This is the same government that said no to a rent freeze this year, during a pandemic.

Back to the Premier: AGIs were supposed to help small landlords cover unforeseen costs to keep tenants safely in place. However, reports show that it’s not small landlords benefiting. In fact, 84% of units impacted were owned by wealthy, profitable, corporate landlords, like those that own 440 Winona—another building in our riding that was just hit with another outrageous AGI. This misuse is why I put forward the motion asking to ban above-guideline rent increases and help struggling tenants catch up during and after the pandemic. This government said no to me, but most importantly, they said no to St. Paul’s and Ontario.

So I’ll ask again of this Premier and his caucus: Will this government stand up to corporate greed and ban abusive above-guideline rent increases—

I thank my colleague for the question.

Speaker, our government has provided more protection for tenants than any government in the past 70 years. The minister has alluded to the decision—the measures we put in throughout the pandemic, now, and even to protect tenants next year.

It’s important to talk about the fact that when we talk about housing and protection for tenants, supply is very important.

I’m really interested now to see that the opposition is finally talking about housing again.

We have continuously been there for tenants. When we were putting protections in Bill 184 through this ministry, we raised the fines to $50,000 for individuals who were breaking the law, $250,000 if it was a corporation—various measures to protect tenants.

What did the opposition do? They have continuously voted against every measure that protects tenants in this province. So while they vote against it, we will continue to be there for every single tenant in—

A petition to raise social assistance rates:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and woefully inadequate to cover the basic costs of food and rent;

“Whereas individuals on the Ontario Works program receive just $733 per month and individuals on the Ontario Disability Support Program receive just $1,169 per month, only 41% and 65% of the poverty line;

“Whereas the Ontario government has not increased social assistance rates since 2018, and Canada’s inflation rate in January 2022 was 5.1%, the highest rate in 30 years;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized through the CERB program that a ‘basic income’ of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to increase social assistance rates to a base of $2,000 per month for those on Ontario Works, and to increase other programs accordingly.”

I wholeheartedly support this petition, thank the folks who are continuing to sign them and send them in to me, and give it to page Arushi to bring to the Clerk.

I’d like to present this petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario: “Put Public Safety First. Get a Fair Deal for Safety Inspectors.

“Whereas safety inspectors at the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) help ensure the safety of Ontarians by inspecting amusement park rides, food trucks, elevators, fuel-burning equipment, propane-dispensing stations, boilers and pressure vessels in our schools, hospitals, long-term-care homes, nuclear power plants and more...;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to:

“—intervene to ensure that the TSSA stop its stonewalling, return to the bargaining table and negotiate fairly with OPSEU/SEFPO Local 546 TSSA members to reach a deal;

“—ensure that newly unionized employees have automatic access to first contract arbitration should they want it when bargaining reaches an impasse; and

“—commit to labour policies and legislation that are actually working for workers and advance a decent work agenda for all working people in Ontario.”

I’d like to affix my signature to this and then pass this to Norah to return to the table.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas today Ontario is facing the largest labour shortage in a generation with over 300,000 jobs going unfilled, 300,000 paycheques and opportunities for families across the province; and

“Whereas our previous work in expanding the employment services transformation builds on the success of the first three integrated regions in Peel, Hamilton-Niagara and Muskoka-Kawarthas, where 87% of clients completing their employment plans have found jobs and 81% are working more than 20 hours a week; and

“Whereas the second career program has traditionally helped laid-off unemployed workers access the training they need to become qualified for in-demand, well-paying jobs; and

“Whereas in Ontario’s 2022 budget, Ontario’s Plan to Build, we introduced the Better Jobs Ontario program; and

“Whereas the Better Jobs Ontario program is another major step in our mission to work for workers by:

“—providing access to the program for people with limited or non-traditional work experience, including gig workers, newcomers and the self-employed who need training to get a job;

“—investing $5 million in new funding in 2022-23, in addition to the nearly $200 million invested over the last three years, paying up to 28,000 for short-duration, job-specific training, including those on social assistance, those who are self-employed, gig workers, youth and newcomers;

“—expanding on the current second career program, more applicants will be eligible for up to $500 per week in financial support for basic living expenses, improving client experiences, supporting short-duration training, increasing funding for wraparound supports and prioritizing supports for laid-off and unemployed workers in sectors most impacted by COVID-19.

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support the progress being made in support of workers through transformative programs such as the Better Jobs Ontario program.”

I’m very happy to sign this petition and provide it to Juliet.

I have a petition to stop this government’s health care privatization plan. It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontarians should get health care based on need—not the size” of their wallets;

“Whereas” the Premier and Health Minister “say they’re planning to privatize parts of health care;

“Whereas privatization will bleed nurses, doctors and PSWs out of our public hospitals, making the health care crisis worse;

“Whereas privatization always ends with patients getting a bill;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately stop all plans to further privatize Ontario’s health care system, and fix the crisis in health care by:

“—repealing Bill 124 and recruiting, retaining and respecting doctors, nurses and PSWs with better pay and better working conditions;

“—licensing tens of thousands of internationally educated nurses and other health care professionals already in Ontario, who wait years and pay thousands to have their credentials certified;

“—making education and training free or low-cost for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals;

“—incentivizing doctors and nurses to choose to live and work in northern Ontario;

“—funding hospitals to have enough nurses on every shift, on every ward.”

I couldn’t agree more with this petition. I will affix my signature and send it to the table with page Arushi.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas our government made a promise to hard-working Ontarians in each and every region of the province that we would have their backs and never stop working for workers; and

“Whereas under the leadership of Premier Ford and Minister McNaughton, we have brought in unprecedented reforms and support to deliver for the working people of this province; and

“Whereas our government has raised the minimum wage to $15.50 an hour to help workers and their families with the cost of living, earn bigger paycheques and save for their future; and

“Whereas we have committed to completely eliminating the provincial income tax for anyone making $50,000 or less, keeping money where it belongs, in the pockets of hard-working Ontarian workers; and

“Whereas new changes to the Employment Standards Act require employers with 25 or more employees to have a written policy about employees disconnecting from their jobs at the end of the workday to help employees spend more time with their families; and

“Whereas the government is now investing $1 billion annually in employment and training programs so that unemployed or underemployed workers can train for high-paying, in-demand, family-supporting careers; and

“Whereas we are spending an additional $114 million over three years for the skilled trades strategy, addressing the shortage of workers in the skilled trades by modernizing the system and giving Ontarians the tools they need to join this lucrative workforce; and

“Whereas we are introducing protection for digital platform workers, the first in Canada, to support workers in this economy bring home better, bigger paycheques while improving job security;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to deliver on the commitment made to the people of Ontario by working for workers.”

I thoroughly endorse this petition, will sign it and give it to page Lucas to bring to the table.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs should continue to develop agricultural policy with an emphasis on food security and consideration of the entire agri-food supply chain; and

“Whereas the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs advocates to the federal government to adopt similar policies related to agriculture and food processing, in the spirit of ensuring Ontario farmers remain productive and competitive;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“That the Legislative Assembly of Ontario adopt a motion calling on the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs to continue to develop agricultural policy with an emphasis on food security and consideration of the entire agri-food supply chain, and advocate to the federal government to adopt similar policies related to agriculture and food processing, in the spirit of ensuring that Ontario farmers remain productive and competitive.”

Speaker, I fully endorse this petition. I will sign it and hand it to page Lucas.

It’s an honour to rise in this House to speak on behalf of the great people of Toronto Centre and specifically to this bill, Bill 3, which will give the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa more political power than the 48 other municipal councillors combined in the two cities.

It should be no surprise to those in the House that, given my history of championing local government, urbanism and my love for the city of Toronto, I have many thoughts to share about this bill. I want to start by calling a spade a spade. This bill has nothing to do with housing and everything to do with a revenge plot. The Premier has clearly not gotten over his anger at Torontonians for refusing to make him their mayor in 2014. The counsel I would suggest that the Premier seek to process his residual anger is that from a therapist and not legislative counsel. This bill again demonstrates the Premier’s disregard for Toronto’s democracy and Toronto’s city council. It’s simply a power grab.

We can have a conversation about the merits of a strong-mayor system—that I would welcome—but that is not what the government is proposing through Bill 3. But the Premier doesn’t want to hear from Torontonians; or, even worse, he’ll do exactly the opposite of what they want. Case in point: After a multi-year consultation with Toronto residents, in 2016 Toronto city council adopted an independent report to amend the ward boundary review to achieve voter parity. Even the Ontario Municipal Board sided with city council. In 2018, the Premier ignored Toronto residents to collapse our democratically determined districts into double-sized mega wards. Now a city of nearly three million residents has 25 councillors, which is nearly the same number of councillors as the city of Ottawa, which only has one million residents.

Toronto is the fourth-largest government in North America, with an annual operating budget of $15 billion, the most diverse city on the planet, where nearly three million residents speak over 200 languages, and the Premier wants to centralize power into the hands of one man.

The Premier is not interested in making life better for people in Toronto; he is, however, interested in perpetuating a political system that only allows people who are almost always rich, almost always white, almost always male and almost always incumbents to run and win political office. When 52% of Torontonians belong to a visible minority group and yet only 20% of city councillors do, there is something tragically wrong with that. I’m going to dig into this flaw a little bit further in the legislation, as someone who has had the experience of running both in a municipal city election as well as now running for a political party in the provincial system.

Running for municipal office, as many of the colleagues here will know, is an individual endeavour. It is not going to be accessible to all residents. There are many systemic barriers to overcome, and this discourages diverse voices who deserve to see themselves represented from running because they are not able to. As a councillor, you have to build an organization team from scratch. You have to network and strategize your path to victory almost by yourself. And then you better have the financial means to be able to put your life on hold for the next five to eight months, let alone to fundraise for a political campaign.

Nothing about the demands I describe are structurally favourable for the leaders our city truly and honestly needs. Our city is full of these leaders who are Black, Indigenous, women, people of colour, queer, two-spirited, trans, low income, people living with disabilities and working-class people. They should have a chance to run for political office. A strong-mayor system will actually deter that.

If we were discussing a bill that actually did anything to strengthen Toronto’s democracy, it would actually allow cities to implement ranked ballots, repeal Bill 5 and empower Toronto’s democratically elected government to have a say in the size of their council and the size of their municipal wards. It should enact proportional representation provincially so that cities could also have predictability and long-term plans that persist through changes in government through their provincial counterparts. It should also limit this government’s ability to enact MZOs that undermine public faith in the planning process.

But if this government was actually proposing a bill to get more housing built, I can offer you some advice on that. After all, I was appointed by Mayor Tory and I served eight years on the planning and growth management committee and another additional four—eight altogether—on the planning and housing committee, when I only resigned on May 3 to run in the provincial election.

During those eight years on the planning and growth management and planning and housing committees, I sat directly across from Toronto’s chief planner, the housing secretariat, the director of urban design, the general manager of heritage planning, the director of transportation planning, the director of strategic initiatives, policy and planning, and others. This was led by our chief planner with our professional planning division of 477 full-time employees, staff who oversaw one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing likes to patronize Toronto from his town seat in Brockville. He often boasts that Toronto’s mired in red tape and repeatedly insults city council for their inefficiency. The minister seems to conveniently ignore that in the first quarter of 2022, Toronto had 252 cranes working on construction projects, far outdistancing even the second-place city in the crane index, Los Angeles, which had 51. Seattle was next with 37 cranes; Calgary had 31; and Washington, DC, had 26. Toronto has led in the crane index count every year since 2015.

Meeting provincial growth targets has not been a challenge for the planning and housing committee; nor has it been a challenge for city council. I was constantly, and we were constantly, reminded of this by Toronto’s chief planner, whom I had the distinct honour of working with. Toronto’s chief planner, Gregg Lintern, wrote in his recent Development Pipeline 2021 report:

“The city continues to be an exceptionally attractive” place “for development in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). There are more residential units and more non-residential GFA proposed in the current Development Pipeline than in any other Pipeline over the last five years. Given the scale of this proposed development, comprehensive planning frameworks that link infrastructure” to comprehensive planning that allows us to manage the city’s growth is what we need to determine how we improve the quality of life. The pandemic has not deterred development activity in Toronto.

The city of Toronto’s population growth is firmly on track with the forecast supporting A Place to Grow: Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. As the city’s urban growth centres develop, they are progressing towards or exceeding the province’s density targets set out in the 2020 growth plan as amended by this House.

In Toronto, our professional city planners know this government’s strong mayors bill posing as a housing bill is an absolute farce. Councillors and city planners representing avenues, urban growth centres, especially in midtown, North York and downtown have individually approved more housing than all the MPPs in this House combined together—mathematical fact.

Here’s the receipt from the 2021 housing report from our chief planner: In total, over 503,000 residential units were proposed in projects with development activity from 2016 to 2020. Of this, only 93,000 were actually built. There are more than 162 residential units that have been approved but not built. Again, 246,000 units still under active review, which means that there are about 409,000 residential units that are either under review or active, indicating a continuation of strong development activity in Toronto. In the coming years, what we will see is that the residential units, if all realized over time, will increase the total number of dwellings in the city by over one third.

The next point I have to share with this chamber, Speaker, is that having a strong-mayor system sounds vaguely like a positive thing. What this bill’s title and framing are is fundamentally misleading and unfair. So allow me to frame it more simply based on the recent experience that we’ve had in the city.

What happens when your strong mayor refuses to take basic steps—

Further debate?

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas we know that building critical infrastructure is crucial to delivering better services, moving people faster and generating long-term sustainable economic growth; and

“Whereas under the leadership of Premier Ford our government is making historic investments to build and repair infrastructure in every region of Ontario; and

“Whereas at the heart of the plan is a capital investment of $158.8 billion over the next 10 years, with $20 billion in 2022 and 2023 alone, and includes plans to invest in trains, roads and subways; and

“Whereas our plan includes $25.1 billion in capital over 10 years to support planning, building and improving highways, including Highway 413, the Bradford Bypass, the 401 and Highway 7; and

“Whereas part of this capital investment includes $61.6 billion in capital over 10 years for public transit, including expanding GO rail services to London and Bowmanville...;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support Ontario’s historic program to build highways and key infrastructure.”

I would like to thank George for submitting this petition. I proudly affix my signature to it and will provide it to Ying Ying.

Resuming the debate adjourned on September 7, 2022, on the motion for third reading of the following bill:

Bill 3, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to special powers and duties of heads of council / Projet de loi 3, Loi modifiant diverses lois en ce qui concerne les pouvoirs et fonctions spéciaux des présidents du conseil.

The member has to withdraw.

Withdraw. Thank you, Speaker.

Allow me to reframe this debate for you since we’re talking about the strong mayor. I want to share with you a recent experience that the cities have. You can call it any city.

What happens when your strong mayor refuses to take basic steps to march in the Pride parade to support the 2SLGBTQ community? What happens when your strong mayor has a history of police having to investigate domestic violence, including pressing charges? What happens when your strong mayor was documented handing out $20 bills in social housing to win favour? What happens when your mayor is the kind of person who says, “If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you won’t get AIDS probably”? What happens when your strong mayor always votes against funding HIV/AIDS programs? What happens when your strong mayor rips out bike lanes and blames cyclists for cars hitting them? What happens when your strong mayor promotes digging a private toll tunnel under the Toronto Gardiner Expressway to avoid hitting cyclists?

What happens when your strong mayor charges into his own deputy mayor during a city council meeting, causing her to live with chronic pain until the day she died? What happens when your strong mayor tries to buy and privatize the abutting public parkland next to his house to enlarge his backyard? What happens when your strong mayor tries to take over the waterfront by dropping a mega mall and Ferris wheel without support from the local residents or city council? What happens when your mayor says a home for the developmentally disabled youth in Etobicoke had ruined the community? What happens when your mayor calls women reporters “bitches”?

This Premier wants to impose a strong-mayor system in Toronto to support his provincial priorities—

This Premier wants to impose a strong-mayor system in Toronto to support his provincial priorities, yet we have no idea what the provincial priorities are. The mandate letters aren’t even made public, and you expect us to just accept this carte blanche. But given our recent experience in Toronto, I would say no thanks.

Speaker, mayors are human, and everyone makes mistakes. I know that we can expand ourselves and go beyond that. But some are corrupt and some are incompetent.

City councils as a whole are far more accountable because we can allow the checks and balances to take place. There will be far more accountability with a strong local government when we deliver good and open government for the residents of Toronto and for Ottawa. A strong-mayor system opens the door for corruption and costly mistakes. These are not my words or my assumption; this was already said by the integrity commissioner. That is a price that I don’t think Torontonians are ready to make. It’s certainly a price that’s too expensive; we can’t afford it.

Recently, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing mocked me for promoting a red-light development system to stop development. What he conveniently omitted was that it was a red-light system to hinder bad development and a green-light system to advance good development. He forgot to say that.

He conveniently forgot to tell the whole story, which was widely reported in the Toronto media at that time. But the Toronto city planners will remember this story because in 2019, after this government first took office, the minister unilaterally tore up the city of Toronto’s downtown secondary plan. We had been working on this document for a number of years and it was going to guide our urban growth for the next 25 years.

The planning document was clearly studied and consultations took place with residents and home builders alike. This government’s 224 changes, surgical changes to Toronto’s downtown secondary plan, included eliminating and reducing infrastructure such as daycares and other community facilities as a condition of development. With a stroke of their pen, they enriched developer donors without binding them to building sustainable, responsible buildings in complete neighbourhoods—what every urbanist is asking for.

As a response to this ripping up of our secondary plan, downtown councillors, with the support of our city planners, created a “red light, green light” system to evaluate which development proposals got prioritized, which ones were going to be advanced. We were determined to make sure that even if you tore up, even if this House tore up our secondary plan, we were going to do everything we could to hang on to it because we worked so darn hard at it.

In Ontario, land use planning has always been an important part of the work expected from the local representative. In 2012, I worked with city council to free Toronto from the Ontario Municipal Board in getting the Liberal government to reform and modernize the quasi-judicial, unelected, unaccountable board.

The very next year, after this government was elected, they tossed all those consultations and all that work out the window, into the garbage bin, and then they brought back the OMB, bigger, stronger and uglier than ever before, with a brand new name: the Ontario Land Tribunal.

This government does not stand for good planning or even good development. They don’t even hide the fact that they reward their wealthy developers and land speculator donors. This government prints MZOs like it’s money for rich donors, paves over wetlands for developers, and illegally tears down heritage buildings, like the foundry buildings in the west Donlands, for mystery buyers. They stopped the construction of North York housing for the homeless. The government doesn’t care about housing, but only about those who are enriched and who can keep them in power.

If the Premier truly cared about housing—I want to make this case—he would:

—meet with the co-op housing federation’s requests for seed grant funding;

—empower cities to investigate rule-breaking Airbnbs so that we can actually get our bylaws back under order. We could put 6,500 family homes right into the market today with a stroke of your pen;

—investigate and crack down on money laundering in the housing sector and land speculation;

—introduce rent control and vacancy decontrol legislation to rein in spiraling rental costs;

—fund the construction of new affordable housing so that the most precariously housed among us will be stabilized;

—create incentives to build the right kind of housing, not small bachelors for speculators but the right kind of housing that’s large, family sized, with three, four, five bedrooms. This House would even invest in creating rent-to-own programs for communities like mine in Regent Park, and family-sized and rent-geared-to-income units; and

—mandate universal design and accessible housing standards so that people who use mobility devices will have access to every single unit without being asked to languish on a wait-list.

If this government truly supported housing, you would actually support Mayor Tory’s HousingTO, a $24-billion plan to build 40,000 homes over the next 10 years, which requires a financial commitment from three orders of government, approximately $7.1 billion each—that’s billion with a B.

If this government actually wants to build housing, then you need to spend the money that you’ve been hoarding and not the millions that you sprinkle around, that you re-announce and re-announce and re-announce. We’ve all heard those stories before and we’ve seen those press releases at the city of Toronto.

In fact, every three to six months, city council will reiterate its request to this government for the outstanding $7 billion of capital and operating funding that we need in order for the mayor to meet his housing targets.

If this government was serious about housing, then they would issue the city-initiated MZO that the city council has been asking for for two years at 175 Cummer Avenue in North York, but instead the MPP and the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has put the brakes on that, asking for more consultation. So we now have 69 units of new, prefabricated housing that could be homes, sitting in a parking lot while people are sleeping in encampments, while we carry out bogus consultation.

Residents know that talk is cheap. This government talks a good deal about housing, but when it comes to building housing and paying the bill for housing, to get shovels in the ground, very little is taking place. Residents are expected to pay their rent on time; we expect the government to pay their bills on time.

For all those reasons—and I could go on, but I’m not going to because I’m getting a little worked up. And to be quite honest, so are the residents of Toronto and so are the members of city council and so is our planning department, because we have all worked so hard to build one of the most globally competitive and dynamic cities in Canada, if not around the world, where we’re world leaders on innovation, green tech and sustainable technology. We are a major employment cluster, a major producer of the GDP, yet we get treated like this. Torontonians deserve better. City council deserves better.

We are looking for a partnership in this government to build housing for Ontarians. This bill doesn’t do any of that, and that is why I cannot support it.

I listened intently to the speech from the honourable member. She pointed out a few facts and I want to emphasize some of them because she gave some very good statistics. Over a 14-year period, they had approximately 500,000 units in development—over a 14-year period. We need slightly more than 500,000 in a 10-year period. Does status quo of that many in 40% more time make sense?

Question?

Interjections.

Thank you to the member. The reality is that the chief planner in the city planning department has repeatedly said that the city of Toronto is on track to meet our housing targets as prescribed by the provincial growth plan. Not only will we meet it, we will exceed it.

During my time at city council, we saw record development applications come in and record approvals. Are we on track? Absolutely. But is everybody else on track in every community where people want to live? That question has yet to be seen.

I have seen that there is an expansion of casinos. I have seen that there is, perhaps, the ability to take over city council. There is probably even some conversation, based on the bill, that perhaps you’d give up the powers from the elected mayor, that somehow you could usurp that and give it to a politically appointed mayor and the regional chairs. All of that is in the bill. What’s not in the bill is any language that speaks about housing.

What the developers are looking for, what they’re really, really looking for, is help to reduce the costs of borrowing. They’re looking for some stability in the supply chain, and they’re looking for help with the labour shortage.

Thank you. Sorry for the confusion there, Madam Speaker.

Thank you very much for that really passionate and informative speech. Thank you so much to the member from Toronto Centre. It’s a real honour to serve in this House with you.

You’ve mentioned to me in conversation that in July alone, the city council of the city of Toronto passed approvals for 24,000 housing units. I want to make sure that that the number is correct. If the city is meeting all of its growth targets, if they are approving the housing that needs to be built, why is this government trying to undermine city council? Why do you believe?

I want to thank the member for the address. It was going pretty quick there and I probably missed some of it, but you were speaking quite specifically about the “what if”—paragraphs of “what if this mayor, what if this mayor, what if this mayor.” I guess my question would be, if the mayor—past, present, future; whatever you’re talking about, I’m not sure—would be doing something that the rest of council found so disagreeable or reprehensible, they would need to have only two thirds—and you say you have faith in that council. Two thirds of them could overrule the mayor. Is that not part of this bill, that a two-thirds majority of the council could stop a mayor from doing something that the rest of council felt was reprehensible or simply unacceptable?

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to ask a question of the member from Toronto Centre. I appreciated their presentation.

I was at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference and heard from various big city mayors, who shared with us that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing didn’t have the answers to the questions that they had. Apparently, they asked questions like, “What if municipal priorities are at odds with provincial priorities?” or “Do they need a population threshold?” or “What will the consultation process with the mayors be?” And they kept being told that there would be a portal and an email.

So my question is: Is that good enough? Does the member know of the answers to those questions? Because the mayors that we heard from didn’t ask for this and had a lot of questions.