It’s my first opportunity to rise in the House and speak on behalf of the good people of Algoma–Manitoulin, and I wanted to go through a process that I go through every single time when a new bill is introduced here in the House. I have to thank the previous member, Gilles Bisson from Timmins, who actually guided me in doing this exercise because it sets the tone for the legislation that we’re going to be discussing.

The bill we’re talking about today is Bill 3, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to special powers and duties of heads of council. It’s introduced by the honourable Minister Clark, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Okay? I want to go through this, and I’ll ask, Speaker, for a little bit of leniency here. I want to read it.

Schedule 1 says the “City of Toronto Act.” It says:

“The schedule amends the City of Toronto Act, 2006 by adding a new part V1.1 which sets out the special powers and duties of the head of council. The following powers and duties are assigned to the head of council under this part:

“1. Powers respecting the chief administrative officer, as described in section 226.3.

“2. Powers respecting the organizational structure of the city and employment matters, as described in section 226.4.

“3. Powers respecting local boards, as described in section 226.5.

“4. Powers respecting committees, as described in section 226.6.

“5. Powers respecting meetings, as described in section 226.8.

“6. Veto powers, as described in section 226.9.

“7. Duties and powers respecting budgets, as described in section 226.14.

“The new part contains various other related provisions, including rules respecting delegation, immunity and transition. Authority is provided to the Lieutenant Governor in Council to prescribe provincial priorities and to the minister to make other regulations.”

That’s schedule 1.

“Schedule 2

“Municipal Act, 2001

“The schedule amends the Municipal Act, 2001 by adding a new part ... which sets out the special powers and duties of the head of council in designated municipalities. In those designated municipalities, the following powers and duties are assigned to the head of council:

“1. Powers respecting the chief administrative officer, as described in section 284.5.

“2. Powers respecting the organizational structure of the municipality and employment matters, as described in section 284.6.

“3. Powers respecting local boards, as described in section 284.7.

“4. Powers respecting committees, as described in section 284.8.

“5. Powers respecting meetings, as described in section 284.10.

“6. Veto powers, as described in section 284.11.

“7. Duties and powers respecting budgets, as described in section 284.16.

“The new part contains various other related provisions, including rules respecting delegation, immunity and transition. Authority is provided to the Lieutenant Governor in Council to prescribe provincial priorities and to the minister to make other regulations.”

That’s schedule 2.

“Schedule 3.... The schedule amends the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. New section 5.3 sets out the duties of the head of council when they have a pecuniary interest in a matter and a power or duty under Part VI.1 of the City of Toronto Act, 2006 or Part VI.1 of the Municipal Act, 2001 respecting that matter. Various other consequential amendments are made.”

All right, we’ve gone through that exercise. I’m going to ask everyone here in this House if you can tell me how many times that I said “housing,” outside of identifying the role of the minister and his ministry, versus “powers”?

Speaker, you have a guess? Give me a guess.

This bill is about powers. That’s what it’s about, and it certainly is scary. Again, I have always committed to bringing a different lens to the floor of this Legislature and I always want to bring a lens from northern Ontario and how this is potentially going to impact mayors across northern Ontario, because they have not been consulted. They don’t know exactly what this means. And they are quite concerned in regard to, when you see language contained within this that says—excuse me, where’s my notes? I had notes. I have my notes. My notes are somewhere around here.

Anyway, in no uncertain terms, it’s going to be up to the government to designate—they’re designating Toronto. They’ve already identified that they’re going to be designating Ottawa. And then it’s pretty much in their decision-making as to who else is going to be designated.

What does that mean? Because there are a lot of them, particularly in my riding, saying we need housing. We want to move ahead with housing. However, we’ve got some huge concerns. How do we proceed if we want to do this? How do we attract those developers to coming into our community? Because our communities are growing, as well, maybe not to the tune of—and I’ll use an example. I had a discussion with one of my colleagues a little bit earlier. If you are looking at a housing development project—in one that I’m actually working on right now, we’re looking at about 25 to 40 houses in Espanola. Well, for many of you in the larger centres, my goodness, that’s like a blink of an eye. But for me, that’s huge.

What does this mean for them? How is this potentially going to impact their ability, and are they going to be the one that is going to be designated? How would they find out? This is one of the questions that keeps coming up from people.

Why wasn’t this part of your campaign? Why is this coming up now? Why is this a priority of this government?

I’ve always said that I want to bring the voices of individuals from Algoma–Manitoulin to the floor of the Legislature. I just got this email from Marlene. I won’t give you her last name. Marlene is at every one of my constituency clinics that I have in a particular community in my riding. This is her message she just sent to me this morning. She said, “So pleased to hear you are not letting up on the crisis with health care with the Ford government. Dissappointed”—oh, by the way, she is a card-carrying Conservative; I just wanted to let you know that. But I just love this lady. Anyway, she’s “disappointed, like so many others, that he is not overly concerned by his financing. And now the Minister of Health talking about possible more privatization? No thank you. We should know by now that doesn’t work except for the profiteers. I believe that is what is wrong with the PSW program. ParaMed and others being paid should be local hospitals, especially smaller places here in”—I’m not going to tell you. “PSWs need a living wage rather than monies going to ParaMed, and it would help the hospital finances as well, as they know local problems and caregivers. Why is Premier Ford using a personal agenda to increase mayors of larger centres’ control? Get on with health care, not your previous Toronto council concerns. It’s ridiculous.”

Thank you, Marlene.

It’s right on point, as far as what we have been raising in this House. Yes, housing is important. But housing is important to everybody in Ontario, not just in two communities. We need to do it in a way that does not infringe on the democratic process that we have by granting immunity—or what was the word that was used in here? Yes, “immunity” and “veto powers.”

We can do a lot better than this, and we need to do a lot more work as far as consulting with people here across this province. Our mayors are asking for it. Our councillors are asking for it. Our communities are asking for it. Ontarians are asking for it.