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.