I’m happy to stand and give comments on Bill 39. It’s hard to know what to say when you see a government drop a bill like this while the housing bill is still being debated and we’re endeavouring to get people’s opinions across the province.

We have committees going on on Bill 23 right now—and I think the public should know that those committee hearings have been shut down. They’ve been shut down because the standing orders for this House say that you can’t talk about the same topic in two different places in this House. So we have all kinds of folks who have come in for Bill 23 hearings, to have their opinions heard—I don’t even know if all the members on that side of the House know what their own party, what their own government has done here.

We have people from all across the province who have come here to give their opinion in consultations at the committee hearings which are in this building.

We have 10 people from the city of Toronto who are showing up today to give their opinion, which the government asked for. The government chose for them to come here and give their opinion on the housing bill, and they don’t get to present today, and we don’t get to hear what they had to say. We could say that it’s possibly incompetence on the part of the government and perhaps the government House leader, but I tend to think they must have known what they were doing.

We have all these people showing up for committee, and now the committee is being shut down. We have the C.D. Howe Institute, Canadian mental health—a pretty important group that we want to be hearing from. We’re talking about homelessness and housing issues, so you’d think you’d want to hear from them. They’ve taken the time to come here today, and their voice has been shut down. The Toronto board of trade, the federation of rental housing—you’d think we’d want to hear from them.

Folks in my own riding, the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority—they changed the Conservation Authorities Act in the housing bill. We want to hear from conservation authorities. They’ve come here. They’ve been shut down. The government doesn’t want to hear from them.

The town of Blue Mountain—they probably drove here through the snow for committee hearing meetings, and they’ve been told, “We are not interested in hearing from you.”

A lot of the groups that have shown up today, let’s be clear, were speaking against Bill 23—but one of them wasn’t AMO, the Association of Municipalities Ontario, because they weren’t even invited to the hearings by the government. The government didn’t want to hear, on a municipal affairs and housing bill, from the Association of Municipalities Ontario. Think about that. All these other people were invited, and many of them showed up, many of them probably drove through the snow, and now the government is saying, “Go home. We don’t want to hear from you. We’re not interested in what you have to say. We’ve got this other bill that we are going to drop today—a bill that no one asked for or recommended, that’s going to violate local democracy and the rights of municipalities to act in a democratic way. So you can all go home.” Let’s be clear that that’s what has happened this morning here at the Ontario Legislature. Quite frankly, it’s a disgusting manoeuvre by the government and extremely disrespectful.

In committee hearings last week, my colleague from University–Rosedale attempted to add extra days of hearings because AMO hadn’t been invited and other people wanted to speak. The government very strictly limited the amount of consultation and the number of hearing dates. So we voted and we got it on the record—we made a motion to have another day of hearings so that everyone could speak, and the government voted against it. They didn’t want to hear from more people. Now they don’t even want to hear from the people who showed up. That’s absolutely disgusting and disrespectful.

The government put forward this bill that no one asked for, that no one recommended—no consultation with anyone. They tabled a bill that will allow them to appoint regional chairs in York, Peel and Niagara. Just four years ago, in the middle of a municipal election campaign, this government cancelled regional chair elections in these regions—elections in which citizens were electing their chair at large because they had gone through a process and decided that it was more democratic, and they had gone through all the motions, so they had elections at large planned.

I know, being from Niagara, that we had folks who were actually raising money, were getting ready for a municipal election where they would be a candidate for chair of Niagara region. After they had already put their name forward, after they had already done all that work and started their campaign, this government came along and said, “No, we don’t trust citizens of those regions with free and fair elections.” Now they don’t even trust democratically elected councillors to choose their chair, as they did in the past. Now the Premier is going to hand-pick who he wants to rule in his stead and hand them additional powers to do his bidding.

I think we all realize on this side of the House how absolutely ridiculous it is, at a time when the government is failing education workers and children, when pediatric ICUs are over capacity, when we’re in an affordable housing crisis, that this Premier is focused on municipal governments and autocratic changes to municipal government. And the Premier isn’t just appointing elected positions here—

Speaker, through you to the Premier: Yesterday, in a move no one asked for or recommended, this government, with absolutely no consultation, tabled a bill that would allow them to appoint regional chairs in Niagara, York and Peel. Just four years ago, in the middle of the municipal election campaign, this government cancelled regional chair elections in these regions—elections in which citizens were electing their chairs-at-large. They didn’t trust citizens with free and fair elections. Now they don’t even trust democratically elected councillors to choose a chair. Now the Premier is going to hand-pick who he wants to rule in his stead, as he hands them additional powers to do his bidding.

Why is the Premier showing such disdain for municipalities and turning local democracy into his own personal sandbox?

It’s absolutely ludicrous that at a time when he is failing education workers and children, pediatric ICUs are over capacity and we’re in an affordable housing crisis, this Premier is laser-focused on autocratic changes to municipal government.

The Premier isn’t just appointing elected positions; he’s also expanding strong-mayor powers to allow for minority rule while removing environmental protections and gutting conservation authorities.

Here’s what AMO said about the government’s recent housing bill: “The province has offered no evidence that the radical elements of the bill will improve housing affordability. It is more likely that the bill will enhance the profitability of the development industry at the expense of taxpayers and the natural environment.” That’s AMO, who were not even invited to the Bill 23 hearings that the government just shut down this morning.

Speaker, will the Premier admit that he sees municipalities and local democracy as nothing more than a delivery system for his decisions and a way to shop around farmland and green space to his wealthy friends?