My understanding is that your government never consulted with AMO on the bill.

Mr. Rice, a developer, bought land on the greenbelt in the middle of September for $80 million that is now probably going to be worth a billion dollars. I don’t know who gave them a heads-up on this particular bill.

What I want to ask you is, how will this bill help the Niagara region, where I’m from, take on the financial hardship it will likely face from Bill 23 and the reduction in development fees? The region is responsible for policing, corrections officers—we have a jail in our area—ambulance services, where we have backloads at our hospital, our long-term care—and we know about the 5,000 people who died in long-term care—retirement, water and waste water. How are they going to provide those types of incredible services with less development fees?

I guess it goes back—Speaker, through you to the member—to whether you support keeping the status quo.

If you’re like the member opposite, you might very well think that housing prices are fine in Niagara region. I suggest that there are many, many people who live in Niagara who feel that housing costs are too high—finding out that there’s not enough supply, there’s not enough opportunity to have a house that meets their needs and their budget.

If you agree with that last premise, which I happen to agree with, you need to lower those baseline costs. You need to deal with those fees and charges.

The status quo is not working. I just talked about our best year in 30 years. It’s still not enough to meet the growing demand of Ontario. We’re going to have two million people who are going to come to our province by 2031. We need to act today.

Again, you have to look at whether you’re going to favour the status quo or whether you’re going to put a system in place that incents the type of building you need.

If the member opposite’s municipality needs purpose-built rental, family-sized rental, there’s an opportunity to discount development charges to incent that type of development.

Municipalities were pretty clear—it wasn’t just things that they needed to do; it was things that the province needed to put in place. We needed to make sure they had the tools to get shovels in the ground faster.

This development charge piece is geared exactly for the question that the member has asked.