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?

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?

Further questions?

A couple of statistics here I just looked up: In 2011, the number of new housing starts in Ontario, 67,000; in 2012, 76,000; in 2013, 61,000; in 2014, 59,000. The record shows that when the opposition held the balance of power with the former government, there weren’t nearly enough houses built in the province of Ontario. The opposition has cut and pasted a million and a half homes into their housing plans, but their record definitely demonstrates an inability to actually deliver on those things.

I’m wondering if the member from Spadina–Fort York is comfortable saying here in this House that he would look his constituents in the eye and say to them, point blank, “If we were in government, there is no way that your children or new Canadians would ever be able to enjoy the dream of home ownership.”

We all were elected here. There are 124 member in this House who were elected by our constituents to represent our constituents. And there are going to be things that you like that your government is doing; there are going to be things that you don’t like that your government is doing. Then there’s got to be some that you say, “This is absolutely reprehensible. I cannot stand with this. The people of my riding will not allow me to vote for this.”

The egregious attacks on our democratic rights in this province by this government—not just Bill 39 and Bill 28, but also in the previous session, when they changed the rules of the municipal elections in the middle of the election campaign period in 2018, when they decided that they could rule by emergency power without having to come back to the Legislature to grant them that power for up to a year. There have been a number of attacks on our democratic rights, and I’m really, really hoping that the Conservative members of this House will stand up and vote against Bill 39.

Anyways, we can do it. We can build the million and a half houses that we’re going to need, but we also need to build some affordable housing and that’s nowhere in any bill that this government has brought forward. In fact, the last time that affordable housing, that not-for-profit social housing and supportive housing was built in this province was under the last NDP government. We were building 15,000 not-for-profit housing units per year in this province. That’s the last time it was built. So if people want to—

We’ll go to the next question.

Just before we pursue for further debate, I understand that the member for Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock has a point of order.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for the time.

I want to introduce, in the gallery, Chris Rol, who is with the insurance bureau association of Ontario, but was one of the first people who came to work with me in the Legislature in 2003, and I want you all to welcome Chris.

I am very proud to stand today to speak on Bill 39, Better Municipal Governance Act, 2022. I would like to thank and recognize the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing for bringing this bill to the floor, and for his hard work on behalf of all Ontarians.

I was watching the debate before I started, and to my surprise, one of the colleagues opposite was talking about how we can build 1.5 million houses with whatever we have today. Then the question would be why we didn’t do it, why the government before us didn’t do it, if it’s available and can be done. Another colleague was saying there is no guarantee if we go with those bills that we can actually build 1.5 million. I don’t know why there is the uncertainty about building or not building, or meeting or not meeting the numbers. There are no guarantees.

We were in the committee hearings the other day, and one of the colleagues was saying, “What is the guarantee that if we did this and that, we’ll be able to meet the 1.5 million?” The guarantee is just the planning. We don’t know the plans. When a country or a company starts a project of 20 years or 15 years, there is no guarantee that after 15 years they will actually be where they are planning to be. But all the odds and the plans and the timelines and the charts and all the kinds of analysis they do are to make sure that hopefully we will be in that.

What we know now is that as we stand today, we have a crisis. We have a housing crisis. There is enough explanation about the status we are in today, because Canada is scheduled to add 500,000 immigrants every year. If the situation is as such today, what is going to happen in two years when we have a million people added to that equation?

Some 55% of my riding wasn’t born in Canada, so the majority of my riding are new immigrants. I can agree to some extent with the colleague who said that the new immigrants would look for rental units, because they want to look for some affordable units to live in. I can agree with that, but again, where are those rental units today? In Mississauga, I don’t think you can get even one rental apartment available as of today. There are none. Why? Because people who have actually been in their rentals for five or six or 10 years can’t even afford a house, so that they can move on and leave that rental apartment for a newcomer to come in.

So the cycle is stalled. Why? Because the cycle to build a new development takes 10 to 11 years before any house can see the light. So even if we start today with the existing cycle, we are not going to see the results of that change until 2033, according to the cycle. The only way we can get out of that is to break that cycle, to change the cycle, to accelerate the cycle.

During one of the discussions here in committee last week, there was one appeal window of two years. There was a two-year appeal window. How come a developer can put a price or develop something, to get something going, with just one window of appeal that’s two years? This can’t happen.

With accountability comes authority. When we tried to push for the mayors to play their role in promoting and getting the units built—if they don’t have the right authorities, it’s not going to happen. It’s just like math, one plus one; it’s not really a magic thing.

This bill didn’t come out of nowhere. This bill is part of a series of bills. This government did the two recommendations based on the housing supply action plan: More Homes, More Choice; then More Homes for Everyone in 2022; then Strong Mayors, Building Homes; and quickly followed by More Homes Built Faster, which we introduced. So it’s building blocks. Each block of those will help us to change something, to pave the way for more housing to get built.

And when we say more housing, I don’t know why the opposition will always refer to housing like the developers and the big houses and the expensive solutions. Again, it’s a connected cycle. As soon as somebody can buy a house, he will leave his apartment, rental apartment, and this rental apartment becomes available for somebody else who is ready to get in there.

With all those changes we are proposing here, if passed, it will allow a better, efficient and more synchronized process for municipalities, to allow a faster response to our shared priority of building 1.5 million new homes over the next 10 years. So there is a decisive action plan made by our government that can get the job done for Ontarians.

Madam Speaker, it’s not news that we are in this crisis because of many years of neglect. Building houses wouldn’t take six months. The current cycle is eleven years, so if we want to address the root cause of that, we need to go back 10 years to see what was the status 10 years ago that caused us to be here today. This is what our government is doing. Our government is looking into what impedes the process, how we ended up here today. It didn’t happen day and night. We didn’t wake up in the morning and find, “Oh, my God, we have 400,000 units missing.” No, it happened across a number of years. And as I mentioned, even in the last mandate, we did two bills to accelerate housing, to try to change the narrative a little bit, to change the cycle, to break the cycle and give the mayors and the municipalities the responsibilities to be able to push that.

Today, I was meeting with some of the co-op associations outside, and they keep saying, “Whenever we talk to the city about a project, they say that this is a provincial issue.” Well, we are pushing this provincial issue now, saying “Okay, municipalities, you have the right, you have the power, go and do your job. Get the job done.” I don’t see why the opposition would be against something like that, when I’m talking about—when I talked about the two-year appeal process, a period of time or a grace period for two years for appeal, the master plan or whatever, some of the opposition were saying, “Yes, we have to give them the chance to study.” So if the chance to study is two years for the appeal process and then they change something and they come back and say, “Another two years for appealing the new ones,” how can a developer plan a road map for a project like that? They have to put some margins, like safety margins, in costs, and being in the process for 10 years would cost them money. This money, at the end of the day, will add to the cost of the unit that gets sold. He would do a project every 10 years. You have to get some money to live, right?

So I think that the speed of the solution, the speed of the process is very important to the whole process. It’s not only that we get things done. We get things done and we need to get things done fast. We get things done now—not in two years, not in the future, today. We need that to get done today.

Let’s talk about competition and let’s talk about math. Since the Conservative government was elected in this province in 2018, the cost of a house has doubled in the province of Ontario—doubled. Since the member is very interested in economics, I would like to think that the scaffolding of the dismal science of economics is math, and I’m wondering if it’s comfortable for the member—whose company I enjoy, for the record—that we have minoritarian rule in this bill, that a third of an elected body can make a decision. I’m wondering if the member is actually comfortable with that. It would be like handing over the levers to the opposition parties. Are you prepared to have a motion, with unanimous consent, to allow us to run the province of Ontario if you very much believe in this bill?

We’ll go to questions and answers.

Report continues in volume B.

There is a difference in here. There is an action plan versus voting on changing legislation. This is totally different. We’re talking about people’s lives and housing and education and health, and you’re talking about a policy change or a constitutional change. Nevertheless, I think what’s going on now at the federal level is not very far from what we are here now anyway.

We know that the only way to bring pricing down is competition. We have to have more units, we have to have developers who are developing, giving options, giving a price range, giving a better price, better cuts to get their units sold. It’s very simple. I don’t understand; how difficult is that?