I am honoured to stand here to speak on Bill 39, the Better Municipal Governance Act.

Ontario is growing rapidly. Each year, Ontario welcomes new Canadians, eager to start a life, start a family in their new home, and it’s a beautiful thing to see. It’s a beautiful thing to see that with hard work someone in Ontario can have a life that previously they could only dream about—or so that is what we might have once thought. There’s one thing that many dream about that they aren’t always able to make a reality, and that is a home that meets their needs.

Unfortunately, with the state of Ontario’s housing crisis, we’re seeing more and more Ontarians unsatisfied with their living situation. Sometimes that may be due to location—and there are many, many reasons for that. One of the reasons is, they can’t find a place close to work so they have to commute long hours daily for their paycheque, or the area they need to live in does not have the homes to accommodate the size of their family or the size of the family they hope to have someday.

We see seniors who want to downsize to a community that better meets their needs, but that’s not an option.

We have millennials who want out of their parents’ home—actually, their parents want them out as well—but that’s not an option.

New Canadians who drop everything they have back in their home countries find themselves living in cramped apartments. I see this in my riding of Brampton North, and it is not right.

It all boils down to one thing: There are simply not enough homes.

Speaker, there’s no doubt in my mind that Ontario is the greatest place in the world. As I’ve said before in this House, Ontario thrives off its diversity. I think we have unanimous agreement on that. It’s no secret that people want to live here; quite frankly, we need them to. We need more people to move to Ontario. We need more diversity, not less diversity.

That’s why it breaks my heart to hear stories of dissatisfaction from newcomers when they come to Canada, saying, “I miss my home” and “Canada is not exactly what I thought it was.” I see it in my riding—in particular, the neighbourhood of Springdale, home to some of the hardest-working people you’ll find anywhere in this country, many new Canadians who are eager to build that foundation in their new home. They’re eager to build that foundation in Canada for future generations of their family to benefit, but this sacrifice they make is made significantly more difficult when they’re living in outrageous living conditions.

We see, particularly, international students in Brampton, who are sometimes crammed into basement apartments, sharing a washroom with up to seven other people.

Ontario is a place where it doesn’t matter where you come from, who you love or how you choose to worship God; everybody deserves the same opportunity to succeed. We’ve attracted the world’s most amazing people, who have helped to build this identity in this province. However, we need to continue to work to maintain the dignity of our system.

I’ll speak about another neighbourhood in my riding, M section. M section is a neighbourhood which the former member for Brampton North loved very much, actually, and which has a significant population of seniors. These seniors are hard-working Ontarians who paid their dues to the province. Now they hope to downsize, and they can’t find an affordable home to meet their needs in a livable community. These are Ontarians, these are neighbours who worked incredibly hard for what they have. However, as Ontario’s population continued to grow through the years, our housing supply simply did not keep up, leaving these seniors with incredibly limited options. Funnily enough, if there were enough options for the seniors in M section to downsize their homes, maybe that would have allowed some of the millennials living in their parents’ basements in another neighbourhood called Snelgrove, in my riding, to find a home that they might prefer.

As I heard from Ontario’s realtor association this week, we need to help young people find a home because it will make them happy and it will also make their parents really happy.

Speaker, as we all saw with the Minister of Education’s fantastic work in negotiating a deal with CUPE that keeps kids in class, we on this side like to make parents happy. We know that’s important to them, and it seems like our government is the only one that truly wants to give the people of this province what they want. We serve the people of Ontario, while the NIMBY members opposite would much rather appease their downtown Toronto environmentalist buddies, slowing down projects across the province, hurting families. We talk about an acronym—we hear the opposite side wants to talk about their amendments to the bill, and I guess you could phrase their feedback in an acronym. I’d say “NDP—Needlessly Delay Projects” that would benefit Ontarians. They used to just be NIMBYs, “not in my backyard”—but now it seems like the members opposite not only don’t want new development in their backyard; they don’t want new development in anybody’s backyard.

Some of the members of my generation want backyards. Some new Canadians who come to our country deserve backyards. Some seniors who have backyards deserve livable, downsized homes, where they can stay in their community and continue to thrive and live.

Unfortunately—this should be straightforward; this should be unanimously agreed on by every member of this House. We all went out to the people of Ontario, we looked Ontarians in the eyes, and we all said that we’re going to build 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. The members on the other side, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V—that’s a generational reference that a lot of the New Democrats may not understand—popped in the same target in their platform. But now, when we’re taking actions to build 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years say, they’re saying that they disagree with it; they want to needlessly delay. We hear them, colleagues. What do we hear? “We need more consultation. Wait. Slow down. We need you to consult with this, to consult with that. Have you considered this amendment? Have you considered that amendment?”

Frankly, Ontarians don’t need more committees or working groups. They need action. They need a government that’s going to get things done. That’s exactly what our PC government is here to do for the people of Ontario.

I’ll speak about Halloween. We saw Halloween in my community—I believe in all communities in Ontario. I’ll talk about some of the neighbourhoods in my riding—neighbourhoods like Heart Lake and Snelgrove, where there used to be a hundred kids who would knock on the door; now there are only three, four, five, maybe a dozen. Part of the reason is, Heart Lake is a community that was built decades ago by young families who wanted to build a better life for their children; unfortunately, a lot of those same children are priced out of the neighbourhood and are forced to live elsewhere. Many of those children, if they still live in the neighbourhood, are living in the basement. They’re not living with a backyard. They’re not living in a house that meets their needs, a house where would be satisfied to raise their family. What I would say to families there, what I told them at the door, is that this is a government that has your back. Our Premier, our Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, our entire PC caucus is laser-focused on delivering the housing supply you need to have a better life for you and your family.

Housing affordability is not something that respects municipal borders. If you can’t afford a house in Brampton, shifting your life and your family over to Brantford or to Brant county will not solve the issues in affordability. Ontario is in a housing supply crisis—it’s not Toronto, not Peel; it’s the province of Ontario.

Another scary statistic, a shocking statistic, that was shared with me was that 53% of Ontarians under the age of 40 are considering moving to another province. We have a labour shortage in this province. We have almost 400,000 jobs that are being unfilled at this point. We need an economy that grows. We need people here to help our economy succeed.

We have Alberta aggressively targeting Ontario drivers and Ontario families, saying, “Move to Alberta. We want you here.” What we need in Ontario is to say, “No, we want you to stay here. We want you to work here, get a great job, have a great family, and build a better life for you and for future generations.” That’s not what I hear from the members opposite.

We’re going to hear a lot about “this statute” and “this amendment” and “this schedule” and all the issues that they like to talk about.

The people of Ontario know—they said it in the last election—that one party has their backs for housing affordability. That’s the PC Party of Ontario.

For the past few weeks, we have had a lot of hearings to listen to stakeholders, and one of the stakeholders told me—he was answering my question. I asked him, “How many years does it take for you when you have submitted all your documents and then you can deliver a house?” He said it was 10 to 11 years.

I want to ask the member from the opposite side: Under their proposal, how fast can they deliver 1.5 million houses in 10 years?

Interjection: A bajillion years.

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?

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

To reply, the member for Brampton North.

I thank the member for his speech. He has obviously done a lot of research.

I know this member is a very proud and active member of the Conservative Party, so what I will say now is something that I’m sure he well knows, and that is that the establishment of conservation authorities here in Ontario came from his forebears, from his party. They had the vision to protect our water supply, to protect farmland, to protect environmentally significant land, to protect endangered species. They had the vision to establish this, and now, years later, this current Conservative government is doing everything it can to undo the important work that was done by their forebears.

So my question is, do you believe that past Conservative government was misguided in protecting these lands?

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?