The Northern Ontario School of Medicine—including every other medical school in the province of Ontario—has 20 additional residency positions under this government. We have made those expansions—at least 20.

To sit and hear the NDP talk about the investments that need to happen—where were you when we were doing as-of-right in the province of Ontario, legislatively saying, “If you have a licence and can practise in any part of Canada, you can come to Ontario and immediately start working while your licence is getting passed.” Where were the NDP? Respectfully, they were saying, “No, not appropriate.” Where were the NDP when we were writing the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and saying, “Please, you must—I direct you to make sure individuals who are waiting on those lists to get assessed and ultimately licensed to practise in”—

My question is to the Premier. Believe it or not, they are calling for snow in northern Ontario this week and we all know what happens when we get snow in northern Ontario. Highway 11 and Highway 17 once again become even more dangerous than they are now. They’re closed a lot now in the summertime, but with the first snow, we can almost guarantee it.

My question to the government is: What progress is the government actually making with driving schools to ensure that every driver that’s trained and licensed in Ontario is actually equipped to face the conditions that they will face when they go over Thibeault Hill?

I would like to bring this government’s attention to what is happening outside the silo of Queen’s Park. Outside these doors, Ontarians are really struggling, more than we’ve seen in, I think, generations. They’re struggling with the steep increase in rent, mortgage, groceries, gas. Basic necessities are feeling like a burden. People even with two, three jobs are lining up at food banks. Ontarians are worried that homelessness is around the corner for them—and many more are experiencing that first-hand. Wages aren’t going as far as they used to. Mental health supports aren’t keeping up with demand.

These are the stories that I’ve heard, whether I was meeting Ontarians right here in Toronto or in Peterborough or Sudbury or Kitchener or Kapuskasing. I’ve seen and felt the same stress and helplessness all across the province.

But instead of offering hope that things can be better, instead of taking action to change things, this government has been busy lurching from scandal to scandal. They’ve been busy helping their friends instead of helping the people who need it most. We’re talking about a massive land transfer—a land transfer scheme that would make their friends and donors of their party billions of dollars richer. And the people of this province, of any political stripe, cannot swallow this.

Mr. Speaker, what’s worse is that this government essentially used the housing crisis as a scapegoat to cover up their greenbelt grab. It’s shameful. They had the audacity to tell weary Ontarians that they needed to carve up the greenbelt and give it to their friends so that they could build housing—never mind that the land was already being flipped for a profit before a single foundation was laid, never mind that the proposed developments wouldn’t even be affordable to most working people. But the fact that they used the housing crisis like this, as a pretense to help themselves, is unforgivable.

Even the Premier’s own hand-picked housing task force recommended the absolute opposite of what this government did. Every single expert voice—the government’s own housing task force; housing experts; municipalities, mayors, councillors, reeves; environmental advocates; First Nations—said that we do not need to sacrifice the greenbelt to build housing, that we have enough land within existing boundaries.

According to Environmental Defence, “Even before the 2022 boundary expansions and greenbelt removals, there was more than 35,000 hectares ... of unused land already designated for suburban development in the GTHA. That is more than three times the size of Paris, France.”

The Premier may have promised to reverse this decision, he may have apologized, but Ontarians still want to know why—despite pushback from all sides, why did the Premier and his government chase the greenbelt? Who tipped off the developers? Why was a cabinet minister getting massages in Las Vegas with a land speculator who stood to benefit from the greenbelt swap?

Speaker, we in the official opposition, NDP, New Democrats, want to make life better for people. It’s what drives us. But you cannot do what needs to be done without first restoring trust, accountability and transparency back here at Queen’s Park. And unfortunately, that is something that this government has completely destroyed.

This is why, today, the official opposition is calling on the government to form a select committee on changes to the greenbelt, to ensure Ontarians are able to get the answers that they so deeply deserve.

Unfortunately, the Premier and the Conservatives are not in this to help Ontarians. This is a party that has a single-minded vision to only benefit their select few friends at the expense of everybody else and, frankly, at the expense of the well-being of this province.

Sadly, this is a government that has made it clear again and again that they cannot be trusted. Just a week ago, when the Legislature returned, the housing minister stood up in the House and said, no, they won’t be passing the greenbelt restoration act. That was the NDP’s legislation that would have reversed the Conservatives’ changes and restored those land protections. In fact, the Conservatives voted it down before it even got to first reading. That is almost unforeseen. They said they’re introducing their own legislation, but it’s nowhere to be seen—and here we are, another week gone by, and we’re still waiting.

This government has made it so very hard to trust their words and their promises. The official opposition’s requests to the Auditor General and the Integrity Commissioner revealed significant evidence that this government did not follow due processes and, in fact, that they gave favourable, preferential treatment to a select few developers over the interest of Ontarians. Before they got caught, they were ready to put billions—billions—in the pockets of their insider land speculators at the expense of essential agricultural lands and ecosystems.

The Auditor General’s report, though, left no doubt—there is no way that a single staff member acted alone to rig the system. This starts at the top.

The NDP’s initial letter to the Auditor General raised concerns about the shift of wealth to land speculators who were not building any homes, including concerns about Mr. Silvio DeGasperis and his ongoing efforts to remove 1,300 acres of DRAP lands.

Let’s review this. Mr. DeGasperis is the president of TACC Construction Ltd. and TACC Developments. The DeGasperis family are prominent donors to the Conservative Party and have donated at least $163,362 since 2014. That’s a pretty penny. The DeGasperis family began purchasing parcels of cheap farmland in north Pickering as early as 2003 with the hopes of building new subdivisions. This land was totally undevelopable until the Ford Conservatives, the members opposite, changed government policy. We know that the DeGasperis family acquired more of this land as recently as 2020.

We also know that Silvio DeGasperis asked a court to block the Auditor General from interviewing him in response to a summons as a part of the greenbelt investigation. It makes you wonder what they’re hiding. What else is there to uncover? What revelations are still to come?

Similarly, Ontarians would also like to understand the suspicious timing of land purchases by Michael Rice, his donation ties to this government and to speculators. Michael Rice is the CEO of Rice Group, and he is also listed as the president of Green Lane Bathurst GP, a company that bought $80 million worth of land which was, at the time, five undevelopable parcels in the greenbelt, two months prior to the government’s November 2022 announcement. Michael Rice has also donated significantly to the Progressive Conservative Party.

In July 2023, Mr. Rice went to court to avoid answering questions regarding his company’s dealings in the greenbelt after—yes, again—he was summoned by the Auditor General. Again, this just begs the question of what else is not being shared?

Speaker, we’re clearly just scratching the surface here, and that is why we in the official opposition NDP are proposing a select committee. A select committee would be able to summon these two developers, who are witnesses but yet refused to co-operate with the Auditor General’s investigation, and they would be compelled to provide their evidence. This is how democracy functions, and Ontarians deserve answers and accountability.

I’m going to offer a few more details about the shady backroom dealings that this government has been engaging in since day one, because I think it helps to lend some colour, let’s just say, to why we might want to actually hold a select committee and why it might be in the best interest of this government to shine a little light on those dark corners.

We know that several individuals who attended the Premier’s family wedding were developers who received favourable ministerial zoning orders and at least one individual who benefited from the now-reversed greenbelt land swap.

But the backroom dealings go further back than November 2022. The Conservatives—the Conservative government—have had their eyes on the greenbelt for their donor-speculator friends since 2018. Here’s a timeline of events that took place prior to November 2022, when the Conservative government decided to remove thousands of acres of land from the greenbelt.

Let’s just start—and this isn’t even going that far back. We know, of course, that the Premier did promise developers in 2018 that he was going to carve up the greenbelt and serve it up to speculators. We have that on record. But let’s go back to April 2022. Luca Bucci was Minister Clark’s chief of staff from January 2021 until April 2022. He joined as CEO of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association in July 2022, just a few months later. But on May 30, 2022, Mr. Bucci registered to lobby the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing on behalf of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, despite guidelines in the Members’ Integrity Act and the Lobbyists Registration Act that actually prevent a public servant from lobbying their former employer for at least one year. That’s the rule here in Ontario—at least one year—and that’s, of course, to prevent any real or perceived conflict of interest.

Here’s another date: June 2022. Andrew Sidnell, a senior aide in Premier Ford’s office, circulated the Premier’s feedback on a 47-page slide deck in an email sent after midnight on June 28, 2022; that’s according to documents that were released through freedom of information. The email chain, which was obtained by the Narwhal, is the first set of records that have been released by the government that suggest the Premier may have been privy to policy discussions about the greenbelt as early as June 2022. That’s just weeks after, let’s remember, the people of Ontario elected this government expecting, believing that they would act with trust and integrity.

September 15, 2022: Green Lane Bathurst GP Inc. purchased five parcels of greenbelt protected land in a group sale for a total of $80 million. The sale listing described the property as a “prime land banking opportunity.” The company lists, as I mentioned earlier, Rice Group CEO Michael Rice as its president.

Then, this summer, the walls start to close in on the Conservative government’s apparent breach of Ontarians’ trust. On June 29, 2023, the Auditor General issued a summons to Silvio DeGasperis, president of TACC Group of companies, to ask him to provide information related to properties owned by his companies that were removed from the greenbelt. Mr. DeGasperis filed a letter with the courts asking to block the summons.

July 5, 2023: Michael Rice, CEO of the Rice Group, filed a notice of application with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice seeking to block or delay a summons from Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk that he be interviewed and provide records related to land he owns in the area that, as we know, was now cleared for development.

August 1, 2023—follow along here—Luca Bucci, former chief of staff to the then Ontario housing minister, suddenly leaves his position as CEO of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, days before the Auditor General announces their office is about to release that special report on changes to the greenbelt, which we in the official opposition, along with leaders of the two other parties, had requested.

Why not clear the air, with all of that? What is this government hiding?

The Integrity Commissioner’s first report found that the member for Leeds–Grenville–Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes had breached sections 2, conflict of interest, and 3.2, insider information, of the Members’ Integrity Act. But those are just a little glimpse into how deep this scandal goes, and the people of Ontario deserve to know the actual full extent of the biggest scandal in Ontario’s political history.

How can we begin to trust a government that has tied itself up so neatly in this web? How can we trust a government when one of their own former cabinet ministers didn’t tell the full story to the Integrity Commissioner under oath about taking a trip to Las Vegas with a developer and making policy on the massage table with them?

According to the Integrity Commissioner, the parties involved—Mr. Rasheed and then-principal secretary to the Premier, Amin Massoudi—said they took the trip in December 2019 and “exchanged pleasantries” with developer Shakir Rehmatullah in the lobby of a hotel. That was the extent of it, apparently. Mr. Rasheed told the Integrity Commissioner that he is friends with Mr. Rehmatullah but didn’t know he was going to be in Las Vegas—what a coincidence. Mr. Rehmatullah is the founder of Flato Development, a company listed as the owner of two of the sites removed from the greenbelt. However, records show that former-Minister Rasheed actually went on the trip—guess what—in February 2020, and the three men also—what a coincidence—got massages at the same time.

Speaker, is this how a government that apparently is concerned about the housing crisis acts? This scandal has cost this government three cabinet ministers, and they’ve set the province back at least five years in meeting our housing targets. Because of this government, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., Ontario has the biggest housing unit supply gap in the entire country. The Premier and his government have destroyed any confidence at all in the system. We need them to move forward with a select committee so we can get to the bottom of it all—because the fact of the matter is, you can solve a housing crisis without a corruption crisis.

We knew when we rang the alarm bells that none of this was ever about housing. In fact, the Conservatives’ corruption scandal only further fuels land speculation and worsens the accountability crisis and the affordability crisis that Ontarians are struggling with every single day. It further encourages greedy speculators to play unethical real estate games to rake in even bigger profits without delivering the homes that we know people actually need. It creates expensive sprawl, which the Auditor General’s report indicates will cost Ontarians billions for roads, sewers, water and other services.

Madam Speaker, if the government actually cared about addressing the housing crisis, there are many, many tools at the Premier’s disposal, if they wanted to take just a minute away from thinking about the interests of their developer friends—those land speculators who are their donors, who they have committed to making richer and richer each day. I can give them a few of those tools right now, if the housing minister would like to take notes.

For starters, this government could bring back real rent control. That would stop the housing affordability crisis from getting worse. They could end exclusionary zoning—a recommendation of their very own housing task force. They could pass the official opposition’s housing critic’s motion to set up a short-term rental registry and restrict short-term and mid-term rentals to a person’s primary residence in those areas where we have low vacancy rates.

I want to quote the member for University–Rosedale here. She said, “Our province has a housing affordability crisis, and we must take every practical measure to make housing affordable for Ontarians again. Cracking down on short-term rentals in investment properties is one way we can make renting more affordable and stable.” I’ll say. Yes, indeed.

Those are just a few of the solutions that we in the official opposition NDP have recommended to help people today—not 10 years from now, but today.

Let’s be clear: This government didn’t walk into a housing crisis on June 3, 2022. This is a crisis that has been years in the making. The Premier has claimed many times that his party didn’t run on the greenbelt land swap because there wasn’t a housing crisis at the time. Oh, please. Come on. The Integrity Commissioner’s report notes many times that staff had discussed greenbelt removals prior to the election. In fact, according to the commissioner’s report, just 27 days after his re-election, the Premier was giving the former Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs explicit instructions to start carving up the greenbelt. The Premier claims that that all happened as of June 2. Come on. In fact, Andrew Sidnell, the Premier’s former deputy chief of staff, told the Integrity Commissioner that he understood that the housing crisis was a priority this government was just elected to solve, which is completely contradictory to the Premier’s comments.

Mr. Speaker, there is so much more left to be uncovered. If the Premier has nothing to hide, then why are they not co-operating? If they have nothing to hide, why did this government say no to the official opposition’s request for a Speaker’s warrant? Let’s do this—if the government has nothing to hide. Even at the height of the Liberal government’s absolutely disastrous gas plant scandal, that government, those MPPs, co-operated in forming a select committee to investigate what happened.

The Auditor General’s report also revealed that the Premier was using his personal device—this is something I raised in question period this morning, and I didn’t get any answers, interestingly. The Premier was using his personal device for government business; even the former housing minister’s staff were found to be using personal email accounts to conduct government business—by the way, I think they then deleted some emails. This is not how government is supposed to be run.

It’s shady.

The NDP believes that these facts constitute a troubling pattern of behaviour by this government and a pervasive disregard for record-keeping and transparency, and possibly attempts to avoid public scrutiny.

That’s why, in the official opposition’s continued efforts to restore order, trust and accountability, we have also written to the Information and Privacy Commissioner, as well as to the secretary of cabinet, the head of Ontario Public Service, asking both offices to recover and retain all records pertaining to this government’s changes to the greenbelt. I will note that that secretary of the cabinet, the head of the Ontario Public Service—that person’s priority seems to be to trace who actually spilled the beans on the mandate letter; not securing the servers, which I think is shameful, actually.

Today, I want to make one thing very, very clear: The NDP—we on this side of the House—will continue to use every single legislative tool to get to the bottom of what happened with the greenbelt. We will not stop. We will not stop because an apology from the Premier is not enough. For nearly one year, this government was busy cutting their close friends—those land speculators—backroom deals, and since getting caught, they’ve been so busy with damage control from these never-ending scandals that they’ve lost total sight of their responsibility to Ontarians.

Let’s get it straight; as I mentioned at the start of this, Ontarians are going through a very, very hard time. They are lining up at food banks in record numbers. They are struggling to stretch their paycheques until the end of the month. They are worried that homelessness is around the corner. And right now, during so much financial hardship and uncertainty—and let’s remember, as well, things are not better after five years of this government; they are far more difficult today for people in this province. Maybe not for the land speculators who donate to the Conservative Party, but for real Ontarians, things are tougher today. The last thing that the people of this province need is a government that is unstable, a government that is refusing to be transparent with them and that is refusing to be truly accountable to them and to be responsive to them.

A select committee will help Ontarians get the answers and the transparency that they are looking for. I want to remind the government again: A prior select committee helped uncover misconduct in the former Liberal government’s gas plant scandal. That led to the former Premier’s chief of staff being sentenced to four months in jail. The creation of that select committee was supported by MPPs of all parties. Why not now? I heard the member opposite, the member from Nepean, say, “But that was a minority government—special circumstances.” I just want to point out that I think these are special circumstances. We have the worst political scandal in this province’s history, I would argue—unprecedented. Now is the time. A select committee is another tool that we, in the Ontario official opposition, NDP, are going to use to bring trust and accountability to government.

I would deeply urge and strongly suggest to the government that they co-operate today and pass this motion.

I appreciate this opportunity to address the motion.

I had the opportunity, 10 years ago, to sit on the committee that carried out the inquiry into the gas plant scandal. All of us should be grateful to the Auditor General and the Integrity Commissioner for the work they did, shedding light on what has happened with the greenbelt scandal. But I know from experience, sitting on that committee of inquiry, that more can be done in finding out what happens when a government goes wrong.

For those who may not remember, in the 2000s the Liberal government commissioned two power plants to be built in Oakville and Mississauga, respectively, to deal with local electricity demand. In the run-up to the 2011 elections, the government faced growing problems with voters in the ridings hosting the plants and those who were neighbouring those plants—so much opposition that, in an attempt to secure government, the McGuinty government cancelled both plants, one before and one during the 2011 election. Of course, those cancellations triggered legal actions by the builders, and ultimately the Auditor General found that they resulted in losses to the ratepayers of approximately a billion dollars.

By the way, the Auditor General was much lauded by the Conservative Party at the time, and rightly so. The same Auditor General dug into the shenanigans around the removal of parcels of land from the greenbelt, for which she received much less goodwill from the same party, and she found that benefits to friends of the Premier came in at over $8 billion. No one has ever said that the Premier was not ambitious and generous with his friends, and he proved it with this.

Again, as a refresher, Premier McGuinty did not win the majority in 2011, and in the minority Legislature that followed that election, an inquiry into the gas plant scandal was forced into existence. After an attempt at stalling by the Premier, who prorogued the Legislature for a number of months, the committee was allowed to resume its work, calling civil servants, ministers and participants in the whole process before the committee to answer questions. There were 400,000 pages of documents provided to the committee of inquiry. We did a lot of reading.

There were a few things that became clear from the introduction of the emails and from the testimony of the many who appeared before the committee. The first thing that became clear was that the absence of emails, of records of activity were substantial—and the vital role of access to records in establishing what happened, even with the destruction of records. You should know, by law, government records were to be preserved and archived, and many weren’t. In fact, almost nothing came out of the office of the Minister of Energy and his staff. That led to a secondary examination by the privacy commissioner, who found large-scale destruction of records. Ultimately, the large-scale destruction of records led, as my leader has said, to criminal prosecution of senior members of the Premier McGuinty staff, with the conviction and jailing of chief of staff David Livingston. And, man, did that ever give us the sense of the moral compass of that government; did that ever clarify to the people of Ontario who they were dealing with.

In his report, the Integrity Commissioner noted that the calendar for the minister’s chief of staff, Ryan Amato, had times blocked off for meetings in the relevant period that were critical to the transfer of those lands but no participants noted, or purposes of meetings noted. The man must be incredible in terms of memory. I don’t know about other people in this room, but I can’t remember every item on every calendar day. I’m impressed.

There was a notable absence of emails and use of personal phones and personal email, apparently to get around the laws on preservation of archival material. An inquiry would give us a much better sense if there was an evasion of the Archives and Recordkeeping Act and the potential scale of that evasion.

I have to say to all of you that access to the actual records was critical to reconstructing what happened in the gas plants scandal. Something we discovered when we were questioning Liberal political staff and politicians in the committee was the staggering rate of early-onset memory loss. These were people in the prime of their lives, and they had the memory of people in their nineties. It was astounding to watch. I felt sorry for them, being struck down so young with that kind of malady. The records that didn’t get deleted did actually give us a chance to understand what happened.

Speaker, I think it’s going to be critical for a committee of inquiry to get records, because I have a sense that under pressure of testifying under oath, there may be some Conservative staffers and politicians who also suffer early-onset memory loss, and so in order to establish what’s going on, or what went on, access to records, even if they’ve been disturbed, will be critical. We need to ask: What did they forget, and when did they forget it?

The second thing that became clear from the records that did survive was what led to the decision to cancel the plants—I’m talking now about the gas plants scandal. The government and its ministers, who had seats directly affected by the plants, were distraught—you had to read the emails to understand it, to appreciate it—at the level of anger they were dealing with in their ridings. They were besieged. What we saw in their internal emails was raw political fear—raw political fear that translated into decisions for cancellation of plants and incurring of huge losses for the people of this province.

It’s hard for me to believe that a similar examination of emails and texts from current government MPPs wouldn’t show the same kind of fear in the lead-up to the reversal. You don’t snatch $8 billion worth of profits out of the hands of your friends, people who show up for your daughter’s wedding, unless there is, on the other side, a powerful political motivator, like a career-ending event at the hands of your angry voters. If fear motivated the reversal, it would be interesting to delve into the records to see what motivated the savaging of the greenbelt in the first place.

I accept that the buck stops with the Premier. He said it himself.

No one buys the fairy tale that this had anything to do with the housing crisis. We need to find out, what did the Premier order, and why did he order it?

The third thing that became clear in the course of that inquiry—and that could be made clear in the course of another inquiry—was that the Liberal government knew very early on the scale of the cost to ratepayers of Ontario. The chief of staff to the Minister of Energy made inquiries when this whole thing was about to go forward, when the whole idea of cancelling the plants was first promoted, and some prescient bureaucrat suggested the cost was in about a $1-billion range. I don’t know who that bureaucrat was, but whoever they are, man, they knew energy costs.

It’s hard for me to believe that with this greenbelt scandal, there were not senior political and bureaucratic staff who didn’t do the rough math themselves—maybe the developers did it for them—to see what kind of staggering gift of public value was being made to those who had the chance to get a piece of wedding cake served by the Premier. The public deserves to know. Cake and billions—what an amazing combination; what a wedding gift. What did the government know about the value they were giving away, and when did they know it?

The fourth piece of clarity that came out of that gas plants scandal inquiry—and, I think, would come out here—was a look into the operations of government itself, which was something that few people ever get a chance to do. At one point, we were given access to the interviews of senior bureaucrats and political staff by the OPP. In one interview, a senior bureaucrat talked about his concern that the top political staff in the Premier’s office didn’t keep records of their daily meetings. The chief of staff’s senior people would meet every day. They had one sheet of paper with headings like “Shutting Down Hamilton” or “Making St. Catharines a Free-Enterprise Zone”—I don’t know. There were no records kept of any decisions or discussion. That was it. That’s how the province was being run. I have to say, this was so noteworthy that in the final report on the inquiry, the Conservatives put in their own dissenting opinion. They quoted from the OPP interviews. They went out of their way to quote the cabinet secretary talking about the lack of Liberal records. Here is the text: Cabinet secretary Peter Wallace told investigators that he warned David Livingston, McGuinty’s chief of staff, that “the only organizations that did not maintain records were criminal organizations” and that “a practice of no record-keeping would be embarrassing”—the second one, yes, it would be amazingly embarrassing; the other would have a greater punch, I thought. I have to ask myself, with the way that the Integrity Commissioner describes the avoiding of government phones and emails to communicate about these parcels of land, with missing calendar entries, with the use of envelopes full of plans given out at events, what would that civil servant say today? What would a legislative committee find with regard to the Premier, his ministers and his operatives with the questions—what did they delete, and when did they delete it?

As I go door to door in my riding talking to my constituents, the questions come up constantly: What really happened with the greenbelt? Who did this? They know, generally, the Premier was running things, but through what persons did he do it? Who benefited? Why wasn’t this stopped? Why wasn’t it stopped internally when people realized, “This is bad news”—aside from the fact that there were other considerations, not just bad news.

A public inquiry with the power to compel evidence could give us answers to many of these questions—maybe not all, but to many of these questions. We need to get those answers. Let’s get going with this committee of inquiry.

It’s shady.

Further debate?

I want to talk a little bit about committee work that had brought great, great value to the people of Ontario and that was started by a Conservative member. I’m talking about the work we did about Ornge air ambulance.

I want to bring you back to January 2012, when the whistle-blowers were coming from everywhere, telling us that things were really, really, bad at Ornge. The Auditor General—it was Jim McCarter at the time—issued a special report on Ornge on March 21, 2012. At the time, Frank Klees, who was a member of the PC caucus, was on public accounts, and so was I. We agreed, as a group, to put all of the work that we were doing on public accounts aside and focus on the special report of Ornge. It was a decision that really—it was Frank Klees at the time; the member from Oxford who is still there; the member from Nepean who is still there; as well as Julia Munro, who were on public accounts. I would say they worked at it really hard, but they were able to convince the entire group at public accounts that we should look at this special report right away, and we did. We worked for—I went back. We heard 85 witnesses during 40 hearing days, and altogether we spent 147 hours at that work.

Why am I putting that out there? Because it changed things for the better for the people of Ontario. And I give the credit to the PC caucus and Frank Klees—because they pushed really hard that we should look at what had happened at Ornge, we were able to help a lot of people turn the page and regain confidence in Ornge.

For those of you who were not there at the time, let me show you a really, really sad story of Ornge, our air ambulance here in Ontario. Air ambulance had been there for—as long as there has been ambulance, we’ve had air ambulance in northern Ontario. It had worked under the name of Ornge—without the A—for a few decades. We started to have whistle-blowers. I had them coming to me and to everybody else telling us about Dr. Mazza, who was the CEO of Ornge at the time. He was supposed to be a public servant, covered by the mandatory disclosure of salary, but we could not find his salary anywhere; whistle-blowers were telling us that it was in the realm of $1 million—it was actually $1.4 million, but it had not been on the sunshine list.

We also found a lot of wrongdoing had happened at Ornge. The first one that came to us, aside from the CEO of Ornge being paid $1.4 million a year—there was also all of the members of his board. This is a board of governance of a not-for-profit charitable organization in Ontario, funded 100% by the Ministry of Health, and the chair, Rainer Beltzner, received $232,757. All of the board members received, on average, $238,000 for sitting on a not-for-profit board of directors. None of this was available in the information that they were willing to share with us.

But it got way worse. When we started to look and, again, invited people to do testimony in front of the committee—and I have to say, the good work of Frank Klees; he was always ready, always had a ton of questions, always read all of the documents, and we’re talking, like, that thick of documents that were coming to us every week. He would ask questions.

Dr. Mazza had bought helicopters from AgustaWestland. They paid $144 million to buy those new helicopters—12 of them—when, really, Ontario only needed nine. The business case to buy new helicopters was for nine, but Dr. Mazza decided to buy 12. Not only did he decide to buy 12 helicopters, but he decided to pay an extra $600,000 for each and every one of those helicopters, and this money came back to him—$4.7 million went from AgustaWestland back to Dr. Mazza. The $2.9 million went to Ornge’s charitable foundation. Ornge also bought 11 used helicopters for $28 million, and the fleet was resold for $8 million. Anybody who’s strong in math—you all know that we had, as taxpayers, just paid $20 million more for the used helicopters than what they were worth.

So of the 12 helicopters that were bought by Mazza, we only needed nine. Two of them were not equipped at all for patient transport. This is what Ornge does—it does patient transport. If you get hurt in northern Ontario, Ornge picks you up and brings you to the closest hospital that has an emergency department open. But two of the 12 helicopters were not set up for patient transport at all, and what made it even worse is that, of the 10 that were set up—the AgustaWestland helicopters were not made for medical transport. They are really low-ceilinged, which means that if you are a paramedic caring for somebody who codes while you’re transporting them from the scene of the accident to the emergency room, there is not enough room for you to do CPR. So we had just spent—“we,” because we paid for this—$144 million to buy 12 helicopters when we only needed nine. We paid an extra $600,000 per helicopter and bought helicopters that did not meet our needs. We didn’t do that—Ornge did that for us. It gets worse. They also bought 10 Pilatus PC-12 airplanes when we only needed six, and they had to be resold.

But what really got me when I was sitting there listening to the testimonies was the operating issues at Ornge. Those are the issues that a lot of the paramedics had come to talk to me about. I used to fly down to Queen’s Park every Monday morning. I was there at 4:30 in the morning—at the airport, waiting for my flight. The paramedics sit very close to the rest of the airport, and they would come and talk to me about operational issues. The main operational issue was that Dr. Mazza had put in place these operational guidelines that said that the dispatch operators were pressured to cut costs—because he had just made a whole bunch of purchases that made no sense—by reducing helicopter launches. So the policy was that the helicopter would not be dispatched until a land ambulance had confirmed the need. Think about that, Speaker. You dial 911; there is somebody who’s just had a major accident in a mine way out in northern Ontario; and you would have to wait for a land ambulance to leave from Timmins or Sudbury and make the four-hour drive through the brush to say, “Yes, we need to dispatch an air ambulance,” or the air ambulance would not get dispatched because Dr. Mazza was trying to save costs.

This led to an inquiry by the coroner of Ontario, who showed us that eight patients had died who would have had good chances of survival if that policy had not been in place. One of those patients was one of my constituents, a nice lady from the east end of my riding whose family only gained closure as to what happened to their mom, to his wife, after the coroner released his report. All of that was only discovered because we agreed, as parliamentarians, to focus on this report; we agreed to work together so that we would get to the bottom of this. Was it pleasant? No. Did it make the government look bad? Absolutely. It was a Liberal government at the time. Deb Matthews was the Minister of Health, and we had a lot of testimony that showed that a lot of the decision-making was all written up and sent to the Premier at the time, Mr. McGuinty; sent to the Minister of Health, Deb Matthews; sent to five or six other ministers; and none of them clued in that they had to step in, that they had to have a look as to what was going on. How can you sign off on a policy that says we won’t dispatch a helicopter until a wheeled ambulance makes it out there? But it did not trigger anything from the government.

I must say that at the time, the chair of the board of Ornge was also the chair of the Liberal political party, and he would be the one who would come out with the letters outlining everything that Ornge was about to do to the minister, to the Premier, and they all thought that that was really good, that everything was just hunky-dory; it was not.

Then, we have to talk about the webs of companies. The desire to privatize was always there with Ornge. They shared that with the minister. They shared that with the Premier. They wanted to privatize. They wanted to use some of the assets—those are public assets that were going to be used by companies that were associated with Ornge but not part of Ornge.

There was a web of companies: J Smarts, Ornge Peel—Ornge Peel; who dreams that up? Anyway, it was there. It became Ornge Global Real Estate, Ornge Global Holdings, Ornge Issuer Trust, Ornge Global Air, Ornge Global Management—and the list goes on. The Auditor General had identified, I think, 40 of them. Through our work as a committee, we identified 20 private companies that were directly linked to Ornge and making money using the assets of Ornge, whether it be the building where they were, whether it be the helicopter, whether it be the planes, the ambulance—to make money for a whole bunch of private companies that were all linked to Ornge. For some reason, they all belonged to friends of the government or members of the board of directors—or Dr. Mazza himself—and they were all making a ton of money.

Meanwhile, air ambulances were not being dispatched when people in northern Ontario were needing them, to save money.

I could go on and on as to everything that went wrong, but the point I want to make is that a lot was learned from this. A lot of people who were hurt—and we’re talking mayors of small communities; we’re talking families of people who died or had severe health impacts; we’re talking the hundreds of people who worked for Ornge, especially the dispatchers, who were told they had to follow those policies. They had all lost faith in the system. They had lost all confidence in Ornge.

Ornge needs some really, really specialized workers. We don’t have, in Ontario, very many specialized care paramedics. We have specialized care paramedics for pediatrics who work for Ornge; those are very few. All of those people were either leaving Ornge or trying to find a job somewhere else. And when you have that level of training, let me tell you, it’s not hard to find a job someplace else.

The work that we did as parliamentarians to take the time to work together, to hear dispatch and all of this, helped us regain the trust of the people who worked for Ornge, regain the trust of the people like me in northern Ontario who depend on Ornge, and helped the families who were hurt turn the page.

I hope that, this afternoon, everybody will vote in favour of a select committee. We can learn from the mistakes of the past and make it better for everyone in Ontario by showing them that this will never happen again, that we have learned from it, and that we want to do better.

I’ve been listening intently to the comments made by the members opposite, and I appreciate them, really, because I had actually forgotten about the—not forgotten; I shouldn’t say that. It had been out of my memory—about the scandals that were predominant in the previous Liberal government with respect to Ornge, and the gas plant scandal. I appreciate the members opposite for refreshing this House on that.

The members opposite talked a lot about, what was the motivation and why did we do this, but I wanted to say this first and foremost: I obviously have committed to and will be bringing forward legislation that will protect the greenbelt through legislation. What does that mean? Obviously, currently, the greenbelt can be changed through regulation and not through legislation, meaning that since its inception governments are able to bypass the House in order to make changes to the greenbelt. We will be making changes and ensuring that legislation is brought forward to codify the boundaries of the greenbelt, and I will be doing that as soon as possible.

I will go a step further by ensuring that we add the 9,400 additional acres to the greenbelt that we had previously talked about, including the Paris-Galt moraine, which I know is something that many people had talked about preserving and protecting for a long period of time, but it had never been done in the province. We will be doing that.

A lot of time has been spent by the opposition explaining to us the need to have a select committee, and I certainly appreciate hearing from the members opposite why they believe a select committee should be brought forward. Let me just say this: In their own comments here today, they show why a select committee is actually not needed and why we will be voting against that.

The members opposite talk about what happened during the Liberal time in office with respect to Ornge, and they talked about the gas plant scandal. You will remember, Madam Speaker, the members themselves have talked about the cost to taxpayers. They talked about the loss of faith and trust in the then Liberal government. The members opposite talked about how that impacted their communities, and the extraordinary work done by Progressive Conservatives to extract that level of accountability from them. But one of the hallmarks of that and one of the reasons why a select committee was so important is because the government of the day refused to acknowledge that it had made a mistake.

Madam Speaker, the Auditor General reported, and the government has accepted all of the Auditor General’s recommendations, full stop. Every single one of those recommendations, the government has acknowledged, and we are acting on all of those.

We are going a step further, and we are ensuring that we codify the boundaries into legislation.

The Premier said it on behalf of all of us, frankly—we made a mistake. We acknowledge that mistake. We thought that there would be broad public support in order to build housing as quickly as possible by accessing the greenbelt. That was a mistake for which we apologize.

But make no mistake that we are completely focused on ensuring that we can build 1.5 million homes across the province of Ontario. We will not be deterred in that. Whilst we acknowledge that it was a mistake to consider the greenbelt lands, we do not for one moment believe it a mistake to continue to focus on building homes for the people in the province of Ontario, and I’ll get to a little bit more on that.

Specific to the request for a select committee, Madam Speaker, and again, the member for Toronto–Danforth and the member for—forgive me; Algoma–Manitoulin?

A vast majority of their speech highlighted the challenges of those two scandals in the Liberal government. But in the final analysis, the government of the day refused to acknowledge that it had made a mistake—we did. But the opposition NDP, at the time, did nothing. In their speeches, both of these two members talked about how horrific those two scandals were to Ontarians. They talked about their communities. They talked about the billions of dollars that were actually spent and wasted on the gas plants. They talked about the impact it had during an election. They talked about the fact that it drove a Premier out of office. But when Progressive Conservatives went to act on those two reports—not once but twice tabling motions of non-confidence in the government—how did the NDP vote? They voted to keep that government, which they say is one of the most corrupt governments in the history of this province, which they have been talking about now for about 40 minutes. They voted to maintain that government in office.

Progressive Conservatives, at that time, were clear. They wanted that government out of office and defeated because of those two scandals, which the government refused to acknowledge were actually even a problem—those two scandals which directly cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

The member for Nickel Belt and the member for Toronto–Danforth talk about the success of those two select committees, but what they fail to talk about is their failure to hold the Liberals accountable for those two scandals.

So specifically on the creation of a select committee, I say to the honourable members, in this instance, it is not required because the government has acknowledged it made a mistake. The government has heard from the Auditor General. The government has accepted all of the Auditor General’s recommendations, and the government will move one step further to ensure that the greenbelt is protected. We will go even further. We will add additional lands to the greenbelt because we know how important it is that we do it.

In her message, the Leader of the Opposition talked about how important affordability is to the people of the province of Ontario. We’ve seen this a million times from the opposition, haven’t we, colleagues—it’s say one thing, but do something else.

The member opposite talks about the motivation for doing this, and I think it really speaks to the affordability question that the Leader of the Opposition talks about. The motivation was to build homes for people who can’t otherwise afford them. Do you know why they can’t afford them? Because we’re not building enough homes. Why are we not building enough homes? Because of the obstacles and the red tape that was put in the way by the Liberals and NDP over 15 years—full stop. It goes further than that. It’s not only red tape and obstacles that they put in the way. Not only did they have the opportunity, between 2011 and 2014, to vote the Liberals out of office so that we could address some of these problems—in their own words, two horrific scandals—in select committees to review those scandals. And what action? Nothing. But they continue to vote for policies which take money out of the pockets of the people of the province of Ontario.

We’ve talked about this a lot. One of the first things we talked about was a carbon tax. And they lost their minds.

The member for Toronto–Danforth talks about affordability. This is a member who supported a policy that saw our electricity rates skyrocket. This is a gentleman who is singularly unconcerned with the fact that millions of Ontarians had to choose between heating and eating because of the policies that he supported then and that he continues to support now—policies that we are fighting against. That is the record of the NDP, in co-operation with Liberals.

When we said we had to get rid of a carbon tax, what did they say? No. They said it would have a huge impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Do you know what has impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Our nuclear fleet. Do you know who is restoring our nuclear fleet? It is this government. Who is against that? It is the opposition who is against that.

Think of what the carbon tax costs us. Do you want to talk about—

Interjections.

Nickel Belt.

Further debate?

The members opposite are screaming and hollering. Thankfully, the mikes don’t pick up what the opposition are screaming and hollering about—their support for additional taxes for people. But that is no surprise. That is at the core of what the NDP are—it is, in their estimation, that government can do a better job than individuals on deciding how to manage their own wealth and resources.

I talked about when I was at Walmart last week, and I ran into Carol, who is a local—

Interjection.

What Carol was saying—and the reason I remember Carol is because she is from a local farming family, and she was highlighting for me the high costs of produce. Do you know what she said? The costs were directly associated with the fact that there was a carbon tax. Fuel has gone up. The fuel in the tractor to plant the crop has gone up. Harvesting the crop has gone up. Fertilizer costs have gone up. Transportation of her crop to the store has gone up. People driving to the store to buy goods has gone up. Do you know what that creates? That creates hardships for the people of the province of Ontario.

So when the Leader of the Opposition talks about affordability for Ontarians, I say you cannot even begin to talk about affordability until you address the one tax that is costing all Canadians—forget about just Ontarians—on every single thing that they buy. That is what a carbon tax does.

When we brought forward tax reductions for the people of the province of Ontario, to put more money in their pocket, they voted against those measures. So when you talk about putting more money in the pockets of people, they vote against it. But when the Liberals brought forward more spending programs that took money out of people’s pockets, they were supportive of it. In fact, despite the fact that we had two horrific scandals under the Liberals, in a minority government in which they held the balance of power, they voted to keep the Liberals in office, despite the fact that our economy was sinking. We saw our—

Interjection.

That is the legacy that they’re screaming and hollering their support for, and somehow, they expect people to believe that they are the guardians of affordability. It gets even worse than that. It’s not even just that.

When we’ve brought forward measures to help build jobs and the economy—like the mining sector. We have talked about mining for how long in this province? We’ve talked about the Ring of Fire, we’ve talked about northern Ontario for how long in this province?

The Liberals called the north a wasteland—

But when we brought forward measures to help unlock the vast potential of northern Ontario, to make our mines work better, to provide additional investments—the member for Sudbury, who sits here and claps for his leader, who talks about affordability, voted against those measures that would clearly help the people in his own riding. Thousands of jobs and opportunities—the member for Sudbury gleefully sat on his hands, hoping that nobody would pay attention or notice that he was voting against the workers in his own riding. But he’s paying attention now, because you see how uncomfortable he is.

It’s not even just me who suggested that the NDP are constantly on the wrong path. The people of the province of Ontario have reduced the Liberals to non-party status in two elections. In the last election, we heard from the NDP—you remember this, colleagues, before the election, when they formed government. The results of the last election actually were just the opposite.

Interjection.

Decades now.

The member says I’m reaching. I’m reaching because there are Conservatives over there; there are far fewer NDP. But that’s not the point. Do you know why there are far fewer NDP? Because they have never voted for measures that help build housing. They have never voted for measures that help put money back to the people of Ontario. They vote against measures that would get people moving around more. They vote against transit. The member for Toronto–Danforth talks about building transit but votes against it.

The members opposite talk about building where land is available, but some of the members opposite have already told me that they feel their community has already played enough of a role in building. Well, I say to them very clearly that, no, nobody has played enough of a role in building homes for people. It is an absolute that we must build more homes for the next generation of Ontarians. Every community will play a role in helping us do that, and every community across this province, frankly, is excited at the prospect of having the ability to participate in doing that.

I have heard from small communities in northern Ontario who have said to me, “We can build five or six homes, and we want to be a part of it”; I’ve heard from larger communities that have said that they can do even more.

I’ve heard from communities that say, “We need more long-term care in our riding,” and we’re going to deliver.

At the same time, we have been very clear—they have voted against it—we are going to build homes around the transit infrastructure that we’re building. This is one of the recommendations of the Housing Affordability Task Force that they talk about and that many of them are so terrified of now. They’re very afraid of that because we will come through; we will build housing across our transit systems.

It is a much larger transit system, you will know, Madam Speaker, because we are making significant investments that have brought two-way, all-day GO trains, for instance, to different parts of the province that never had them before. I’m proud of that. I think it’s very good news for the people of the province of Ontario that we’re doing that. But it also gives an opportunity for people in those communities to live by transit corridors, so they don’t have to drive cars. They can get to where they have to work without getting in a car and driving. The NDP is opposed to that.

The NDP, actually, is even opposed to measures that would see the cost of transit and transportation cost less. Let’s unpack that just for a second, because it’s important when you talk about housing affordability and why we are voting against this motion. Somebody in my riding—frankly, I don’t know if the NDP have ever held a seat in the 905, so I’m going to help explain to them some of the realities of 905, up in York region, because I know the member for Oshawa is about to say it’s 905 there. In York region, you can get on a bus or you can get on a GO train and you’ve got to pay; you get on the TTC and you’ve got to pay; or you could go to Mississauga transit, and you’ve got to pay for the GO train in Mississauga and Brampton; you might go to Durham region. The NDP think that that is a good use of taxpayers’ money. Do you know what we say? We say, no, it’s not. There should be one fare.

We have talked about this in this province for a very long time. We brought in a unified fare system. How have the NDP voted? This is a common-sense measure that will save the average transit user in our area about $1,600 a year—$1,600 right back in the pockets of those people who need it the most. The NDP voted against that measure. So let’s see—$1,600 out of your pocket if the NDP were elected for transit and transportation, because they don’t believe in a unified fare. Who knows what the cost of a carbon tax is? Take that right out of your pocket.

The NDP that set the record for spending in the history of the province of Ontario—in the short time that they actually held office—want to bring those same types of policies back to the province of Ontario. It is the same type of policies that we’re seeing in Ottawa. We talked about this right from the beginning. From the time that we took office here, we said when you increase red tape, when you increase costs, when you have out-of-control debt and deficits, that is not good for the economy and, ultimately, it’s not good for people. They disagree, and they continue to vote for those types of policies, which now have led to interest rates increasing faster than at any other time in this country’s history—it’s not just them here, because this very same crew that held the balance of power here and could have made a change here in 2012 or 2011 now holds the balance of power in Ottawa.

Interjection: Do you miss Ottawa?

I met with the mayor of Ottawa on Thursday—very supportive of the things that we are trying to do to build housing; very supportive of the things that we’re doing on transit and transportation; very supportive of cutting red tape and taxes for the people of the province of Ontario. But not to distract from what they’re doing in Ottawa, the NDP—it’s no surprise that the leader of the NDP in Ottawa was amongst that crew here that kept the Liberals in office here in the province of Ontario. In Ottawa, we’ve had SNC-Lavalin, we’ve had that justice minister who had issues, and just on and on and on, but they keep them in power—

Interjection.

When you talk about increasing interest rates, Madam Speaker, do you know what that means? That means a family who is about to start out and go buy their first home all of a sudden can’t afford to buy their first home. That means that families who are about to renew their mortgages can’t afford to renew their mortgages and continue to pay for the home that they have. That’s what that means. That’s what high interest rates and the policies that the NDP support mean for the people of this country.

I would challenge the members opposite to give their friends in Ottawa a call and say, “Reverse course”—don’t do like they did when they were here, and put the people of Canada first. When they had the opportunity, they didn’t put the people of Ontario first, and we are still trying to dig out of the mess that was 15 years of Liberal and NDP government in this province. We will continue to focus on that.

This morning, I talked about the bargain that was Canada for so many years—if you come to this country and work hard and play by the rules, you should have the opportunity to do better. It’s the one thing that we do—you leave your country, your province, in a better spot than what you found it in. Because of how disastrous the Liberals were, it was a low bar for the province of Ontario. It was a low bar, but we exceeded that so much—700,000 people have the dignity of a job, who didn’t when we took office. They’re working hard. But the bargain for them, the bargain for generations who have come to this country, was that if you do that, you work hard, you play by the rules, then your kids would do better than you do.

That’s why my parents came to this country. That’s why they left Italy to come here. My mom was 18; my dad—I don’t know; 26. They came here. My dad got off a train and started working almost immediately. The entire family lived in a home. They shared beds. When one was working, the other would leave. But they knew that one day, they would be able to have their own piece of the Canadian dream if they worked hard. And they did, right? They did. They moved out. One bought a home—I’ve talked about this—in the member for Scarborough Southwest’s riding. A wartime bungalow, a small, little 1,200-square-foot bungalow is where my family started its journey of home ownership. But they could do that.

One of the reasons I actually got into politics in the first place is because I remember—I was 10 years old when the first Liberal government, in my lifetime, anyway, brought the country to its knees with interest rates at 18% or 19%. Again, similar: out-of-control spending, higher taxes, the inability for the country to compete and to build a growing economy. I have never forgotten the stress. My parents were really good at it, Madam Speaker; they were really good at pretending like nothing was wrong, but you knew something was wrong. You knew something was wrong, and that is partially what drove me into office.

I will not be here in government and leave that as the legacy for the next generation. I just simply will not do it. So we will get 1.5 million homes built for the people in the province of Ontario. Do you know why, Madam Speaker? Because that is the bargain. That’s the bargain that we have here. As I said, work hard and you have the ability to get out of your parents’ basement. Think of all of these kids right now. When my 17-year-old daughter says to me that she might never be able to buy a home, that’s not the Ontario we grew up in. That’s not the Canada that we grew up in.

So when the opposition label, “What did you do? Why did you do it?”—look, I talked about this in my first news conference. My family was one of the first families in the province of Ontario to put a conservation easement across our farmland. I’ll never forget that work—it was done by Don Prince and the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust. We took 60 acres of our land back in 2004 and we put a conservation easement on top of that in favour of the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust.

Why would a guy who has done that and a family who has done that be so willing to move so quickly to build homes? Because we are in a crisis. I acknowledge the fact, Madam Speaker, as I said earlier, that we made a mistake in where we chose to build those homes. We’re stepping back from that and we’re doing what is right because that’s what the people have asked us to do, but it doesn’t mean that we will stop on our motivation to build homes.

It goes further than that, right? Because not everybody just wants or can immediately start out building a home. Like my parents when they came here, there were many of them renting a home in a riding. That was the start of their dream: renting a home in a community. For many, that is the start, and the policies that we have brought in have helped us see purpose-built rental housing at its highest level in over 15 years. Imagine that: its highest level in over 15 years. We have people getting back into building rental housing in this province like never before, and they’re doing that because they know they have a government who’s a partner, a government who’s focused on building affordability for all types of people.

In my riding, we have the very first affordable housing apartment building being built—97 units of affordable housing that had never been built in our community, halfway through the construction phase right now. When I was there turning the sod on that, I can’t tell you how happy I was. I was there with the mayor of Stouffville, and we knew that it would make a difference. Because in a community like mine, we have seniors who want to go to different-style housing. They might be in a large house, and they want to downsize and move into a smaller home, thereby making their home available, but they have nowhere to go. They have nowhere to go, Madam Speaker.

The changes that we are making have seen more homes being built than ever before, but we still have a long way to go. Purpose-built rentals: at their highest level in 15 years. Housing starts: at their highest levels in 15 years. But it’s not enough. It is not enough, because if we’re to hit our target of 1.5 million homes, we are going to have to do even more, and it’s not just for them.

You look at long-term care. Long-term care is a home for someone. It is a home for someone, and when you bring 30,000 new long-term-care beds, it is 30,000 additional people who have a home who didn’t have it before. And we are going to go even further.

I was in Windsor a couple of weeks ago. We were at Meadowbrook Place, another investment that’s being made in social housing in Windsor—the first one, if I’m not mistaken, in over 30 years in that community. This is a really, really great place. It will support a couple of hundred families.

Again, it took them over 30 years to be able to build something like this. That is unacceptable. But those investments are happening, right? Those investments are happening in the province of Ontario again. You’re seeing there’s this energy around what’s happening in Ontario. There’s an energy about what’s happening around the province of Ontario.

Despite the fact that we have challenges, people can see that we are moving in a positive direction. Yes, high interest rates caused by federal policies are causing challenges for the people of Ontario. I talked about a young family, an individual who—frankly, it was his grandparents who had called me. I spoke about them in question period once. They had made 21 offers on homes—21 offers on homes and were not even in the game; not even in the game, ostensibly because there aren’t enough homes for them to buy.

This is an individual I talk about who did everything right. He bought a small bachelor apartment when he could, when he started working, with a goal of moving forward. He recently brought home—he and his wife had their first child, and they brought that child home to that bachelor apartment, but that’s not where they wanted to be, right? Now, he’s grateful that he was in the market, but that’s not where he wants to be, and that’s not where I want him and people like him to be. I want them to be in a home they are comfortable in, in a home where they can flourish, because that is what the promise of Ontario is for people.

We’ve gone a step further, Madam Speaker. We’ve gone a step further, right? In order to encourage the building of homes across the province of Ontario, working with our municipal partners, we said, “Look, you’re going to have to do more within your boundary. We’re going to build more homes around transit and transportation corridors because that makes sense. There’s going to be higher density in those areas.” You can build up to three units right now. Whether it’s a basement apartment, a garden suite, we’ve brought that in, and we will start to see the benefits of doing that.

But we’re going a step further, right? We’ve brought in a program that will incentivize our municipal partners to help us get shovels in the ground faster, because they want to work with us, right? They are just as frustrated by the years of Liberal and NDP stepping on their toes and getting in the way. So we brought in the Building Faster Fund, and that is geared specifically to helping reward those communities that help us get shovels in the ground to build more homes faster across the province of Ontario.

The reaction to that has been spectacular. It is a fund that is also available in smaller communities across the province because they told us they want to participate in that fund. We have a bill in front of this House right now which I challenge the opposition to vote in favour of. I challenge the opposition to vote in favour because, in a very real sense, the bill that is in front of the House right now is a referendum on building homes. It is a referendum on buildings homes.

In that bill, we have redefined what affordable housing is. We’ve redefined it not just based on market conditions in an area; we’ve redefined it based on income across the province of Ontario in different communities because we know that what is affordable in Hamilton is different than what’s affordable in Toronto. It’s different than what’s affordable in Stouffville. So we will work from community to community to ensure that everybody can participate in that.

And make no mistake about it: This is a referendum on everything. It gives the opposition NDP the opportunity to say—and it’s not only that. I know the associate minister will talk about the extraordinary work that’s being done in St. Thomas, where thousands of jobs are coming back. We need to build housing there. But this bill is a referendum on building homes. This bill is a referendum on our policies to reduce taxes for people. This bill is a referendum on economic development. It’s a referendum on whether you believe to support our automotive sector. It is a referendum on whether you believe we should build homes in communities across the province of Ontario. The NDP have the opportunity, in this bill, to vote in favour of the bill and to say that everything that they had voted against in the past was wrong and they actually now agree with the direction that the government has taken in order to build homes across the province of Ontario.

So, I say very clearly to the opposition—and it is a deliberately focused bill so that the opposition can focus on what matters to the people of the province of Ontario. It encapsulates everything that we have done to spur on development, to bring affordable homes to the people of the province of Ontario, and the NDP can stand in their place when we bring this to a vote and they can vote in favour of that, or they can say, “We still don’t agree with building homes. We don’t agree with the definition of affordability that includes all parts of the province and at all income levels.” But they have the opportunity to do the right thing, despite the fact that they have voted literally against every single measure that we have brought in. They actually even voted against the increase in funding that we brought in for the homeless.

We spend, I think—about $700 million each year, I think, is the total that we spend and I think we increased that by over $200 million this year, and the opposition NDP voted against that. They voted against that increase in funding. I’m not sure why, but I suspect the reason why is because what that money is intended to do is to lift people out. It’s intended to lift people out and the NDP constantly want to hold people back. I’ve talked about this a lot. For the NDP, what is important is not what you do with your wealth, not what you do with your resources, it’s what they can do for you. I think Ronald Reagan said it—what did he say? Beware of anybody who comes and says, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” That is the mantra by which the NDP live by. They are happiest when people exclusively rely on government.

Now, the same thing with the Liberals, right? They just get the NDP to do their bidding for them. So the Liberals feel the same way, but they know they have the NDP to support them and to keep them in power, so they blame the NDP for that. They are one and the same.

To sum up, Madam Speaker, let me say this: We will be voting against this measure because we have acknowledged and accepted each of the recommendations of the Auditor General. She laid on the table 15 recommendations; we have accepted all of those recommendations and we’re going further. But we will not—this is not about—because they’ve shown it, in their speeches. They’ve shown that a select committee does not mean accountability for them; it just means delaying. Delay, delay, delay and stopping us from doing what is important: building homes for the people of the province of Ontario.

Because of that, we will be voting against this motion, and we will remain singularly focused on building more homes for the people of the province of Ontario, reducing taxes, fighting the carbon tax, fighting the policies that stop young Canadians from purchasing their first home or renting their first home. We will vote against all of the policies that they brought in with the Liberals that held our economy back. We will continue to focus on building a bigger, better, stronger province of Ontario and we will not let the obstacles that the NDP and Liberals like to put in the way, standing in our way of doing just that for all Ontarians.

Having listened to that, I’ve just speed-dialed my therapist so we’re all set up.

I do want to say, directly to the House leader, that he’s very, very sorry. The government is very sorry. They really feel badly, Madam Speaker, and I just want to point out that in order to apologize for something, that apology is usually made after you’ve made an accident, you’ve made a mistake. This entire greenbelt scandal was intentional. The Premier’s fingers are all over this mess. In fact, he was directly involved in the hiring of Ryan Amato. He overrode his own Minister of Municipal Affairs and put that player into the game, because that is how this Premier views environmental protections, this whole housing crisis that he says this is the solution—their own government’s Housing Affordability Task Force told them, “You don’t have to have to build on the greenbelt, you don’t have to carve out all those urban boundaries. You have all the tools in the tool box you need; you just have to pay attention to your own government task force.”

So, to hear the House leader say, “We’ve accepted 14 of the”—there were 14 and then they said “all of them”, but it’s actually, Madam Speaker, they were just really, really sorry that they got caught. They got caught—and that’s when the 15th recommendation to put all of that greenbelt land back into the greenbelt, where it should never have been tampered with.

So that’s what were dealing with. We’re also dealing with—I mean the government has already said, “We’re not going to support your select committee.” This government is embroiled in a lack of transparency and undermining the democracy of this province.

It’s not altogether surprising. Our leader has brought forward a motion to get a special permit to pull the witnesses into this place; they shot her down. At public accounts, I asked the public accounts committee to prioritize the select report from the Auditor General. It’s our core business, our core mandate, as a committee to review this; it got shut down.

At every turn, this government says, “No, we’re not digging any deeper. We know we got caught, we’re really sorry, but we still don’t have the legislation.” Let me tell you, if you as government members are going out into the public and saying, “Just trust us,” this is an absurd statement. Nobody in this province trusts this government and for good reason.

Now, I want to say, it is true, the greenbelt grab underpins this government’s attitude towards our democracy. This Premier, I feel sometimes, thinks that he’s running his sticker business, where you can just make a little deal here and make a little deal there. That is not how democracy operates.

And I want to thank the media, actually, because the media has done a very good job in really chasing the money, and when you follow the money, you follow the handshakes, you can get so far. But mostly it’s been through FOI, and the government has also tried to deny the media their ability to FOI documents, Madam Speaker.

Paul Webster, from the Toronto Star, published a piece which actually resonates really well in this very moment as we are trying to get some transparency with this government.

“Opening up thousands of acres of protected greenbelt lands will be an $8 billion win for a small group of land developers close to the government officials”—this is from the Auditor General’s report. But he goes on to say:

“But the greenbelt land carve-out isn’t the only mega land deal the Ford government is cooking up.

“At the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO), officials are in overdrive to kick-start building the 60-kilometre Highway 413 through much of the GTA’s last remaining nearby open countryside.” This is another carve-out, Madam Speaker. “And that means hefty cheques would soon be issued to the owners of well over 2,000 hectares of prime farmland along that highway’s path.”

Now, we know, and we raised this when Highway 413 was first raised, this is a pet project, really, for this Premier. Along that highway, you have the same cast of characters who have benefited from the greenbelt grab. So there’s money to be made by this highway, and it will only save two minutes for those commuters. If you put the same amount of money, the same $6.9 billion, towards public transit, you move 27,000 people. I mean, it is common sense where you invest to actually benefit the people that we’re elected to serve.

I will also say it’s a little surprising that they came out so hard against this select committee, because Conservatives in the past have supported select committees. They have supported transparency, finding solutions and trying to learn from mistakes—not that this is a mistake—but in the past there have been.

Even Mike Harris, the former Premier of this province, brought in a special commission, an independent commission, to look into the Walkerton deaths, which were seven people who died and 2,000 people were sick. That was a majority government, because earlier we heard: “Well, you know, the gas plant scandal—the only reason we got that select committee was because it was a minority government.” Well, it was a majority PC government. They brought in the Walkerton commission. We found out what happened. Hopefully, governments in the future will learn from that.

On the other side of the coin, this Ford government—I mean, just look at the media that you’re reading. This is not going away. We’re going to keep trying. We will be relentless to get answers on this issue, because it speaks to a bigger issue of how this government does business.

This is the headline from the Hamilton Spectator and the Waterloo Record today: Ford government’s expansion of urban boundaries driving speculation boom. You’re driving up the cost of land. That’s what you’re doing. This is a direct quote from the article: “There are three themes here: real estate speculation, death by a thousand cuts to natural heritage and agriculture, and top-down ministerial behaviour bordering on corruption.” This is what’s in the media today. It’s not dying down, people.

There was one article that I read—you know, I came in during the gas plant scandal, and I won the seat in Waterloo, which kept the government at a minority level. For me, it was a pretty good day. I like to think it was a good day for the people of this province, because that led to greater transparency. Eleven days later, then-Premier Dalton McGuinty prorogued the Parliament to shut down the debate on the gas plant scandal. He shut it down.

I don’t know if this Premier was paying attention during that time, but this Premier is definitely experiencing that Dalton McGuinty effect in that he doesn’t see the writing on the wall.

But the people of this province care deeply about this issue. They truly do, because they see that it’s connected to the urban boundary expansion. They see that it’s connected to Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass, and Ontario Place. For the love of humanity, who signs a 95-year lease in business?

Interjection.

We’re going to go to further debate.

Is it 99? Ninety-nine.

I have to say—and moving the Science Centre so a developer can build on that site. You couldn’t make it up, Madam Speaker. You really can’t.

But my friend Paul Webster, here, goes on to say that the government’s own records show that many of those cheques along the 413, and I’m connecting it to the 413, because that’s why the select committee is so important. It’s to prevent further mistakes, further waste of money. He goes on to say that a “select group of land speculators and property developers” have “been buying up these lands in recent years, spurring a huge increase in the land values.” And the MTO—we’re trying to get answers from the MTO about Highway 413. These are not state secrets. They’re building a highway. We’re trying to get the costing of that highway. We want to figure out how much it’s going to cost to appropriate the land, to buy the land. You would think that this is a secret cabinet, Hogwarts style, Madam Speaker.

The ministry has said, “But just how much the MTO estimates these purchases will cost taxpayers and just which land speculators and property developers will get them, is something government lawyers are keeping a secret.” So this government has literally lawyered up.

I will also note that at estimates, because I was trying to get some answers, as a finance critic will try to do, the House leader showed up, on behalf of the Premier, and two lawyers—two lawyers, just to have a finance critic ask some questions about projected expenses. And he had to turn to those lawyers a couple of times.

So I just want to say that, on the Highway 413, the ways that these decisions around major infrastructure projects and major capital projects are being made lack transparency. They lack authenticity. They lack basic financial due diligence. It’s the people of this province that suffer, because while the government is busy making all these deals with all of these people who are going to make a ton of money, while they’re distracted with this, they’re ignoring their own Housing Affordability Task Force, which says, “This is how you build housing.” Housing is so key. It is the key. It is the anchor to the economy, to education, to the environment—it is everything. And yet this government is so distracted with their deals.

I do want to say that, in addition to Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass and Ontario Place and the “MZOs are us” by Mr. X—honestly, this reads like a House of Cards episode that nobody would even believe. It’s so far-fetched. It is so embarrassing. Other people from other provinces are looking at Ontario and saying, “What the actual heck is going on there?” Especially when you follow the cast of characters.

I think that the mandate letters also were a fairly strong indicator of why this government is hiding from transparency. Who doesn’t want to tell the people that you’re elected to serve, “These are my goals. These are my aspirations as the Minister of Health, as the Minister of Transportation, as the Minister of Long-Term Care. This is what I want to get done for the people of this province.” Why is that such a secret? It defies all logic.

But there’s one thing for sure: This greenbelt scandal has destabilized and compromised trust in our democracy. And understanding how this even happened and how it was even possible that a staffer was able to move files in brown envelopes or little zip files—

This Auditor General’s report is unprecedented, absolutely unprecedented. She has actually called it “indefensible” from this government. These are just a few of the headlines from her report:

“Government-Imposed Greenbelt Removals Proceeded Without Evidence They Were Needed to Meet Housing Goals”—no evidence.

“The Selection of Land Sites for Removal from the Greenbelt was Biased and Lacked Transparency”.

“The 2022 Greenbelt Boundary Changes Were Inconsistent with the Greenbelt Plan’s Vision and Goals....”

“The Proposal to Cabinet Did Not Clearly Explain How Land Sites Were Identified, Assessed and Selected....”

She also noted in 4.5 that “Most of the Land Removed from the Greenbelt May Not Be Ready for Housing Development in Time to Meet Government Goals.”

And finally, the “Government’s Exercise to Alter the Greenbelt Did Not Factor in Financial Impacts or Costs, or Clarify Fiscal Responsibilities.”

So this was essentially: “Off the side of the Premier’s desk, we’re going to arrange for these carve-outs.” How else can you explain a staffer driving around Ontario, picking up the ice cream selection of greenbelt land plots that they want, and then all of a sudden it’s done? It’s done.

The fact there are so many questions left unanswered, and the fact that the government is shutting down all attempts at greater transparency and accountability, is deeply concerning—not just for us as the opposition but for the people of this province.

There is this narrative that the Premier said last week. Right here in this House, he said this did not cost anybody a dime, not one public cent. Well, this clearly is a statement that has not been fully thought out, Madam Speaker, because the Ontario public service was working on this special project under the leadership of Ryan Amato, who the Premier hired, who I also want to point out was completely unqualified and not trained for the job and who now has resigned.

So in this instance—and if you walk it back a little bit, we’ve seen the Premier in that backroom promising to carve out some of the greenbelt. Then, in April 2021, he said, “I’m not touching the greenbelt,” and then in May 2021, it was alleged that then Silvio DeGasperis paid $50 million for 100 acres of farmland in Vaughan that was never supposed to be touched. And get this—this is why there’s so many questions: It was alleged that to cover their purchase, they borrowed $100 million from CIBC at an interest rate of 21% annually. It’s almost like they knew something would change to benefit them greatly. It’s outrageous. You can only take out a loan at that percentage when you know the payback is right around the corner. Borrowing at these rates reeks.

There’s so much material, it’s shocking. I mean, the financial impacts are real. There is no way in humanity that these developers who bought this land and then turned it over and are making hundreds of millions of dollars are just going to walk away. So the lawyers are going to be doing okay in the province of Ontario, but we still have a housing crisis.

I would urge the government to restore trust back in our democracy. Look at your own task force recommendations and invest in housing so that people have shelter. And I would urge you to open up this House to the people who were elected to serve, create this select committee and do the right thing—and for the people. Throw out those little banners that you have on all your desks if you’re not going to do this, because nobody is buying what you’re selling.

Thumb drives.

Further debate?