Thank you to the hard-working member from Thornhill for that great question.

Mr. Speaker, yes, our government is currently making an unprecedented investment in housing. As we see before our eyes, the population within our province is growing at an outstanding rate, and these people need somewhere to live and ways to get around. Our government is aware of these challenges— and if left unchecked, will lead to more issues in the future.

That is why we have introduced the Transportation for the Future Act, which aims to help build more GO Transit stations, which in turn will help to generate more housing and mixed-used communities around transit infrastructure. This will result in a more convenient commute across the greater Golden Horseshoe while also helping us to meet the goal of getting 1.5 million homes built by 2031. It is one of the ways we’re building up Ontario for families in the years ahead.

Mr. Speaker, our proposed legislation would create a station contribution fee as a new tool to allow municipalities to stimulate the construction of new GO Transit stations. This will bring a return of investment that will include accelerated transit expansion as well as vibrant mixed-use communities that will contain much-needed housing. This legislation also seeks to give permission to municipalities to recover costs from funding new GO Transit stations. The station contribution fee would be collected until the full station costs are recovered. This will result in a reduction in other development costs.

Mr. Speaker, building these transit-oriented communities will lead to more housing, local businesses, investment opportunities, reduced travel times and will create better connections between regions. And to add to that, our subway Transit-Oriented Communities Program has already led to 13 new sites, creating 48,000 new housing units.