Congratulations to the member on their election. That inaugural speech was truly amazing, so thank you. My question to you is, what prompted the member to stay and live in Toronto Centre? What is it that you love so much about Toronto Centre that you remain in this area?

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to reply and ask a question to the member for Toronto Centre.

To the member: I want to, first off, congratulate you on your election into this House. I remember my first day so very, very fondly. It’s quite exciting to be able to stand in this House and be able to have your first speech and speak about what motivated you to come here.

I was listening, as you spoke, and I really appreciate all that has motivated you to come to this House. I think that for each one of us, we all have some type of motivation—myself as a child of an immigrant family as well, coming from Italy and having challenges in our community.

When I look around the room and I see each one of us here, we all have challenges and we all have things that have motivated us to be able to come here and serve.

It was very good to hear your story. I enjoyed seeing you in the hallway this morning, actually, as we were coming in and saying hello, and I look forward to being able to work together with you.

I know that as we enter into this House, sometimes when we put on our jerseys, things get a little bit more difficult. But I hope you’ll join me in wearing a jersey that we can speak to the member for Peterborough–Kawartha and remind him that the Soo Greyhounds are really the only place for Wayne Gretzky to be recognized as the best player for that organization. So I hope you’ll join me in that regard.

I wasn’t planning on speaking this morning, but the opportunity has arisen, and this is actually the first time that I’ve been able to speak since being re-elected by the good people of Timiskaming–Cochrane. I, as everyone else here, would like to thank the people who worked to help me get elected, but I would also like to thank the candidates who ran against me, and the people who helped them, because democracy doesn’t just take people from one side to work; it takes people from all sides to work. In Timiskaming–Cochrane, there was a record number of candidates this year. We had eight candidates, and I’m going to say some people were confused because we’re used to, you know, three, four—but more choice.

I have to go on the record, Speaker: I was vehemently opposed to some of their positions, extremely vehemently opposed to some of their positions, but not to them as people. And I would like to be on the record as saying, in Timiskaming–Cochrane, we have a long tradition of being able to be vehemently opposed to one thing and being able to work together on another thing. By and large, we maintained that tradition, and I think it’s very important that we all do that.

I’ve said to a few people when I came back that we all have—and, to the new members, from all sides, you will have days in this place you wonder why you won and why you ran. I have also had those days, and I’ve had days when I’ve said, “Why would I run again?” I never knew how much I relished the opportunity to be able to speak on behalf of the people of Timiskaming–Cochrane until this election, when I almost didn’t get that opportunity again. It didn’t come that close, but it came much closer than we were used to, and that’s not a bad thing—it isn’t—because it’s really important that you listen to people’s voices, that you listen to people who you are philosophically opposed to, and you explain to them why—what your position is, what their position is. I would like to make sure that the people of Timiskaming–Cochrane know that, regardless of their individual positions and individual issues, my office door is open. It always will be open, and we will work very hard for them on the issues that we can agree on. That’s why I’m here, it’s always been why I’m here.

There are many days—I had no childhood dream of ever becoming a public official. All I ever wanted to do was be a farmer, and that’s the first thing I thought of on election night: “I might have to go back to that quicker than I thought.” So I thought, “It’s lucky I kept the farm.” I actually kept a large part of our farm for my kids, in case they ever wanted to come back. It’s near and dear to our family, but on election night, I was thinking I might have to come back. But having said that, on that night, when the results were over, I’ve never felt so honoured to be able to have this opportunity. I think we all feel this: How many people have the opportunity to speak in this House and, in large part, say what they believe in a safe space?

We have just heard an inaugural speech from the member from Toronto Centre, and it was incredibly moving. I haven’t faced the issues that the member has faced, but in some ways, my family could relate. I was born in Canada, but I didn’t learn English until grade 1, because we always spoke the language of our family. I can remember my mom making soap. There’s a reason I hate liver: We were always on a farm. We raised cattle. We sold all the good meat, and we bought liver. My mom bought pig heads, and she made headcheese. I’m not a big fan of headcheese, either. I remember those things.

Immigrants, no matter where they come from, have a drive. The drive isn’t just colour or creed; it’s family. It’s pride in where you came from but also pride in where you’re going to. And except for the First Nations, we’re all immigrants. It’s just the degree of how long ago our families came. My kids won’t remember the liver and the headcheese; I do. We all work very hard so our kids don’t have to remember the bad things. Some people might love liver; I don’t. We all work very hard so our kids don’t have to face the same issues that we did. It’s a balancing act, because we also want our kids or our friends to keep the good things from our histories, because that’s what also makes Ontario and Canada very strong.

Speaker, you come from a much different background than I come from. The member who just spoke comes from a much different background than either of us come from. Yet the fact that we’re all here and we can all express, I would hope, in this place, without fear and without fear of retribution is incredible. The reason that we’re all here is to be able to do that so that others who don’t have the ability to speak without retribution can see themselves in us and so that they can approach us and tell us what their issues are so that we can help them overcome those issues. That’s one of the reasons we’re all here.

And the member from Sault Ste. Marie, I appreciate his comments too, because in every one of our lives, I am sure, there is a moment that you go, “Whoa, that’s not cool, and I don’t want that to happen to anyone else.” We have all had that, and so have I.

But actually, what we’re here to talk about is the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act. I have listened to most of the debate on this bill, and the government is focusing on an issue, housing, but it isn’t actually addressed in the bill. So if the answer to housing is changing the power of two mayors in Canada, it’s pretty simplistic.

I was a councillor in a very small township for a long time, and we had incredible frustrations with the length of time for planning. Some of the planning issues—there are just not enough planners. Changing the powers of two mayors isn’t going to change that.

One of the issues we heard at the AMO conference is that building permits are given and developers sit on them—they sit on them. Maybe if we put an expiration date on building permits—and I’m not saying it’s just that; this is just one issue—so that if you, the developer, get a building permit, you can’t just sit on it until the price goes up high enough so you can make a bit more money. And that’s not evil; that’s private business. I’ve been in private business my whole life, but you don’t need to change the power of two mayors to do that. There’s all kinds of things you can do.

I listened very intently to the member from Peterborough. He’s a great speaker. We were elected—I think you were elected after I was. But anyway, great speaker. I actually agree with a few things with the member from Peterborough—not a lot, but a few. We get along. But he spoke very eloquently about how this was going to change, and how the schedules were going to change. There’s absolutely none of that in this bill—nothing. Nothing. This bill is about changing the power structure of the mayors for two cities.

One thing he did say which was very interesting, I thought, was that the purpose of this bill was so the municipalities would align more with the will or the wishes of the province of Ontario. That’s really what this bill is about.

Interjection: Priorities.

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.

I want to congratulate the member on her re-election and for her submission and speech today.

She said, for instance, the mayor of Toronto has 500,000 votes. But councillors receive cumulatively, across the city, the same number of votes, essentially, as the mayor does. People vote for councillors and expect them to have the paramountcy on local issues, the understanding of local issues. When you’re in a city of millions, you don’t expect a response from a mayor when something goes wrong.

So what is it about this government? Why do they want to weaken local councillors in their ability to make decisions when the mayors of municipalities already have overwhelming powers to be able to get their agendas across?

My question is really—a bit of a confusion that I’m sensing here in the members opposite. The member referred to the 42nd Parliament; we started off with a bill at that point in time that reduced the size of Toronto city council. I’m not sure if anybody can help me, but I don’t think the sky fell when that bill passed. In fact, as far as I remember, it seems like things actually worked out a lot better.

Now we’re proposing another measure to deal with a crisis that is out there. We need the million and a half homes we want to build in Ontario over the next eight to 10 years. We need a lot of housing right across the country, and we are really, really struggling with being able to find that housing, so we’re trying to [inaudible] a measure here to try to remedy that situation, and all I hear is “no.” All I hear is complaining from the opposition.

Now, we went into this last election, and the opposition party has been reduced to the teeny, tiny little caucus that we see before us today. I’m just wondering if the member opposite will ever learn to say yes. That’s my question, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, as someone who came to this country as an international student, I can tell you from experience how difficult and challenging it is to buy a house in the province of Ontario because of the inaction of the previous government, because they didn’t do anything to fix this crisis. We are the government that believes in action and that is why, this past election, we made a commitment to the people of Ontario that we would keep costs down and build 1.5 million new homes over the next 10 years, so that more people can afford to buy a house in the province of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t understand why the opposition continues to say no and oppose giving the tools to our local leaders to get things done. Why?