This is the first time, actually, I’ve risen to speak in this Parliament. I want to thank the people of Peterborough–Kawartha for giving me the honour, again, to be their voice, as I have been for the last four years.

One of the challenges that Ontario faces is a growing population over the next 10 years. We’re expected to add more than 2.5 million people, and we have seen over the last two decades really, a lack of housing that has been built and challenges in doing it. There have been a number of changes that have been made by different governments throughout the years to try to address this. And every time a change is made, it seems that someone finds a way to weaponize one of those changes to make it possible to delay.

I’m going to talk specifically about some of the challenges in Peterborough. I’m very close to what happens in Peterborough, coming from the riding there. I don’t necessarily experience the challenges that you see in Toronto or that you see in Ottawa, and the strong-mayors legislation is specifically for these two cities to make some adjustments. But I think that if you take a look at, historically, what my community has been, my community has always been seen as a microcosm of everything that’s happening in Canada.

For more than 40 years, we were a test market for everything. When a company wanted a new product, when they were going to introduce something new, they would introduce it in Peterborough as one of the test markets, because we had that mix of individuals. We had blue-collar workers. We had manufacturing. We had knowledge base. We have a college, a university. We have a great, diverse population. We have a strong arts community—

We’re also the centre of the lacrosse universe in Peterborough as well. And, as everyone knows, I refer to it as God’s country, so how could it be bad? But I digress.

Whenever something was being introduced, it was being introduced in Peterborough, and they took a look at what our market would do and how successful something would be. I think if you take a look at what has happened in Peterborough over the last number of years, it represents what has happened all across Ontario.

In June 2018, when I was first elected, the average home price was $314,000. Last month, it was $760,000. We have a shortage of housing. In 2019, in the city of Peterborough, only five single-family home building permits were issued. The population in Peterborough proper, the city itself, has grown by almost 4,500 people in four years, yet we’ve had just a shade over 1,200 new residences added, whether that be a house, condo, apartment—only 1,200. Our vacancy rate is 1%. Rental rates have increased significantly because we don’t have the inventory. Housing prices have increased significantly because we don’t have the inventory.

Kate Kidd, the former president of the Peterborough–Kawartha area realtors—her term just ended in July—said to me about a year ago that we need an inventory of 1,400 to 1,500 houses for sale at any given time to make sure that we have enough inventory. We had less than 100 this past January. In February, we were averaging about 127 listings. Right now if you go to realtor.ca, there’s a little over 400. We’re still significantly lower than what we should have to have the proper inventory.

There are lot of pressures that have been put on my community, in particular. Yes, I am talking about Peterborough, but Peterborough is that microcosm of everything else that’s going on in Ontario. When the 407 opened all the way to Highway 115, a great addition to the transportation network, what it meant was—those individuals who were being priced out in the GTA, who could not find a home in the GTA—it was easy for them to commute from Peterborough, and we’ve had a number of people come in. There was a time when it made perfect sense to do that.

My colleague from Oakville, who was my seatmate early on in the last session, had talked about home prices in Oakville. Actually, prior to being elected, the house beside me sold to somebody from Oakville. At the time, they had sold a two-bedroom home with a 30-foot lot in Oakville for $1.2 million. They moved to Peterborough. At the time—this is prior to 2018—they bought a five-bedroom home with two bathrooms on a 65-by-130-foot lot that backed on to environmentally protected green space. I’m painting a beautiful picture of it. Who wouldn’t want to live with wildlife right behind your home in the city? They paid $418,000 for it.

So we saw an influx, when the 407 opened, of individuals who were able to sell their property in the GTA for a very large sum—and it’s gone up in the GTA—and move to Peterborough for a significantly lower price and have more home, a better lot and a higher quality of life. That raised the price in Peterborough to what it is today, $760,000 for the average home in Peterborough, whereas just over four years ago it was just a shade over $300,000—$314,000. That’s a massive jump.

Why am I focusing on that? Peterborough city council has made a number of what I would say are poor decisions around housing. I’ll go back to 2019: five single-family residential home permits issued—five, that’s it. More than 4,000 people moved into the community, 1,200 homes, apartments or condos is all that we’ve added, and the previous council used some of the tools to delay, to not make decisions.

In my old neighbourhood, just around the corner from where my house was, a developer had a piece of property. Originally he wanted to have a single level of commercial and two storeys above that of residential. He was not able to find someone to move into the commercial property because there weren’t enough people in that general vicinity to make it worthwhile for commercial activity to happen. There weren’t enough people. It wasn’t convenient enough for a professional office like a dentist, a lawyer. There weren’t enough people in the area to put in a retail outlet, a convenience store or a small grocery store, just because of the nature of where it was. But it’s not far from Trent University. It’s a walkable distance to Trent University, and there’s actually a walking trail that goes right to Trent.

That was blocked by council because the developer wanted to change it to a six-storey apartment building, and council said no because of some pushback—not because it didn’t meet the requirements of the community, not because the transportation study wasn’t effective, not because there wasn’t the demand—they were afraid they were going to offend someone and they were going to lose votes. And when you have councils that are doing those types of things, then you’re not serving the needs of your community. That developer took the city to LPAT and won, because the city chose not to send someone to the LPAT hearing to oppose it.

On Sherbrooke Street, another development: 164 homes, 164 apartments to be put in. A few city councillors lobbied to say no to it because they had some pushback from some other individuals in the area. On Lansdowne Street, two developments: The developer originally wanted 14 storeys, came down to 10, and the city came back and said, “No, six is all you could do.” They couldn’t build them then and actually make it work. The city was taken to LPAT by the developer on all of those, and the developers have won. And in each case, the city chose not to have a delegation come because they knew they were going to lose. They were doing it for political reasons, not for the right reasons.

And that’s happening in a community like Peterborough. As I said earlier on in my speech, Peterborough is the microcosm for everything that happens across Ontario. If you want to see what’s going to happen in this province, look at Peterborough, because it will be emulated or replicated in other areas. The cost of housing has gone sky high and councils have continually made decisions to block development—not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they’re concerned about gaining votes or losing votes.

What we have to do is take a look at what is in the best interest of the entire community, what’s in the best interest of the city. We have 2.5 million people coming into Ontario over the next 10 years. We set a record last year in housing starts of just over 100,000—100,000 units built last year, the most that we’ve had in more than 30 years. That will not get us to 2.5 million over 10 years. It will not get us enough bedrooms for the people who are going to be coming into this province. It won’t. And it was a record year.

The problem is we have councils who are saying no to development. “No, we don’t want a house over there.” “No, we don’t want this.” “No, we don’t want that.” And what I find interesting about it and almost hypocritical—

I will say that I’m proud to be a Conservative here in the Ontario Legislature, because we’re actually getting things done for the people of Ontario. We’re building more homes. We’re building more purpose-built rentals. Maybe we’ll give the member for Peterborough–Kawartha an opportunity to talk a little about the purpose-built rentals that are being built here in the province of Ontario. It’s been over 1,000 over the last year that have been built in Toronto alone. It’s more than we’ve seen, I think, over the last 20 years, the last two decades. So I’ll give the member an opportunity to speak a little bit more about that.

Thank you to the member. I have to say, there’s probably not a lot we have in common. Peterborough Petes—we could spend some time saying whether it was Bob Gainey, whether it was Chris Pronger. The best Peterborough Pete: That’s something we can talk about.

But, anyway, what I want to say is you’re talking about this bill, but let’s be perfectly clear: This bill does not talk about housing, which is what you talked about. You neglected to talk about the special powers and the significant changes that will be happening to democratically elected city councils without your government doing any consultation. You also shed quite a few tears when it came to concern for the developers’ bottom line, but you didn’t talk at all about the infrastructure costs that are borne by your taxpayers.

Right now, you have an infrastructure deficit in the city of Peterborough. You can tell us how much that is. It will cause residential taxpayers’ rates to go up. In the city of Hamilton, we’re pushing $3 billion in infrastructure deficit costs that are not borne by the cost of development. So could you share some of your empathy for hard-working residential taxpayers in the province of Ontario and in your city of Peterborough?

Questions to the member from Peterborough–Kawartha?

I think, if we take a look back at the last 20 years of what’s been happening in Ontario—actually, we just have to look at the last four years in the city of Peterborough: $314,000 to $760,000 for the average home price. What has been done has not been working. It is incumbent on us as legislators to make sure that we’re looking at the best interests of the people of this great province and put forward legislation like this that’s going to make a positive difference and allow for that development to happen so that all of those individuals who want an apartment, who want a home, who want a condo, have the opportunity to acquire that.

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?

Rising for the first time, I would just like to thank the hard-working men and women, the incredible people of Northumberland–Peterborough South who have elected me.

Speaker, under the leadership of Premier Ford and our government, we’ve become a leader in clean, green steel. With our government’s significant investments, Ontario’s manufacturing sector is breathing new life. Why does this matter? Because in Ontario, it’s not through punishing taxes on hard-working families that we’ll ensure a prosperous clean, green future, but it’s through working with and leaning on the ingenuity and work ethic of the men and women of our Ontario steel sector—men and women like my grandfather, who got off the boat and worked in the steel sector to provide opportunity for my family.

Thanks to the electrification of the arc furnace, thanks to working collaboratively with all levels of government, this Premier has ensured, through the electrification of the arc furnace, that we are going to see a six-megaton reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, ensuring jobs for our future, jobs for men and women who choose to choose Ontario for a more prosperous, cleaner future.