Thank you to the minister for that response. This is all good news for the people of Ontario.

Since day one, our government, under the leadership of the Premier, has been committed to eliminating barriers to economic success for all Ontarians and acknowledging the unique contributions of diverse communities.

Throughout my home region of Windsor-Essex, we have not only seen a rich history of people of African descent, but we are also seeing many active community organizations and projects dedicated to preserving this vital history and building a bright future ahead. The Black community, as well as other diverse communities and their businesses, are truly crucial to the growth and success of Windsor and the surrounding areas.

Can the minister please elaborate on the supports that are available for diverse communities across Ontario?

Mr. Clark moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 97, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to housing and development / Projet de loi 97, Loi modifiant diverses lois en ce qui concerne le logement et l’aménagement.

I want to thank the member opposite for the presentation this afternoon. I know Hamilton, like Windsor, is very much an industrial city and has been part of recessions and boom-and-bust cycles. I certainly remember the boom and bust from the last recession; coincidentally, it was the same time as we had our previous government which had crippling deficits, crushing debt, a systematic dismantling of the manufacturing sector and, quite frankly, unaffordable electricity costs.

The changes that are being proposed in this bill—some of them have to do with electricity—will ultimately ensure that ratepayers are not subject to additional costs that are not directly related to their usage of electricity or gas. Does the member plan on correcting the record about lack of affordability in this bill—because I think it’s there—by supporting this bill to keep penalties off of rates?

I think I heard the comment earlier, “Is this what we come to government to do?” I’d say, in my case, yes. My previous career as an engineer for a municipality meant that I dealt with regulations all the time and their impact on the public that we served with unnecessary costs imposed, unnecessary delays. It kept things from getting done.

I spent nearly 20 years being the regulator. There were rules and they needed to be applied, and I did my job faithfully. Actually, it came back to haunt me at our pre-budget consultations a few weeks ago when one of our local property owners actually raised an issue he had brought directly to me when I was Windsor’s drainage superintendent. He cited it as an example of unnecessary red tape. The situation was that he had a piped municipal drain that crossed his property just at the corner; it wasn’t much. But he had an economic development opportunity that he wanted to leverage quite quickly. He had an engineer with him who demonstrated a suitable fix and a way to accommodate the piped drain and the land development proposal. And I told him no. He was incredulous.

The reason I told him no was the Drainage Act required that downstream properties affected by the change had to be notified and have the opportunity to participate in the dialogue as to whether this was a good idea or not. While the turnaround on this wouldn’t really have been the worst among government standards, it was lengthy enough that the opportunity to land any investment by this property owner could be lost. Speaker, the irony of it is that at that point in time, our government had already engaged in consultations for amendments to the Drainage Act that, once passed, would have given me the discretion to say yes.

So I saw the benefits of previous red tape reduction efforts by this government. Absolutely, there were cases that I witnessed first-hand where they would have made a difference. There are countless stories like this that I can tell.

But it’s important to recognize that regulations exist for a reason. You have to trust your regulators and their authority and their judgment. Giving a certain amount of discretion means that we don’t have to just make work to make work and add cost to an initiative where it truly isn’t necessary. If something is reasonable, please let your regulators make that judgment call and not necessarily have it written down that there is a mandate to do specific things.

Personally, having been responsible for holding up and adding costs to projects repeatedly for intangible benefits to the common good, it truly is a privilege to see bills like this one that try to get rid of unnecessary work and expense in the delivery of vital services for the people of Ontario.

Our government’s red tape reduction efforts follow seven key principles:

(1) Less onerous compliance requirements should apply to small businesses rather than to larger businesses solely.

(2) Recognized national and international standards should be adopted.

(3) Digital services that are accessible to regulated entities should be provided.

(4) Regulated entities that demonstrate excellent compliance should be recognized.

(5) Unnecessary reporting should be reduced, and steps should be taken to avoid requiring regulated entities to provide the same information to government repeatedly. That’s something I saw time and time again: giving the same information across the board to various agencies who were looking at exactly the same thing.

(6) An instrument should focus on the user by communicating clearly, providing for reasonable response timelines and creating a single point of contact.

(7) An instrument should specify the desired result that regulated entities must meet rather than the means by which the result must be achieved.

Speaker, this bill contains 42 separate and distinct measures. I know that they will reduce frustration, save money and help make things work better. Knowing that my time is short today—I think I’ve just about five minutes left—I’d like to focus on two particular refreshing approaches that this bill has brought forward.

Number one: For people of my generation multitasking is everything. There’s so much going on and not enough time to do it all. We have known a world with card catalogues, libraries and encyclopedias with 20-something volumes. But then we came of age with the keyword search, and so the digital modernization components of this bill reflect today’s world. We are a digital-first society, and we need to get there.

I signed up for epost over 20 years ago. I think it was actually 2000. I was going through my old files and saw my application to Canada Post. Epost was just shut down last year, but it was the first electronic billing records system, and now it’s actually beyond its usefulness; people have moved on to other ways.

I continue to get RSP cards, investments, pension prospectuses, which, over the course of time, I’m probably going to lose at some point. Having electronic filings helps me immensely, because they’re archived; I have an opportunity to access them. And this bill contemplates that, just like the rest of the world, it doesn’t have to be printed just because the government likes it. There is a better way.

Also, part of this is clarifying, especially for the occupational health and safety and labour-related matters: An email is considered a written record. That is a long-awaited realization that modern practices by employees and employers is indeed to conduct business electronically. Our legislation needs to catch up, and we are there.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed us our long-conceived notions for legally compliant meetings where people travelled in person for long distances just for the meeting could very well be ended. I don’t want to decry the value of meeting in person; we’re here today. I live four hours away, so I travel—just as many of you do—long distances to be here in person. But not all meetings warrant an in-person visit every single time, especially when it’s a short period of time. A two-hour meeting—yes, I’ve done that, charging mileage, hotel and per diem for a very brief meeting. Now, with the advent of virtual meetings, not only do I not pass those costs on to my employer, I also don’t lose a productive day of work, and I can get my work done. This bill makes corporate virtual processes permanent in Ontario.

The other part of the bill I wanted to cite had to do with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. Speaking again from first-hand experience, the MTO corridor permits do apply to a number of proposals, including one I did involving a low-impact, environmentally friendly parking lot. It was an infiltration trench. It didn’t have anything to do with the King’s highway; it wasn’t adjacent to the highway, but it was within the corridor as defined, and so that meant I had to get an MTO permit. It was a regulation whose reach was far and wide. Understanding that some developments do have an impact on the King’s highway—take, for example, a Costco or a Tim Hortons, where people are turning left and people behind are going to have to hit on the brakes, waiting for that left-hand turn to happen—probably not something we want direct access to, especially on a controlled-access highway like Highway 3 back home.

Our government is reinforcing the opportunity now to undertake pre-consultation and better triage these applications to the MTO. And I want to say that MTO was great in my case; they facilitated the permit process as quickly as they could. And now with pre-consultation, more opportunities to reduce the time frame for those rules will exist. The workload decreases, because the increased engagement and awareness of developers and municipalities and the inclusion of specific language in MTO and municipal affairs and housing policy documents and processes is part of this bill, and I want to commend this approach to MTO corridor management.

I will also highlight, as part of the corridor management, the broadband implications. There’s a lot underground in a municipal right-of-way. Most of them are about 66 feet wide—larger arterial roads were about 100 feet—and there’s only so much room down there. One thing I’ve seen in my neighbourhood has been the installation of broadband by multiple companies. When I was a municipal councillor, a lot of my constituents were upset that there was actually two choices for broadband because of all the construction disruption. But unfortunately, there’s only a limited amount of room.

A lot of communities don’t have broadband, and they need it. Rural communities need broadband in order to stay viable, and our government is improving guideline 3.0 that clears up the processes and timelines for MTO corridor permits, and this initiative will definitely expedite projects of significance like the expansion of broadband services to Ontarians, so—

Thank you to the member from Windsor–Tecumseh for your thoughts on this bill today. I want to refer back to your role. As you said, you were a regulator. Regulators play an important role in this province, particularly when it comes to protecting pensions that people have worked all their lives for, and when it comes to protecting investors, particularly small investors that have their life savings invested.

The Auditor General’s recent report—it’s actually from 2022, a value-for-money audit—talked about pension plan members who may be unaware of the risk that “they may not receive their full targeted pension benefits,” and improvements in sector oversight were needed to protect investors. She also went on to say that over the “past three fiscal years, about 718 pension plans submitted a total of” 1,000 “required filings late,” but they were not charged.

Rather than going after that, in this bill you just make it so that pensioners don’t have the—they have the obligation to say they want to receive their—

I very much appreciated listening to the member from Windsor–Tecumseh and his remarks, and reflecting on the fact that he used to be, as I think I heard him say, a drainage superintendent in Windsor. That’s a very practical position, and, frankly, someone we really need in this building, and perhaps even in this Legislature sometimes.

I was interested in the comprehensiveness of this bill—energy, colleges and universities, mining, natural resources, infrastructure, transportation, so many ministries impacted directly. I wonder if the member can further reflect on, from his past experience in a very practical role, other practical benefits he sees from this bill going forward.

I also want to thank the member for his contribution to the debate as well. Actually, I want to follow up on the question that my colleague on this side of the House from Toronto Centre asked; I know that the member from Windsor–Tecumseh may not have had enough time to answer.

We have a lot of businesses that are in debt right now across this province, and because of the red tape created by your government, unfortunately a lot of these businesses did not qualify, or even after qualifying, did not receive the funds that they truly needed to just stay afloat.

What would you do to change that, and how come there is nothing in this bill to support those?