In my city of London, council had a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss Bill 23, and staff reported just yesterday that they see a potential shortfall of $97 million, a hole in the city’s budget. The mayor is asking this government to slow down and take the time to do proper consultation with municipalities.

Effectively, this bill is undermining public participation. Bill 23 is literally undermining democracy.

If the government is not consulting with municipalities like London, I’d like to ask the member, whose interest are they acting on behalf of, and who’s giving them the mandate to go ahead and ram this bill through and effectively shut down democracy in municipalities throughout the province?

I’d like to welcome Mayor Fred Mota from the town of Red Lake. Red Lake is probably one of our most westerly communities in the province. Certainly, it’s the most westerly town in the province of Ontario, being 100 kilometres from the Manitoba border. He’s here in town today to partake in meetings with AMO, as the first vice-president of NOMA. He’s a great representative for northwestern Ontario and someone I’m proud to call a friend. Welcome.

My question is to the Premier. Bill 23 is about to eviscerate Toronto’s affordable housing construction program. Removing housing services from development charges is going to cost the city $230 million in revenue. It will restrict Toronto’s ability to deliver on its 10-year housing targets, invest in new shelter services, and carry on with several of its affordable housing development and protection programs.

Will the government help Toronto deliver its affordable housing plan and cover the loss in development fees?

The money that is received from development charges is already committed, and ignoring the revenue losses from Bill 23 risks virtually every significant program Toronto has to provide affordable housing. Giving the mayor the power to pass bylaws over the objections of two thirds of Toronto’s elected council will do nothing to fix that.

What is the government’s plan to help municipalities build truly affordable and supportive housing?

Well, without the New Democrats’ support, we’re supporting Mayor Tory, providing him with strong-mayor powers to help him meet his goal of his share of the 1.5 million homes we’re going to be building over the next 10 years as part of our housing supply action plan. And despite the NIMBY chants from New Democrats, we’re going to continue to work with Mayor Tory and the city of Toronto so that they can meet those targets in partnership. We’re going to continue to provide them the tools to get shovels in the ground faster.

Again, the member has to realize that the most significant changes in development charges are exactly the type of homes that she talked about in her question—the deepest differences in development charges are for affordable housing, attainable housing and inclusionary zoning units. I think we can agree—or maybe she doesn’t agree—that that’s the type of housing that Torontonians need.

Again, this member speaks against the strong-mayor powers in Bill 39. I want to remind her that John Tory won a city-wide mandate with over 342,000 votes—36,000 more votes than every city councillor combined. He has a city-wide mandate to get shovels in the ground. We’re going to give him the tools to get it done.

I want to thank the member for that question and for her important advocacy and leadership for the people of Hamilton.

Speaker, let me be abundantly clear: This is absolutely unacceptable. Upon hearing of the situation in Hamilton, I was angry, like many of the good people of Hamilton, including my family who live there. I was angry for the people who are yet again hearing about how their city and the lack of oversight has failed to protect their waters. I was angry that this lack of oversight has happened for 26 years, even after all that the people of Hamilton have gone through.

I’m happy to report that upon notification of the spill, my ministry took immediate action. We sent an environmental officer over to Hamilton, who’s working closely with the municipality to block any further sewage flow, to stop further environmental damage and move immediately to address this situation.

I look forward to informing the Legislature of further action that this government is taking in the supplemental.

Again, the continued lack of oversight is simply unacceptable.

I had a very good conversation with the new mayor of Hamilton, and I commend her for speaking of being transparent with the people of Hamilton—our government and I agree.

That’s why, immediately upon learning of this latest spill and speaking with the mayor of Hamilton, I’ve instructed my ministry to require Hamilton to audit its entire sewage infrastructure and come up with a remediation plan to clean this mess up.

We’re going to work closely with the new mayor and the city of Hamilton to address this so that this never happens again. It’s unacceptable. The people deserve better, and thanks to this member from Hamilton, they’re going to get it.