I move the following motion: Whereas the government is under criminal investigation by the RCMP for their removal of lands from the greenbelt; and

Whereas the Auditor General is in the process of reviewing whether there has been mismanagement and abuse of ministerial zoning orders; and

Whereas there are outstanding questions about an inappropriate relationship between a former government minister and a land speculator, and incorrect information provided to the Integrity Commissioner about this relationship; and

Whereas there are outstanding questions about whether there was preferential treatment given to a foreign company to build a private spa on public land at Ontario Place; and;

Whereas there are outstanding questions about whether there was preferential treatment given to a foreign company to build a private spa on public land at Ontario Place; and;

Whereas there are outstanding questions about preferential treatment given to government donors and personal friends of the Premier with respect to the building of Highway 413; and

Whereas there are outstanding questions about unqualified patronage appointments to public agencies, boards, and commissions; and

Whereas the Premier has admitted that he regularly uses his personal phone to conduct government business and those communications might be relevant to these inquiries;

Therefore the Legislative Assembly calls on the Premier to cease his access-to-information appeal and disclose the contents of his personal phone and email accounts to the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

Speaker, before I dig into the official opposition’s motion today and why it has become so imperative that the Premier disclose the contents of his personal phone and email accounts to the Information and Privacy Commissioner, I would first like to talk about leadership and the responsibility that leaders have to rise in the most difficult of moments.

A few months ago, I had the great opportunity to be present at the swearing in of new Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler, with thanks to my colleague MPP Mamakwa. Needless to say, it was very moving. With everything going on around us, whether it’s at home here in Ontario and Canada or abroad, I’ve been thinking a lot about what leadership really means. Grand Chief Fiddler talked about the privilege of leadership, of listening, of always learning from your successes and your mistakes, and why he chose to step up during a very challenging time for the 49 nations that make up NAN.

Madam Speaker, Ontario is in a similarly challenging time. I have tried time and again to use my position and resources as the leader of the official opposition to bring to this government’s attention how deeply people are struggling outside of the silos of Queen’s Park, and my entire NDP caucus team does this every single day.

This moment we are living in demands that the people Ontarians elected, who were chosen to represent their voice in this place, rise and show true leadership—to put aside partisanship, greed, rigging the system to benefit insiders, and lead the way toward prosperity. I think this has just been asking for too much from this government. This order is way too tall for this Premier.

That’s why time and again this government has shown flagrant disregard for the people of this province. Instead of using their power to deliver on meaningful solutions and relief for Ontarians at a time when they are financially squeezed, stressed, worried and weighed down by the high cost of housing and rent, mortgages, groceries, gas, the people of this province have been dealt a Premier and a government who are all too preoccupied with rigging the system to benefit their insider friends. And when they’re not busy making backroom deals that don’t look or smell right to anyone, they’re all too busy lurching from scandal to scandal, losing cabinet ministers, spinning stories when they get caught. This is how this government is leading our province.

Ontario is in a huge period of transition. When the people of this province need the government and the people they have elected to step up and show capital-L leadership, what we have instead is a government that’s under criminal investigation by the RCMP.

Speaker, let me lay down exactly why the official opposition NDP is calling on the Premier to cease his access-to-information appeal and disclose the contents of his personal phone and email accounts to the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

The first example I want to bring up is the greenbelt grab. This has become one of the biggest scandals in the history of this province—bigger even than the gas plant scandal that the Liberals served us during their time. What the government has been involved in for the past year, a scandal of their own making, has cost this province so much time, so much effort and, yes, taxpayers’ money. Virtually everyone—experts, municipalities, First Nations, the government’s own housing task force—told the Premier and his government that pursuing the greenbelt was bad policy, that there was enough land available to develop without having to touch the greenbelt or expand urban boundaries, that the housing crisis is just not about a lack of land. And yet, despite so many voices of opposition, this government single-mindedly, unilaterally pushed forward for the greenbelt to be opened up, and it was ostensibly to build luxury urban sprawl—away from built-up towns and cities, away from jobs and services, away from transit. It’s hard not to wonder, who was this all to the benefit of? It was certainly not the people of this province.

In many ways, this government’s actions have made the housing crisis worse because these real estate games that they’ve been playing, this land speculation, have only further helped home prices to go up and up and up, and Ontario is not a single step closer to building the homes we need in this province. In fact, housing starts are actually trending downwards in the province of Ontario.

The Premier can’t explain why he ignored his own task force, why he ignored every single voice, and we are now nowhere closer to solving the housing crisis—again, a very real housing crisis in this province. More than five years in government, and they have nothing to show. Thousands in tax dollars have been wasted in the wrongful pursuit of parts of the province that were never meant for homes—thousands of dollars and people’s time and effort that could have been meaningfully spent in following the recommendations of the government’s own housing affordability task force. This government’s scandal, this corruption, has set Ontario back years on building the homes that our province so desperately needs.

Speaker, we know these schemes go beyond the greenbelt. I’ve visited the greenbelt issue here, but I’m going to take it a bit beyond that. Even a criminal investigation of the dealings around the greenbelt hasn’t stopped this government. The Premier continues to show us who he really is: someone who puts the interests of a very few of his well-connected insiders above everybody else, and everyone else in Ontario suffers because of it.

I want to talk for a minute about municipal zoning orders. The greenbelt grab made it clear that this government’s schemes run way deeper than we first thought. The greenbelt was a very small glimpse into this government’s troubling pattern of preferential treatment for well-connected land speculators. Ontarians are onside with the official opposition, and they have questions about how far and how deep this pattern extends to other decisions. Does it also include urban boundaries and this government’s frequent use of MZOs? The government says they are now going to reverse course on those urban boundary expansions that came out of nowhere, but let me be clear and, in the words of our critic and caucus chair, MPP Burch, tell you that is the very least the government could be doing, the absolute bare minimum. They finally find themselves without a choice, backed into a corner, because it’s just such bad policy. It makes no sense—so why? What is the government’s motivation?

Well, to Ontarians, I would say that the Ontario NDP are committed to answering those questions and bringing ethics and transparency back to Queen’s Park.

Interjections.

If I may, I’d like to take a moment to quote some of my colleagues here, Speaker—because they say it so well.

The member for Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas—I’m going to quote that member. “These forced urban boundaries are the other half of” the Premier’s “greenbelt scheme that benefited wealthy land speculators. I call on” the Premier “to do the right thing and respect the decision of our Hamilton council and community by cancelling this plan.” Well said.

The member for Ottawa West–Nepean said, “Ottawa’s city council has asked the new housing minister to review” the Premier’s “plan—but” the Premier “can’t be bothered to listen.” But “the Ontario NDP are listening and are committed to getting to the bottom of what happened and reversing these forced expansions.” Well said.

The member for Waterloo, somebody I love to quote, says as follows—I’m going to quote her again: “It seems that” the Premier “doesn’t trust our cities to do their jobs. We’re already losing 319 acres of farmland a day in the province of Ontario, and” this government’s “forced expansion will make it worse. After the backlash to his greenbelt scandal, he should think twice.” Strong words from the member from Waterloo.

Madam Speaker, I agree with every single word they said.

This government’s forceful boundary expansions must be investigated. Who’s benefiting? We know that the availability of land is not the issue. A few developers or land speculators out there right now might seem to be the luckiest ones in the whole world, getting an inside scoop on which land to buy right before it’s being added to the urban boundary. Given the Auditor General’s findings regarding the greenbelt, we think it’s absolutely essential that this case of lucky insiders cashing in is also investigated.

One of the properties that the province included in the urban boundary expansion was a 37-hectare farm at 1177 Watters Road, Ottawa, purchased in August 2021 for $12.7 million. All five directors of 1177 Watters Developments Ltd., the company that owns the property at 1177 Watters Road, donated a combined $12,315 to the Ontario Conservatives in 2021 and 2022. This property had been excluded by the city of Ottawa from its official plan due to the provincial government’s own policy to protect valuable farmland, and still, this government chose to include it, raising even more questions.

I want to quote, again, my colleague the MPP for Ottawa West–Nepean right here: “Questions of integrity aside, this decision will cost Ottawa taxpayers for years. The price of building the necessary infrastructure to develop these lands could fall in the billions—a tall price to pay for development that Ottawa’s city staff determined unnecessary in our fight against the housing crisis.”

These expansions are absolutely unacceptable. Municipalities and Ontarians are seriously concerned, and they want and deserve answers. So the official opposition was very pleased to see that the Auditor General will launch an audit into the way this government selects and approves MZOs in this province. I welcome the eventual report that is going to shine a light on this process.

Now I want to talk about the boys’ trip to Las Vegas. I wish our evidence of this government schemes wasn’t as long as it is, but here we are.

On October 18, we, the official opposition NDP, submitted a request to the Integrity Commissioner, asking him to investigate what exactly happened on that boys’ trip to Las Vegas that, unfortunately, has become quite well known to the people of this province—a trip that the member for Mississauga East–Cooksville, the former Conservative Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery, took with two of the Premier’s top advisers: his principal secretary and his housing policy director. And guess who was also along for the ride? A land speculator who stood to benefit from the greenbelt grab. The member’s story on what happened in Las Vegas has changed many, many times. First, he told the Integrity Commissioner that he’d only been there once since he was elected—turns out, it was at least twice. But worse, this government wants us to believe that it was a total coincidence that one of their MPPs and two of the Premier’s closest advisers all provided the wrong dates to the Integrity Commissioner and only corrected the record once media reported evidence to the contrary.

This was a trip apparently paid for entirely in cash. I’ve got to tell you, most people, including myself, didn’t even know that you could still buy expensive airline tickets in cash anymore.

This whole Vegas trip raises so many questions. What were three high-ranking government members doing in Las Vegas with a land speculator? Why were they getting massages together? What else happened in Vegas? And if there’s nothing to hide—this is the important piece—then why did they provide inaccurate information to the Auditor General at that point?

From where I’m standing, none of this looks right, and we know that it doesn’t look right to Ontarians either. We are determined, on this side of the House, to get people the answers and the truth that they deserve.

Once again, let me remind members across the aisle, people out there are very frustrated right now. They are frustrated with the growing cost of living and a government that isn’t doing a thing about it—a government that has brought back a cash-for-access culture in this province. But our promise to the people of this province remains: Step by step, we’re going to put an end to it.

I want to get to a fourth point, which is that while Ontarians, again, are struggling to put food on the table, this government has decided to prioritize building a luxury spa in downtown Toronto.

Madam Speaker, the official opposition has tried to bring this government’s attention to what’s happening outside Queen’s Park several times now. Let me say it again: Ontarians are struggling. They’re lining up at food banks. Even people with two or three jobs—we see this all the time—full-time jobs, are waiting in line at food banks. They’re making meal choices depending on what they’re able to get from the 50% section. The thing is that this is the new normal for so many people in this province.

In these very tough financial times, what we have is a Premier and a government who are busy trying to get a luxury spa built on public land in downtown Toronto. Why? The Premier has called his plan for Ontario Place a “bold vision.” Those are his words, not mine. But the fact of the matter is there is absolutely nothing bold about this plan at all. It is not bold to build a luxury spa that will be used by almost nobody in this province. People are barely able to make rent in this province. Does this Premier really think that they are able to afford luxury massages? Maybe they do—I don’t know. We’ll just leave that to their cabinet ministers, to go get them in Las Vegas, maybe. His plans for Ontario Place just show how absolutely terrible and out of touch this government is from the people of this province. They are living in the twilight zone. The plan is arrogant, it ignores the interests of Ontarians, and it blatantly disrespects the taxpayer.

The official opposition is committed to bringing transparency back to Queen’s Park. We’re determined to uncover just how deep this government’s corruption runs. That’s why—just like we did with the greenbelt, just like we’re doing to investigate who’s benefiting from those MZOs that have proliferated under this government—the official opposition NDP has supported the call for the provincial Auditor General to conduct a “compliance investigation and value-for-money audit” of this government’s plans for Ontario Place. The Auditor General is going to be very busy.

We also submitted a freedom-of-information request to Infrastructure Ontario to get answers for Ontarians—answers and transparency that this government has been denying the people of this province. I can tell you that the Ontario NDP, your official opposition, have obtained documents from Infrastructure Ontario that contain mounting evidence of a rigged process for the Ontario Place redevelopment—a process that ultimately saw this public parkland handed over to Therme. These documents include a parking study from Infrastructure Ontario from January 2021 that mentions Therme and its half-billion-dollar parking garage nearly two years before the public even knew about it. That was also before an election, as I recall. They didn’t talk about it there. It suggests, by the way, that the Premier gifted a publicly funded half-billion-dollar parking garage to Therme and hid it from the public for nearly two years. That’s half a billion dollars of Ontarians’ money being spent on an elite luxury spa while people were pleading for investment in our emergency rooms and our schools.

The greenbelt looked bad from the start, and so does this one. This government is just putting its hands in one deal after another deal. If the Premier has nothing to hide, then why won’t they give us more details on the rushed and secretive deal that this government has cut with Therme, a private European luxury spa company?

We the Ontario NDP are committed to making sure that this land is publicly accessible, not just today but in perpetuity.

We’ve learned through recent media reports—that’s right, Speaker; through the media, but not this government—that the Minister of Infrastructure was informed by Carmine Nigro, the chair of Ontario Place Corp.—of course, we all know, a very good friend of the Premier and a big donor of the Conservative Party, who also got appointed to the head of LCBO. He was informing the government that the site had 2.8 million visitors in 2022 and turned a record profit. Why is it that the minister never shared these numbers with the public? Why did she instead choose to keep Ontarians in the dark and insist that Ontario Place is not enjoyed by anyone, when all the evidence shows the opposite?

The people of this province are being kept in the dark about what this deal is costing them, and let me tell you, that number keeps growing. Initial estimates put taxpayers on the hook for $650 million for the parking garage and for site preparation. We are now seeing that that is a low estimate, as it appears that taxpayers are going to be on the hook for the upgraded water and sewer systems to fill this private luxury spa’s pools and to treat their sewage water.

Commercial property in downtown Toronto sells for approximately $200 per buildable square foot. With 700,000 square feet, that means the West Island at Ontario Place is worth—are you ready?—$1.4 billion. Not only is this government handing over that prime public parkland to an Austrian luxury spa corporation for free, but they’re also giving this corporation that other hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money that I talked about.

So, as the official opposition, we want this project and its secretive deal cancelled.

My next point is, like so many of this government’s undertakings, whether we’re talking about the greenbelt or Ontario Place, the resurrection of Highway 413, too, begs the question of who is benefiting from this deal. It’s not a deal that will do one bit to make Ontarians’ life better or easier. Studies on Highway 413 show that it will only reduce travel time by up to 60 seconds. Then why did this government go to such immense lengths to speed up development, especially after the project was axed? Once again, we find ourselves asking the question: Who stands to benefit if it’s built? Thanks to a deep investigation by the Toronto Star, we know the people who stand to benefit all have some relationship to the Conservative Party—either they’ve worked with the government previously or they’re big donors to the party. The Star’s investigation found that eight of Ontario’s most powerful land developers owned thousands of acres of prime real estate near the proposed route of the controversial Highway 413. Four of the developers are connected to the Premier’s government through party officials and former Conservative politicians—now acting, by the way, as registered lobbyists. What do you know?

According to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, if built, Highway 413 will raze 2,000 acres of farmland, cut across 85 waterways, and pave nearly 400 acres of protected greenbelt land in Vaughan. It would also disrupt 220 wetlands and the habitats of 10 species at risk.

These are issues that Ontarians really care about. As I travel around the province, I am always struck by that. Ontarians care about this. They care about their food security. They care about the future of farming. They care about species at risk. They care about wetlands.

One of the developers, John Di Poce, was the head of the Ontario PC Party’s fundraising arm for several years, and three other developers—worked on the member for York–Simcoe’s 2018 Conservative leadership campaign, as a government lobbyist. As the former Minister of Transportation, that member played a key role in the decisions about the 413 highway.

Another of the developers, Michael DeGasperis, hosted the Premier and the education minister in a private luxury suite at the BB&T Center in Miami to watch a Florida Panthers NHL game in December 2018—coincidence?

No, you can’t make this up.

Most of the developers in the group are also prolific donors to the Conservative Party, contributing at least—at least; these are only the ones we’ve found—$813,000 to support the party since 2014.

The government has handed down extraordinary directives in at least three instances since April 2020 to help fast-track development on lands owned by some of these very same major developers around that proposed highway.

Does any of this seem above board to you, Speaker?

Time and again, this government has revealed their real motives, their priorities, why they’re in this important leadership role—not to improve the lives of the people of this province, but only to make their close friends very, very wealthy while they’re in power, and that’s it.

Speaker, I want to speak about another issue which I don’t know if I’ve raised yet in this House since we returned from the summer. This government’s behaviour of preferential treatment extends to every corner. Let’s talk about how this summer they rewarded themselves and their donors with fancy new titles. This one I find, personally—I am embarrassed for the government. I am embarrassed—

Interjection: I am embarrassed by them.

The Ontario NDP firmly believe that the government’s handing out of these King’s Counsel designations is absolutely nothing but a Conservative patronage scheme designed to reward their loyal insiders.

I’d like to quote our NDP critic for the Attorney General, the member for Toronto Centre:

“This government has caused absolute chaos in the courts”—I’m going to go back to this, because I want to say, this is just to provide some context of where things are at while this government is prioritizing these fancy titles. “This government has caused absolute chaos in the courts and it’s affecting Ontarians’ access to justice. It currently takes more than four or five years for a civil action to proceed from commencement to trial. We’ve even seen serious convictions tossed out due to delays.

“Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Those are the words from the member from Toronto Centre.

Instead of prioritizing fixes to the justice system, this government has decided their priority is to reward not only their donors with fancy new titles—no, that wasn’t good enough—but they gave them to themselves. You can’t make this stuff up.

Considering this absolutely embarrassing patronage scandal and the state of our courts, the official opposition is calling on each of the Conservative MPPs bestowed with the King’s Counsel title to voluntarily return it. If they merit the title and it’s important to them, Conservative MPPs can go through the same transparent process that you promised after this became such a ridiculous scandal.

Once again, at a time when Ontarians were waiting up to 24 hours in the emergency room to see a doctor; when emergency rooms were closing down across this province because of a sheer shortage of nurses and health care staff, while this government fought them in court to suppress their wages; while the people of this province were waiting in line at food banks, this government was busy doling out meaningless patronage titles that hold no meaning or relevance to the everyday people of Ontario and do absolutely nothing to make their lives better. It is shameful, and the people of this province deserve so much better.

Finally, I think I have made it abundantly clear by now that this government is not acting in anyone’s but their own sole interest. They are here to make their friends wealthier, and that seems to be their only mandate—we don’t know, because we haven’t seen the mandate letters, but we can guess. The more we learn about this government’s preferential treatment for speculators and personal friends, the more the Premier appears to hide.

If the Premier has truly done nothing wrong and has nothing to hide from the people of this province, then why not disclose the records from the personal phone he himself admittedly uses regularly for government business? That’s the crux of this motion. While he’s at it, why not release his emails?

The government is under a cloud of suspicion. It is being investigated by the RCMP. People deserve to know who their Premier is talking to and what he’s saying. By the way, I don’t buy that it’s just Mrs. Johnson calling about potholes. Can we just be real here for a minute? Come on. It’s a matter of public interest. In fact, experts out there agree that it is, in fact, a matter of public record. The Auditor General noted this on page 68 of her Special Report on Changes to the Greenbelt. She noted that under the government’s own Acceptable Use I&IT Guidelines—that’s the name of the policy—it is not appropriate for staff to use personal accounts for government business because of “cyber security concerns.” It also outlines that using non-government resources to conduct government business is unacceptable.

She goes on: “Communication between lobbyists and political staff using their personal email accounts also creates the perception of preferential access and treatment, and thereby an unfair advantage to those receiving unauthorized confidential information from political staff.” A perception of preferential access and treatment; an unfair advantage—not acceptable for political staff, and certainly not acceptable for the Premier of this province, and he knows it.

The Auditor General also includes another very important point on this, again, on page 68 of her report. I’m going to read it here: “It is important to note that any communication between lobbyists and political staff about government business is still subject to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and is not excluded from this act even if the communication occurred on a personal email account.”

Ministers of the crown and members of this government have it drilled into their heads when they take office that their emails, their phone calls, documents, must be on their government devices and that they are subject to freedom-of-information requests because they are a matter of public record. We know this is the case. This is designed to safeguard the public’s right to know, and it’s there to ensure the transparency of government decisions and government actions. And Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner agrees.

Back in 2019, a staff member in the Premier’s office was caught using his personal email account to conduct government business—including, by the way, managing the Premier’s interactions with lobbyists and police. He was using his personal account to work on the Premier’s “off the books” souped-up van.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner discourages government officials from using personal emails to discuss government records, and in 2019 he had this to say: “The Premier’s office is not exempt from the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act as it relates to government business.” That seems pretty clear. The commissioner said that they recommend “that government and political staff only use government devices and platforms.”

In other words, you cannot evade access-to-information requests by using personal accounts for government business. News flash: They are a matter of public record. So if they are, in fact, a matter of public record and not exempt from the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, why not release them? Is it because this government is worried about what would be revealed? It seems the only logical explanation.

Interjection.

I know; it’s shocking.

And yet, here’s yet another chance for this government to step up and do the right thing. Will they finally show true leadership and pass this motion? Will the members of this government caucus stand up for transparency, for accountability, for integrity? Will they have the guts to stand up to the Premier and stop cowering before him?

Really, I’ve got to tell you, he’s not so scary. We stand up to him every day; you should be able to as well.

It’s time to stand up and do what your Premier won’t: Bring things out into the open, shed some light, clear your good names and pass this motion.