My question is with respect to the strong-mayor powers. We often hear the government talk about how Mayor Tory was elected with this large majority, but the fact of the matter was, after his secret meeting with the Premier prior to the municipal election, it wasn’t mentioned at any time throughout the municipal election.

Does the government House leader believe that the election might have changed if folks in Toronto had actually known that this secret meeting had taken place and they were planning to give minority rule to Toronto city council?

I’m pleased to stand near the end of the debate. I’m going to be sharing my time with the member from University–Rosedale.

Look, the government House leader can say whatever he wants. This bill is an attack on democracy. Everyone knows it. That’s why we had some very impassioned presentations to the committee on very short notice. Very few people came forward to the committee to speak who were actually in favour of this bill. Folks are outraged right across the province and they’re outraged on a number of different levels, for the attack on democracy and for the attack on the greenbelt.

It’s interesting to listen—I just brought it up in my question—to the government talk about how there’s some kind of a mandate for this and a mandate for that. This is a government that doesn’t come out and tell the truth before they go out and campaign, Speaker. With the greenbelt, as a matter of fact, they said the exact opposite of what they ended up doing. The Premier is on film in the 2018 election divvying up the greenbelt to his friends. Then he came out and said, “No, no, I’m not going to touch the greenbelt.” As a matter of fact, I think the leader of the Green Party—I saw some research that he did: 18 times, the Premier and the housing minister, between the two of them, promised they wouldn’t touch the greenbelt. Now they’re carving it up for their developer friends.

On the issue of strong mayors: Look, again, the mayor of Toronto came out and admitted that he had a meeting—and it was a secret meeting, because no one knew about it—with the Premier of the province. He requested special powers so that he could rule Toronto city council with one third of the vote—the first time in North America, as the civil liberties association at our committee pointed out, that a government is going to do away with majority rule and institute a system of minority rule. That was planned prior to the municipal election, in a meeting that they didn’t tell anyone about. As one of the former mayors said, they’re closing down the front door to the people of Toronto and they’re opening up the back door to lobbyists and friends of the Conservative Party.

Let’s be clear: Throughout the election, this was never mentioned by the mayor. So here’s a mayor who meets with the Premier, negotiates special powers of minority rule and then goes into a campaign and doesn’t mention it at all through the campaign to the people of Toronto. I can see—and I think that most of the people on this side of the House can see—the anger that is starting to bubble up now that people understand what this mayor and this Premier have done.

We had a group of former mayors come out from all different parties: Art Eggleton, David Crombie, Barbara Hall, David Miller, John Sewell, and they wrote a letter letting the Premier know—begging the Premier and saying: “Listen, don’t do this. Don’t do this to democracy. Don’t be the first jurisdiction in North America that institutes minority rule.”

In their letter they said, “This bill would allow you as mayor to pass bylaws with support from just over one third of council members in any matter somehow defined as ‘within a provincial interest.’” And that isn’t defined, Speaker. It’s not defined at all. It’s whatever the Premier says can be in the provincial interest, and then that is pushed through by one third of councillors. Eight councillors and the mayor of Toronto can go forward and pass bylaws, ignoring the other two thirds.

We just had a letter come from councillors in the city of Toronto, from all political stripes, saying, “Listen, we don’t want these powers. We don’t want the mayor to have these powers.” AMO did a survey—this is just on the veto powers contained in Bill 3—and 75% of mayors across the province and 95% of city councillors say, “No. This is undemocratic.” That’s just the veto powers. Now we have minority rule.

These mayors say: “We are fearful of the real substantive risks this change would pose for our city. The principle of majority rule has always been and must continue to be how council conducts the public’s business.

“We are now in a time when our provincial government is revealing its real agenda for our future. It is a disturbing future. It includes the unwinding of our greenbelt and the hollowing out of the mandate of conservation authorities that were created to protect us from environmental disaster.

“The province is also taking steps toward the intentional reduction of farmland in favour of more urban sprawl and the stripping away of rules and regulations supporting the building of healthy and affordable communities. All of this is taking place within a matter of months into a new mandate, without having put these troublesome changes before the voters. This is alarming in the extreme.”

These mayors have written this and said, “If you tell the government you’re not interested in these powers, we will come and we will support you. We will help you.” This isn’t intended to be punitive. They’re shocked. They’re surprised that John Tory would enter into an agreement like this in secret with the Premier of the province of Ontario prior to an election and not mention it at any time during the election campaign—shocking.

It shouldn’t actually be that shocking to us. For me, as the municipal affairs critic and as a former city councillor, this is probably the most shocking legislation. It’s certainly up there with taking charter rights away from workers to collectively bargain a collective agreement, which happened earlier. But I guess it really shouldn’t surprise me because there’s a long history with this government—

Interjection.

Shortly after the 2018 election, they tabled Bill 5, which cancelled the regional chair elections and cut the size of Toronto city council. That happened with the municipal election campaign already under way, and when a lower court found Bill 5 to be unconstitutional and they granted a stay, then the government passed Bill 31, which invoked the “notwithstanding” clause to bypass charter rights—not the first time they were going to do that. After an appeal, Bill 5 went ahead; Bill 31 was left to die on the order paper. Then in 2020, this government tabled Bill 218, which was supposed to be a COVID recovery bill, but inside of that, sneakily, had repealed the legislation that allowed municipalities to have ranked ballots.

Back in September, the government, right before the municipal election, when clearly they already knew that they had cooked up this secret deal with the mayor of Toronto for strong-mayor powers—they introduced the veto powers under strong mayors. Then they went and they decided to suspend everyone’s charter rights to collectively bargain, something that is internationally recognized, that workers have the right to collectively bargain, and they used the “notwithstanding” clause for that. We know what happened with that. Then they come forward with strong-mayor legislation that does away, for the first time in North America, with majority rule and institutes a system of minority rule that the civil liberties association and pretty much everyone else in Ontario who cares about democracy is shocked and alarmed with.

Then, after telling people for years that—I guess it’s been five years now that the Premier has been saying, “I won’t touch the greenbelt; I won’t touch the greenbelt.” He fought an election on the promise he wouldn’t touch the greenbelt. They’re opening up the greenbelt for development, despite the fact that their own Housing Affordability Task Force clearly said that land was not a problem. We have more than enough land. That’s the government’s own experts on the Housing Affordability Task Force, and yet what we see is the opening up of the greenbelt.

We’ve been pointing out every day in the Legislature, Speaker, these shady deals: people buying land in the greenbelt; developers buying land. They’re not buying it to farm on. They know what’s going to happen. They knew it was going to be taken out of the greenbelt. Now they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars. And that land was put into the greenbelt at a certain price. That’s taking money directly from the public and putting it in the pockets of developers who speculated on that land and banked it.

So that long, long history—I’m going to hand things over to my friend from University–Rosedale, but the record of contempt for democracy from this government is absolutely shocking. To hear the government House leader stand up and pretend that they’re somehow making democracy better when they’re destroying democracy in our province on a number of different levels is absolutely appalling. The people of Ontario are not going to stand for it.

These two issues, minority rule and opening up the greenbelt, are going to be the end of this government.

It’s a great question and something that municipalities all over Ontario are grappling with. As a matter of the fact, Markham’s mayor and councillors began their new term at council with a special council meeting where they rejected Bill 23 precisely for that reason, and that’s in the government House leader’s own riding. Taxes are going to have to increase $600 to $1,000 per year for the average homeowner. That’s what the town of Markham is saying.

I think the government House leader should pay attention to home and talk to his mayor and council about how much their taxes are going to go up because of the irresponsible actions of this government.

He can get as mean and nasty as he wants in the Legislature. We’ll continue to talk about real issues here on this side of the House.

Thank you to the member for the question. I guess it’s a difference of philosophy between us. I don’t think that democracy is a tool to be used or not used. I think that majority rule is the basis of our democracy. As I mentioned earlier, this is the first jurisdiction in North America that’s going to institute minority rule, and people are absolutely shocked by it. I think it’s something that’s going to follow this government around as they continue to attack democracy and violate people’s charter rights.

So to the member’s question, I think the responsibility is to the people that elected us, not to developers or to other politicians.

My question is to the Premier. Markham’s mayor and councillors began their new term at council in a special meeting to unanimously reject Bill 23. This is the government House leader’s riding. City staff presented a report showing that the changes in Bill 23 could cost the city $136 million in annual revenue, requiring an increase of 50% to 80% on property taxes to maintain service levels, equalling an estimated $600 to $1,000 a year to the average taxpayer.

Speaker, why does the Premier choose to subsidize developer profits by increasing the taxes of the people of Markham?

Interjection.