Merci, madame la Présidente, et félicitations encore pour votre nouveau poste. I have to say, the chair looks good on you.

It’s a privilege to speak to Bill 3, Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, 2022, today. As we know, Ontario is facing a housing crisis, so when I first saw the name of this bill when it was finally introduced, I thought, “Wow, this government is finally going to do something about housing.” Boy, was I wrong. Don’t let the name fool you. This bill has absolutely nothing to do with housing. Sadly, despite its name, this bill won’t build a single new housing unit.

There are no measures in this bill that will directly lead to more housing. There are no measures in this bill that will address the affordability crisis facing Ontario families. This bill does nothing for people like my parents, who lived in the suburbs and raised their family there their whole life, then wanted to downsize their home but stay close enough to be close to their kids and the grandkids without gobbling up all of their equity. This bill doesn’t do anything for people like them. It does nothing for young professionals and young families who are having trouble buying an entry-level home in Orléans and other parts of Ontario. This bill does nothing to build or finance any housing whatsoever. It doesn’t address the life-cycle issues being faced by co-ops and other housing providers. It doesn’t address land availability, density or zoning.

Madam Speaker, quite simply put, this bill is not a housing bill; this bill is a municipal governance bill. That’s okay. You can have municipal governance bills. But call it what it is: a municipal governance bill.

As I’ve said before, it’s not even close to the most important municipal governance issue facing cities and towns in Ontario. We have councillors who are abusing their staff and their colleagues—not addressed in this bill. We have councils unable to meet because of lack of quorum, consistently—not addressed in this bill. We have councils firing their lawyer because they don’t like his advice, only to hire a new lawyer and then lose in court as a result—not addressed in this bill. There are real municipal governance issues that need to be addressed in our province, and unfortunately this bill doesn’t come close.

This bill seems to come from the point of view that councillors and senior city staff are the reason why housing isn’t being built or isn’t being built as fast as it’s needed in Ontario. This government talks about cutting red tape and accelerating approvals to bring housing to market faster. That sounds really good. However—since this bill is about Toronto and Ottawa, I’m going to talk about my hometown for a minute—in Ottawa, the biggest piece of red tape holding up housing isn’t in the mayor’s office; the biggest piece of red tape isn’t in the city manager’s office; and despite an anti-development NIMBY councillor running for mayor—a councillor supported by the NDP caucus, I might add—the biggest piece of red tape isn’t around the council table.

How can I say that? Let me give you a couple of numbers. The current administration at the city of Ottawa was largely elected in 2010. I was proud to be part of that class of change at city hall. As we started to implement our work, we started to measure the progress of our work. Measurement is an important part of implementing change. I firmly believe that. In 2012, the city of Ottawa issued building permits to build 6,522 new units of housing. After being in office for 10 or 11 years, in 2021, the city of Ottawa issued building permits for the construction of 10,016 new housing units. That’s a 54% increase in housing unit starts. It seems to me that Ottawa city council is doing quite a good job at accelerating housing construction in the city of Ottawa.

Ottawa has put in place the vision, the ambition and, in large part, the staff to increase housing construction. And while there are always improvements to the process that can be made, the city of Ottawa has demonstrated its commitment and drive to address the housing crisis.

The biggest piece of red tape with housing and development in the city of Ottawa isn’t the mayor, isn’t council, isn’t the CAO or the city manager. The biggest piece of red tape impacting housing in the city of Ottawa is this government. And why do I say that? This government is sitting on the city of Ottawa’s official plan.

Laughter.

Thank you to the member on the other side, and I want to thank him for his statement.

One of the things that is part and parcel to this new issue—obviously, it’s not a new issue; we’ve had 15 years of a previous government that did very little to deal with this issue. It’s not a new issue, but attainable homes is a massive problem, and Ontario is launching the housing supply action plan, along with this. This team will work to implement the recommendations that we’ve heard from the Housing Affordability Task Force.

Does the member on the other side have any comments with respect to this affordability issue and the task force? Does he not think that it would be important to have them at the table to help with this issue of affordability that has just been brought up?