I’m going to go to an article from the CBC—I don’t know if it was yesterday or today; it’s hard to keep up: “Wealthy Ontario Developer Close to Winning Long Battle to Build Homes on Protected Greenbelt.” In my area, Silvio De Gasperis started buying up parcels of land back in 2003. Back in 2005, he told the National Post that the province’s move to include the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve in the greenbelt would cost his company an estimated $240 million in lost revenue. He said, “McGuinty has already hurt me. I’m going to hurt him.” He “then launched a campaign to stymie plans for the greenbelt, working with Pickering to develop the preserve land anyway....

“Victor Doyle, a former senior provincial planner who helped design the greenbelt”—in his words, to answer your question—“said he felt ‘deceived as a planner and as a citizen....

“‘It’s all about, in my view, rewarding the land development interests who own this land and are clearly of primary interest to the government,’ Doyle said.”

These are folks who stand to make a boatload of money. They have been investing in this Conservative government since 2014—

Interjections.

How long?

Thank you. Other questions?

I was wanting to ask you about the greenbelt. This bill does make it much easier for PC donors who happen to own land in a section of the greenbelt that’s being opened up by this act. Why do you think the government is choosing to open up sections of the greenbelt in areas near you?

Speaker, through you to the member for Brampton North: I thank him for his excellent presentation.

I know that from his background he has a very strong understanding of the effects Bill 39 would have in upper-tier and lower-tier municipalities, particularly as it relates to planning and development, and the efficiencies it’s going to bring to build badly needed affordable housing in Brampton, but also across the region of Peel. Could he elaborate further on that?

I thank my colleague for his question. I would invite him to read the bill, where we’re very clear that we’re protecting the core mandate of conservation authorities, which is to stop flooding. What I would also say about—

Interjection.

Imagine if we were to put our heads in the sand, the way the members of the opposition would want us to. “We won’t build anything. We’ll find an excuse to never build any new homes for people. We’ll never build any roads for them to drive on. We’ll never build any long-term-care homes for aging Ontarians to go to as they grow older. We’ll never build any new hospitals for Ontarians to go to when they get sick.” Imagine if we were in that scenario.

Thank God, Ontarians chose this party and this government to lead our province. We’re going to build Ontario to make it better for every Ontarian.

I would also kind of lament a little bit—I wish the members on the other side of the House would trust the people of Brampton a little bit more. Brampton is the fourth-biggest city in Ontario. We’re the ninth-biggest city in Canada. The idea that a city of 700,000 people could take a little bit more ownership on some of the decisions that are impacting Bramptonians every single day should not be something ridiculed by members of this House. We’ve seen it before.

I invite members who were here in the previous government—we see the opposition fearmongering. What did they say? They said that the Premier and the PC government were going to fire all these government employees. Did we see that happen? No, actually, the only government employees who lost their jobs were the NDP caucus members, when Ontarians kicked them out in 2022, especially across Brampton.

I think it would behoove all members of this House to trust the people of Brampton a little bit more; our party certainly does. I think it’s good advice.

I think the member has a lot of educational certifications. She’s a very well-educated member for Toronto–St. Paul’s, and I respect that. But I’m not sure if the member ever took an economics course.

There are factors here at play of supply and demand. Here in Ontario and Canada, we have the lowest supply per capita of houses of any country in the G7. In Ontario, we have the lowest amount of houses per capita of any province across the country. We know and experts know that when you make supply to meet demand, that creates a more fair market for everybody.

I would say that when we speak about new Canadians, many of whom live in my riding and many of whom live in Toronto–St. Paul’s, I’m not sure how the member could go to them credibly and suggest that the NDP plan to never build anything—to never build homes, to never build hospitals, to never build long-term care, to never build any transit; to continually vote against good investments that will help newcomers come to our country—

We will go to questions and answers for the member of Brampton North.

To reply, the member for Brampton North.

I’m glad to be able to share some points on Bill 39 and Bill 23, government bills. They’re pretty much “waste” bills, frankly, to use millennial language.

I’m wondering why the government is using immigrants as scapegoats—because no immigrant comes to Ontario asking to live on the greenbelt, asking to live on wetlands.

This government doesn’t understand that their notion of affordability is driving Ontarians into poverty. The average Ontarian does not make $130,000 a year.

So can the Brampton North member tell me which house anyone making $39,000 or $35,000—or ODSP recipients. Which house can they afford to build on Bill 39, Bill 23, or any of the other crap they’ve brought in the Legislature this year?

I’m going to try to bring it down a bit. I will ask the member a very straightforward question. We’ve heard a lot of debate in regard to how we feel that transparency and democracy are being ripped out with the introduction of Bill 39. There’s another word that I want to mention to the member, and I’m curious about his thoughts on responsibility. We are partners in this province. We are all treaty members. I’m wondering if the member can provide me his insights as to what Indigenous communities, what First Nations communities, what leadership was consulted prior to the introduction of Bill 39.

I would say, you know, Canada is a country that’s really been built by immigrants, by newcomers. I’m a first-generation Canadian. My parents came from Scotland and Northern Ireland. We have the Associate Minister of Transportation; his parents came here from Korea to build a better life. We have the member that asked the question, that came here from Sri Lanka to live in a prosperous and free country and build a better future for himself and for future generations.

I think that is a trend that we need to continue as legislators, as lawmakers in this country. We need to continue to welcome people. But who would we be if we’re going to have half a million new Canadians coming in 2025—we know the lion’s share of them will come to Ontario. Who would we be if we didn’t build homes for them to live in, we didn’t build hospitals for them to go to when they got sick, we voted for disastrous regulations that would stop them from getting a job, we would tax them to death, we would build no opportunity for any of them in the name of needlessly delaying projects—

I would say, as our government is building opportunity, we’re not just building opportunity in the GTA; we’re building opportunity in the north, as well. I was happy to see medical school expansions, for instance, in my riding in Brampton. But we also know that we’re expanding access to doctors in northern Ontario, as well. I think we need to be inclusive with all of our partners as we move forward. We need to build a better province for everybody in Ontario.

Thank you for the response.

Le député pour Algoma–Manitoulin.

I’m happy to say that, across our province, there are many vibrant communities growing. Ontario’s population has surpassed 15 million for the first time ever this year, and it will continue to grow for another two million in the next few years. Madam Speaker, many of the members know that the federal government also recently announced that their target of new immigrants by 2025 is 500,000, and many of those new Canadians are going to choose our province to settle down and start families here.

Can the member from Brampton North explain how this legislation, if passed, will help us to continue to prepare for the future growth and welcome new Canadians looking to start their families in Brampton and Scarborough?

I want to start by telling you about an experiment. It’s called the Milgram experiment. Some of you may be familiar with it. It was 1962 and Stanley Milgram was a social scientist. In the experiment—he was the experimenter, so he was wearing a lab coat and he had one volunteer and one person, and the other person thought—a teacher and a learner; I’ll describe it that way. The idea was to study—what he told the two study participants was that he was going to be studying the impact of punishment on memory and on learning. And so what he did is he took these two people, and he designated one as the teacher and the other one as the learner.

Now, the learner was actually in on the experiment. So the teacher and learner go in and they look at the equipment. There’s a dial in the one room, and it’s a voltage dial, and in the other room there’s something that looks like an electric chair. They strap the learner into the electric chair, and then the experimenter and the teacher go back in the other room with the dial. They say that the way the experiment is going to go is that the experimenter is going to read out pairs of words and then the learner is supposed to recite them back. If he gets them right, that’s fine. But if he makes a mistake, they’re going to give him a shock with the voltage meter. The shocks go from 15 volts to 450 volts, and if you know anything about electricity, 450 volts is a lot; it’s deadly.

So he does this experiment, and at first the teacher gives a shock and the learner goes, “Uh!” And then eventually the learner is complaining more and more about the shocks that they’re getting. They’re in the other room. If the teacher was saying, “You know what? I don’t think we should continue. We might be hurting him.” The experimenter would say, “Please continue,” and then he would give another prod; he’d say, “The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue. You have no choice. You must go on,” is what the experimenter would say. And the shocking part was that 65% of the people who were the teachers, who didn’t know what this experiment was really about and didn’t realize they weren’t actually giving a shock, went all the way to 450 volts, even after the learner had gone silent in the other room. And 450 volts is a deadly voltage. So these people actually believed that they were torturing this person, and yet they continued. It’s an experiment about obedience to authority.

One of the other things that came out of this experiment was that people who were polite and nice tended to go all the way to the 450 volts. People who were cantankerous tended not to go. They’d say, “I’m not doing this.” I always think about this, and I think of myself as a polite person, and it’s a warning to me. It’s a warning to me that you can’t always be polite. There are times when somebody is going to ask you to do something that is wrong, and you’ve got to stand up and you’ve just got to push back.

The reason I’m telling this story about the Milgram experiment is that I’m asking the Conservative members of the House: What bill would your government bring forward that you would not vote for? What is your line in the sand? Where would you say, “This is beyond what I voted to be in here for?” I’m looking at Bill 39. We’re talking about Bill 39 today, and this bill, I will say, is an egregious attack on our democracy. It was introduced six days ago and it gives the mayor of Toronto the power to make bylaws with only one third of the councillors. We just had, just three weeks ago, our municipal elections and we elected—the people of Toronto voted for our city councillors. We voted for 25 city councillors, and we assumed that the election that we took part in would be respected. But instead, immediately after the election, two weeks after the election, this government introduces legislation that says, “Well, yes, you may have elected 25 city councillors, but only eight of them and the mayor are going to be able to make decisions.” So 17 of those councillors that we elected are going to be taken out of the decision-making process, even though we elected them. This is a violation of the fundamental principle of democracy. Democracy: Webster’s dictionary defines it as “government by the people especially: rule of the majority.”

The other thing that came out—and I’m really shocked—is that Mayor Tory asked for these powers to govern the council with only one third of council votes. Mayor Tory is a person who—we may not always politically agree on issues, but I’ve always respected him. I’ve been at a few events with him over the last few weeks, and he’s been talking about coming out of the pandemic how we need to work together, how we need to heal the divisions that came up in our society through the pandemic. And then, for him to have asked the government, during the election in which he was running, to override, to give him the power to override the results of the election, to override the results of the votes of the people of this city, is absolutely shocking. I’m so deeply disappointed.

The government always has a rationale. Every time they bring in a bill that attacks our democratic rights, they always have a rationale. This is housing, and the government refuses to talk about democracy. In this debate this afternoon, I haven’t heard the word “democracy” once from any of the government members, but what we have heard about is housing.

The new city councillor in my riding, Ausma Malik, wrote, “Bill 39 isn’t about housing. It’s a clear attack on our local democracy.

“I am disheartened by Mayor Tory’s overreaching request for this power.”

And it’s not just Toronto that Bill 39 affects. It’s also the regions of York, Peel and Niagara. The voters in those municipalities just voted for their councillors, and some of those councillors sit on regional governments, and those councillors on the regional governments were to elect the head of the council. Instead, what’s happening with Bill 39 is, the Premier is going to be appointing the head of council and that head of council that he appoints will be able to make decisions for the regional council with only one third of the councillors. It’s a complete violation of the democratic expectations and principles of the people who voted in those municipalities of Niagara, York and Peel.

To the people, if you’re listening to this and you don’t live in Toronto, you don’t live in York, Peel or Niagara, pay attention to this because when this government attacks the democratic rights of the people in the GTA area, they’re attacking the democratic rights of everyone, because any of us could be next.

I started out by asking the government members, “What’s your line in the sand? What bill would you not vote for?” The other bill that just came up is Bill 28 that this government introduced two weeks ago, and it used the “notwithstanding” clause to strip education workers of their fundamental freedoms and their legal rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and it also stripped education workers of their protection under the Human Rights Code. The Human Rights Code makes it illegal to discriminate against people based on their gender, their race, their religion, their disability—there’s 15 categories there. What that bill did was, it made it legal for the government to discriminate against those education workers, who are predominantly women and people of colour, and that’s a piece of legislation that the Conservative members in this House voted for. I am really shocked that anybody would stand up for that. This is why I started talking about the Milgram experiment: What is your line in the sand? When will you say, “I don’t care what’s coming from the leadership in the Conservative Party, I cannot vote for that because it violates the fundamental principles and rights of the people of this province”?

I will say, just to conclude about Bill 28, there was an incredible mobilization of workers and unions across this province that forced this government to withdraw it. So I’m really, really hoping that there will be a mobilization of citizens across this province that will force you to repeal Bill 39.

I’ve just got a few seconds left. The Conservative members, when you walk out of your caucus room in this Legislature, there’s a large portrait of William Lyon Mackenzie. He was the leader of the Rebellions of 1837. He was fighting for what they called responsible government, democratic government, and that rebellion actually got it for us. In 1848, the residents of Upper Canada got the first elected government in this area, after the First Nations people—so in the colony. This government, your government, is actually taking us back to that pre-democratic history. I ask you, please, do not support Bill 39.

I have a question for my colleague from Spadina–Fort York. We’ve heard the government members talk at length about having to create housing for newcomers to Canada, for immigrants. I want to share some information with you about my riding specifically, but also all of Windsor and Essex: 27% of Windsor’s population are newcomers. I can tell you, my riding, not just the city as a whole but my riding specifically, is one of the most diverse in the entire country. When I’m knocking on doors and talking to those folks—whether they can vote for me or not, they are still my constituents, and I make sure I tell them that. They want to be able to afford a place to live when they come to Canada. Many of them come from countries where democracy is not a thing. It’s not a thing. The people do not have a say. The governments dictate what will happen.

I’m wondering if the member for Spadina–Fort York can tell me how this government rectifies—how they balance this conversation about newcomers when the reality is, through legislation like this, these newcomers will never have a voice here.

The core of this legislation is very simple. It will help us support efficient local decision-making and give elected officials the tools they need to remove barriers stalling development on the housing, transit and infrastructure Ontarians critically need. The proposed legislation, if passed, will give local legislators elected by Ontarians the extra tools they need to get shovels in the ground and help us prepare for Ontario’s future growth, like the individuals that I was talking to in my riding. They desperately need housing.

Why doesn’t the opposition trust Ontarians to choose efficient local leaders?

Time for questions.

It’s always a pleasure to engage with the member from Spadina–Fort York—always measured, always calm, always kind.

I will be pleased to support this piece of legislation, because I recognize the importance of building housing, not just for my children but for the approximately 350,000 new Canadians who will be coming into the province of Ontario every year with the new federal government immigration quotas, and I welcome them and I look forward to that.

What I would ask the member is, what Conservative bill would you vote for? You were bouncing around a little bit. Just recently, we were debating the fall economic statement, on which I couldn’t get a single negative comment out of the NDP other than it went not far enough. Yet you all voted against it.

What Conservative bill would you vote for, if not something that is an absolute benefit to the most vulnerable Ontarians?

First of all, I want to comment on your housing comments, because you always talk about, “That’s the rationale,” and the government always talks about, “The rationale for Bill 39 is we need to build housing.” We’ve been building housing in the province of Ontario since 1867 in a democracy. Nowhere the government said, “Hey you have to overturn or override democratic principles in order to build housing.” Yours is the first government to do that.

What bill would I support from this government? I would support a bill that actually built not-for-profit supportive housing to bring an end to homelessness. We’ve got 16,000 people on the streets of this province who do not have a home. I would support a bill—I see I’m out of time. I will go on about what other bills I would support in the next answer.

I’m really hoping the government will reconsider Bill 39.

When you said that you’re supporting local decision-making, the exact opposite is true. You’re overriding local decision-making. We just had an election in Ontario. We elected 25 city councillors. They are supposed to govern this city by majority vote. You’re saying, “No, that’s not necessary. It’s only going to be one third.” So eight of those city councillors are going to be able to make decisions, and it’s the same process, the same principle that you’re applying and you’re disenfranchising the voters in Niagara, in Peel and York. It’s an absolute assault on the democratic rights of the people of this province.

I want to congratulate the member from Spadina–Fort York for, as I think the member for Brantford–Brant said very well, his calm compassionate remarks. But I want to make an attempt to answer the question you posed and hopefully get some debate in this House, because it was a great question you posed about what’s the line. What’s the line for any one of us that, in our own caucus, we may stand up and say, “No, I can’t consent”?

I want to point out, Speaker, through you, the legacy of Peter Kormos, who was expelled to that chair right over there when then-Premier Rae imposed the social contract. It became very, very controversial, and Peter decided to filibuster for 17 hours because his constituents were telling him, “Peter, we don’t agree with this.”

And that’s democracy. Democracy in this place is that when someone proposes something you disagree with, you should stand in your place and speak against it. I would hope that there are members over on that side, Speaker, through you, that, when faced with the idea of minoritarian rule—there’s got to be debate in that caucus. So that’s the legacy of our party. That’s what I would say: Peter Kormos is the legacy of our party.

What do you think about that, my friend? What’s the advice you’d give the government?