Speaker, through you to the member: I know that our government has committed to putting out one piece of housing legislation per year. Here we’ve seen a major policy change and two pieces of housing legislation coming forward. I was wondering if the member could expand further—and even just last year we had a record number of housing starts, I think, in almost 40 years, with 100,000 homes built—on how important it is to be able to get to our target of getting a million and a half homes. What does that mean with the immigration targets that have been set with the federal government, meaning that the population of Ontario is going to be growing by at least 350,000 people per year for the foreseeable future? How important is it that we just get those housing starts going, and how adaptable do we have to be in order to make that happen?

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.”