure has made us aware—and I thank the minister for making us aware—that there are actually, at present, at least 14 entities that manage real estate here under the government of the province of Ontario. I will admit—I’ll be frank with this assembly—I did not know that there were at least 14 entities that managed real estate for the government of Ontario. I imagine there could be more. Maybe the Minister of Infrastructure will be providing another report at some time in the future, and maybe we’ll learn that too.

But here, let’s take a look at this list of the 14 entities in the province that currently manage real estate for the government of Ontario. Here we go:

—Agricorp;

—Education Quality and Accountability Office—I would have thought that they would have managed education and accountability; I didn’t know they were managing real estate;

—Province of Ontario Council for the Arts, also known as the Ontario Arts Council;

—Ontario Media Development Corp., also known as Ontario Creates;

—Ontario Trillium Foundation;

—Ontario Financing Authority;

—Fire Marshal’s Public Fire Safety Council;

—Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corp., also known as Destination Ontario;

—Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario;

—Ontario Securities Commission;

—Human Rights Legal Support Centre—that’s one I think everybody will find interesting. I come from the legal field. I would imagine that the Human Rights Legal Support Centre would have been working on human rights and perhaps giving people advice in the court system or maybe even giving people advice in front of the Human Rights Tribunal, but apparently the Human Rights Legal Support Centre also manages real estate;

—Intellectual Property Ontario;

—Skilled Trades Ontario;

—Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.

That’s a lot of organizations. I’m sure they’re doing their best managing the real estate that’s under their authority and control, and I have no reason to think otherwise, that they’re not doing or trying their best—I think we all do. But that means that we actually have 14 different agencies managing real estate for the government of the province of Ontario, some of which, clearly, after reading that list—all 124 of us, I suspect, will agree without any hesitation that the primary function of those organizations really is not to manage real estate and that they have a different function which is their primary function, but somehow they’ve acquired the additional or secondary function of having to manage real estate.

It’s always a great thing—and I’m going to pay some homage here to someone out of history I have a great deal of respect for—if you can concentrate on one thing you do really well. You can maximize efficiency, do it better than anybody else, produce faster than anybody else, make decisions faster than anybody else, maximize all sorts of great consequences, when you can do one thing really well and be allowed to do that one thing really well. For example, let’s talk about an artist, a painter. If a painter is allowed to just paint, the painter doesn’t have to worry about managing real estate, doesn’t have to worry about managing the finances, doesn’t have to worry about making dinner. If the painter can concentrate on one thing and do it really well, that painter will probably become a great painter because the painter is not diverting their efforts or their expertise trying to do things at which the painter is not too good.

I would imagine that those 14 organizations may have the same point of view. Those 14 organizations, as I said earlier, have a different primary mandate. Their primary mandate is not to manage real estate. The primary mandate of the Human Rights Legal Support Centre is not to manage real estate. That’s not their primary mandate. The Fire Marshal’s Public Fair Safety Council has a primary mandate, and I would venture to guess that the management of real estate is not their primary mandate. So it might, in fact, be very useful to allow these organizations not to have to manage real estate but to turn that concern over to a central agency, which is exactly what this bill proposes to do, and allow them to concentrate on their primary mandate, and to have an organization whose primary mandate is to manage real estate.

All that seems very logical and simple, or at least it appears to be logical and simple to me, and I think the Minister of Infrastructure in her statements this morning made it very clear and logical and simple to this assembly as to why these steps have to be taken or should be taken and should form part of the consideration of this assembly.

I had the opportunity to listen to the remarks made by others in this chamber. Some people had some concerns. Some people raised the question of whether or not they had a certain amount of confidence with regard to how things were going to work out if this legislation were passed, and the answer to that is, you’ll get to see the results. You will get to see the results.

And what do we say? What do we say, those of us who support this proposed legislation? Well, we say that having 14 organizations all trying to do the same things, which are not under their primary mandate, is probably not saving taxpayer money—probably not. But having an organization that takes care of all that real estate and who is able to make those kinds of decisions—that is to say, the decisions with regard to the management of real estate—is probably going to save taxpayer money.

Now, here’s the choice before us. Here’s the choice: The choice, number one, is do nothing. As I have always said throughout my 24-year law career to my clients, “Your first choice is do nothing.” If you do nothing, you will have what you have now. Under the present proposed legislation, you have a second choice. Here’s your second choice: Do something. And the “something” proposed under this legislation is to create a consolidated authority which will manage real estate, which presents a possibility that does not exist under the previous choice. Under the previous choice, “do nothing” means you save no more money. That’s the consequence. It is undisputable. Under the second option, “do something,” you are presented with, I will say, the probability—others might say merely the possibility—of saving money.

So given the choice between doing nothing and gaining nothing, or doing something and possibly or probably gaining something, what is the logical choice? I shouldn’t have to answer that question, but because I want to complete the logical connection, I will answer that question. The logical choice, Madam Speaker, is option number two: Do something. And that is what the Reducing Inefficiencies Act does. It proposes to create a body which—at the end of the day, the goal is to save money, save taxpayer money, and wouldn’t that be a nice thing for us to do for the taxpayers of the province of Ontario?

And so that, Madam Speaker, is why I will be very happily voting in favour of this proposed legislation. Thank you very much.

Unfortunately, we do not have time for questions and answers.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

Report continues in volume B.