I listened intently to the member from Peterborough, who spoke completely about housing and the housing crisis that we’re all seeing. But the bill itself, the strong-mayors bill, talks nothing about housing. It’s in the title, but as we’ve seen in previous Conservative bills, titles don’t necessarily mean what is actually the purpose. What the bill actually does is empower the mayor with a whole bunch of powers that will probably create more chaos than we’re seeing currently.

The member talked about his community. He talked about the land tribunal, how it went through the process and actually fixed the community’s needs in favour of the developers that he was talking about. Why does he not believe in the process that’s already in front of them, instead of giving mayors powers that are unnecessary?

My question is for the Premier. Last week, a heartbreaking story of a mom and her daughter was published in the Hamilton Spectator. Nicole is the mother to 10-year-old Alexa, who has a rare neurodegenerative condition and is receiving palliative care at home. Nicole has had to perform complex, specialized care that neither she nor her husband are trained for because they can’t get the hours of care that they need to care for Alexa. Instead of spending time with their daughter, they’re filling the gaps of this broken home care system.

Can the Premier explain why a child who needs, and is eligible, for 24/7 care is not eligible and able to get it?

Families like Nicole’s are being expected to just deal with it and figure it out on their own because they don’t have a choice. This is completely unacceptable.

When will this government properly invest in our health care system so families can expect to receive the promised necessary hours of care that their family members need?

No, just a quick question, Speaker.

This is the first time I’ve had had the opportunity to stand and speak freely since my re-election, so I’d like to take the time to thank the constituents of Hamilton Mountain for giving me the opportunity to, once again, serve your interests here in the people’s House, the Ontario Legislature, and the many people who helped on my campaign, ensuring my re-election. I’m eternally grateful to all of those people who truly put their sweat, blood and tears on the line, talking to the people of Hamilton Mountain, and making sure that I had the ability to stand here and to represent them. Thank you.

Speaker, speaking of being out and knocking on doors and talking to constituents, the number one issue that I heard, for sure, was affordability; it was the cost of housing. It was, “Where are my kids going to live? Where are my grandchildren going to live?”

Young people not being able to afford to buy a home, people not being able to afford to pay the rent in places that they were staying, renovictions happening on a regular basis so that landlords could bump up the rent—those are the types of things that we can control.

Good legislation could be brought forward to this House to help those matters, to stop the renovictions, to make sure that there is real rent control in place so that they cannot flip a home or an apartment into the hundreds of dollars, pushing people onto the streets, pushing people into the unscrupulous, awful conditions that we’re hearing on a regular basis.

There was an article in the Spectator, I believe it was two days ago, talking about McMaster students not being able to afford to eat. They were struggling just to be able to find a place to live. One quote from a young person talked about having a room the size of a closet that was just big enough for a single bed, at an enormous cost to that young person, and the maybe $50 a week that they were going to have to be able to eat for that week. I’m quite sure that when we’re sending our young people to university, and we’re looking at them to be the next leaders in our communities, to be the next doctors, to be the next lawyers, to be the next engineers—why are we doing that to them, with such a struggle? They can’t afford the housing, they can’t afford to eat, they’re barely getting by, and we’re expecting them to be the next leaders of our communities.

When we talk about housing, we should be talking about the issues that actually could be addressed. This bill that has been put forward, Bill 3, which was an absolute priority for this government—we have a major health care crisis happening in our province, and the number one bill that this government brings forward is powers to give the strong-mayors powers. The title says “Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act,” but if you look through this bill, which I just did as we were sitting here talking—I’ve looked through it and cannot find the word “housing” at all, except in the title. That is not how we address the housing crisis in this province. This should not be the priority for this government coming back into the 43rd Parliament. This is not the message that I know the members across heard while they were knocking on doors—if they knocked on doors, if they talked to their constituents. This is not the message that was sent back to this Legislature. We’re not even quite sure why this is the first bill being brought back.

My colleagues who have spent time at AMO the last few days come back with the messages that the mayors they talked to—nobody wants this. Nobody wants these super powers.

Quite frankly, as I read through it and try to understand what this bill is doing, it seems quite dangerous. It seems so dangerous to give one person the power of hiring and firing the executive people like the city managers, the directors of departments. Who are those people going to be beholden to? What kind of answers and solutions do you expect out of those people if they’re beholden to a single mayor? To me, that does not make any sense whatsoever. And then to put it under the cloud of affordable housing, of ensuring that you’re fixing a housing crisis, something that people are so desperate for—they’re so desperate for help in housing, and you provide a bill that gives one person super powers.

How is it that this is the first act of business from this government in the 43rd Parliament? Is it coincidental that one of the first acts of this same Premier in 2018 was to change the Municipal Elections Act then, in the middle of an election? What is it that this Premier—what’s it going to take for him to give up on the past, on his past life at the city of Toronto and all of his hurt feelings for himself and his family during that time? What’s it going to take for him to stop imposing his power over our Municipal Elections Act during an election? That’s the question. That’s the question that people of this province want to know. They want to know why this is a priority when we have a health care crisis. They want to know why this government is talking about housing, when that’s a pure crisis, but the only thing that they’re doing is talking about it. They’re putting nothing in legislation to actually correct the issue of housing. Nothing. Do builders have issues? Are there problems with the Planning Act? Absolutely. There is no denying that. But giving mayors powers of hiring and firing over their executives—that doesn’t fix the Planning Act. Nothing in there fixes the Planning Act.

Is there stuff in here that helps encourage council to do better by the Planning Act, to do better by ensuring that we have multi-residential homes, that we have rent control? Is there anything to support a council to do those things? No, there is not. What this bill actually does is take power away from councillors, who know their area the best and who were elected by their communities, to the beholding of one person who has all the power. That’s not how we fix the housing crisis in this province—and I’m sure all of you know that, but that seems to be the case anyway.

I want to share—one of my constituents sent a voice mail, and my office transcribed it. He says, “This is horrible and forgoes democratic principles. It is terrible. It should be illegal.” He doesn’t know what I can do but “hopes that the opposition is strongly against this.”

He goes on to say, “We should not even elect a city council if the mayor has so much power.” This is what’s coming back from our average constituents. I have no idea who this gentleman is, but he felt empowered enough to make sure that I understood that his feeling on this was that it’s wrong.

People’s priorities in our communities, as you all know, if you knocked on a door, are health care and affordability. It wasn’t about mayors’ powers. There was nothing talked about that included the mayors’ powers. And quite frankly, none of you talked about the mayors’ powers either during the campaign, nor did the Premier while he was running. Nobody talked about this. This was a surprise legislation after the campaign. Nowhere during the campaign did it talk about the strong-mayor powers to ensure that this would be the number one issue coming back to the Legislature in the 43rd Parliament.

It should have been health care, and it should have been housing for real—real issues to fix housing, real issues to ensure that those same students I just talked about are not sleeping in closets with a single bed and less than $50 a week to eat. I’m sure none of your kids are doing that. Let’s make sure other kids in this province have the opportunity too.

Interjections.

His priorities are backwards. We should be talking about health care. We should be talking about real solutions to housing. We should be talking about affordability. There are so many things that we could be talking about instead of increasing the power of a couple of mayors, which aren’t even going to cover the whole entire province. How are they going to deal with regional chairs? How are they going to deal with those unelected folks who are appointed to these positions? I guess we’re going to have to wait until we see the regulations to actually understand fully the impact that this legislation is going to have on the people of this province.

So he’s looking for more power. This is all this is about. There is nothing in here that benefits the people of this province. The only thing this bill does is benefit the Premier.

The rental market is a big enough problem. We have people who are literally piling up into rooms to be able to have a roof over their heads. We have tents that are building up and building up and building up, because people do not have affordable housing. That could have been the first measure that came before this House—making sure that we were dealing with the renovictions, that we were dealing with rent stabilization, rent control. Instead, this government has removed any protections that there were in front, and then their first course of action is to provide the strong-mayors bill, which is nothing—I’m curious, actually. I would hope that maybe with the next question that comes forward, the member could take the time to tell me that their constituents specifically asked for this bill over health care and housing.

One of the things that I’ve definitely been talking to constituents in my riding about—because I border onto Mohawk College and McMaster is right there, and we have a lot of international students who are paying the highest tuition rates in the country right here, and this government has done nothing to support that. They also have to be able to afford to pay the rent. There is nothing in this legislation to support that. They’re barely able to keep up with meals and food. There are food fridges on campus, there are food banks being put up on a regular basis to help support these same students.

Why is the member supporting legislation that’s going to do absolutely nothing to address the concerns that he knows that he himself, his constituents and other international students who come to our country are also facing?

I’m happy that I have the opportunity to ask the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services why she thinks this bill will actually help the people she has sworn to serve. She is responsible for ODSP. She’s responsible for Ontario Works, and those folks cannot afford a single apartment. They can’t afford the rent currently. What is it in this legislation that is going to help people on ODSP, people on Ontario Works, to be able to have safe, affordable housing?

We’ve heard about housing. We’ve heard about market rent. We’ve heard about everything. We have not heard the words “affordable housing” out of this government’s mouths. Could the minister please tell me what in this legislation is going to create affordable housing?