My question is for the Premier. This government has wasted years failing to address the housing crisis. Breaking all the rules, so a handful of wealthy well-connected insiders can cash in paving over farmland. Greenbelt, boundary expansions, MZOs: It’s past time to start building homes that ordinary people can afford in the communities they want to live in, on land already approved for development.

To do this, local governments will need money for sewer and water lines, streets and transit operations in order to service new homes, but this government took that money away and residents are now facing big property tax hikes and delayed home building, making the affordability crisis worse.

Will the government make people and municipalities whole by closing the financial gap they created?

Last week, Guelph city council approved a major housing project for students. Guelph has passed rules for multiplexes. Guelph is ready to build. Here’s the challenge municipalities including Guelph face: The government took $1.5 billion away from municipalities. Municipalities need that money for sewer lines, water lines, to build the infrastructure needed for new homes. I want those new homes to have sewer and water lines. They won’t be built if it doesn’t happen.

The government a year ago said they would make municipalities whole. They have failed to deliver that. Will they commit to it today, Speaker?

It’s an honour today to rise and speak in support of Bill 65, the Honouring Our Veterans Act, and I want to express my deep gratitude to the member for Whitby for bringing this bill forward. It’s an appropriate bill to bring all members of this House together to honour our veterans, and I think it’s important for us as members of this Legislature to observe two minutes of silence to honour those who made the ultimate sacrifice serving our country and make the opportunity available for members to give speeches.

I know one of the most memorable things I’ve had the honour of doing in this House as a party leader is to rise and be one of those members who have the opportunity to honour our veterans on this floor. I think it’s important that all members have that opportunity to show our deep gratitude to our veterans and to their families. So I want to thank the member from Whitby for providing us with that opportunity through this bill.

Remembrance Week and Remembrance Day are truly meaningful moments each and every year, and it’s always an honour to stand with our veterans, our first responders and their families to honour them on Remembrance Day as we pay tribute to the sacrifices they’ve made, both seen and unseen.

I’m particularly honoured to be representing the riding of Guelph, the home riding of Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, who was born on November 30, 1872. Last year, we had the honour of honouring the 150th birthday of John McCrae, and we’re blessed in Guelph to have our Royal Canadian Legion branch named in Lieutenant Colonel McCrae’s honour.

He volunteered in World War I at the age of 41 and was quoted as saying in a letter, “I am really rather afraid, but more afraid to stay at home with my conscience.” So, at 41, he went to Europe to fight for Canada, to fight for all Canadians.

In 1915, on May 3, he witnessed one of his best friends being killed in battle. He woke up in the next morning and he wrote this famous Canadian poem, and I’ve always had moments in the House to read bits and pieces of it, but I’ve never had enough time read it in full, I’m going to today in honour of Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Speaker, when I put my poppy on this Friday and go to the Legion for the annual raising of the poppy flag and the launch of the poppy campaign in Guelph and in communities across Ontario and around this country, I’ll of course be thinking of Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae and all veterans, and I ask all Ontarians to support and participate in the poppy campaigns because the money that our Legions raise through those campaigns are more than an offer of wearing something to honour veterans, but they provide funds to support veterans and their families.

As many of us know, fewer and fewer veterans are now members of our Royal Canadian Legion, so I also want to let my fellow Ontarians know that you don’t have to be a veteran to join the Legion. I’m not a veteran myself, but I’m a proud member of Royal Canadian Legion Branch 234. I encourage all Ontarians to join their local Legion and participate in the friendship and fellowship that our Legions offer their comrades.

I’m also a member of the Red Chevron Club Branch 4 in Guelph. There were four Red Chev clubs founded in the province of Ontario, in Toronto, Peterborough, London and Guelph. They were formed in World War I for veterans to have friendship and fellowship and a gathering place. I encourage all Ontarians to continue to support clubs like the Red Chev. Even though there aren’t many, we still have ours in Guelph.

I’m also going to think about my granddad, John Boyd. My middle name is John, named after my granddad. Sorry, I get emotional. He was a World War II vet. He was in the navy. He never wanted to talk about his service because it was too traumatic. I can’t imagine what he experienced, what he went through. I was lucky, because right before he passed away, I took the time, and he granted me the opportunity to tell his stories. So I recorded his stories, and I understood, in those moments when we talked, why he didn’t want to talk about it too much with his family, because he did not want them to know the horrors and the pain and the trauma he experienced. Even though my granddad was the gentlest, nicest person you would ever meet, he didn’t want people to know the anger he felt about what he saw and what he went through. And I think of so many veterans from so many wars and peacekeeping operations and military operations that have had that exact same experience.

So, when we remember and when we remain silent on the 11th day of the 11th month in the 11th hour, I’m going to be thinking and praying and offering gratitude to all the veterans and their families, because we also know their families made tremendous sacrifices. My grandma talked about the fact that she had never left home, and she went with my grandfather to his base for training and they got married right before he left. She’s like, “Jeez, how crazy is that? I’m going to marry this gentleman and he’s going to leave, and here I am stuck all alone in a little tiny apartment somewhere where I don’t even know anyone. But I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to be there to support his service. I wanted to be there to honour him.”

I know what kind of sacrifice families go through, and we as Ontarians and as Canadians benefit from that sacrifice. We live in the best province in the best country, the best place anywhere in the world we could live. We have democracy. We have freedom. We have the opportunity in this House to disagree and debate each other and have our moments. The reason we have those opportunities and the quality of life that we all have here is because people were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect us, to protect this place, to protect what we stand for and what we value.

I want to thank the member from Whitby for bringing this bill forward, and I hope all members in the House today and in years to come take the opportunity to tell their stories, to tell their families’ stories and express their gratitude for the veterans who have sacrificed so much so we could enjoy so much.

It’s a pleasure to always debate housing in this House because we have a housing crisis. I just want to say to those who are watching and to my colleagues on all sides of the House, solving this crisis is going to require the private sector to be engaged in market housing to build the homes we need, and it’s going to require the government to partner with non-profit and co-op housing to build deeply affordable homes.

When we were most successful in Canada in building homes that people could actually afford to own and rent, we had a mix of for-profit and non-profit market and non-market actors engaged in the housing market. Market supply—that’s why I put forward bills to end exclusionary zoning and to make it easier for builders to build homes that people can actually afford in the communities they want to live in, on land already approved for development.

Speaker, we also have to acknowledge that, up until 1995, about 20,000 homes a year in Canada were non-profit, co-op and social housing—deeply affordable homes. That’s exactly why 93% of the deeply affordable rental homes in this province were built before 1995.

Now, the federal government got out of housing in 1995, and the provincial government got out of housing in 1995. The crisis has been getting worse ever since, and now we’re at a breaking point. A new report has shown that we would need a drop in housing prices of more than $500,000 on average for the average millennial to afford a home. It takes 22 years for the typical young person to be able to save enough money for a down payment to buy a home. To afford rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto on minimum wage, you would have to work 80 hours a week. I look at my own riding, in Guelph. The average one-bedroom apartment now is well over $2,000. And so the market is going to solve a lot of our challenges, but it’s not going to solve all of them.

While I don’t know if the numbers add up of what’s been proposed here—but I can tell you, the sentiment of having government re-engaged in non-profit, co-op and social housing is absolutely vital if we’re truly going to build enough deeply affordable homes for people.

And I also want to say that supporting co-op housing is about putting a roof over somebody’s head, but it’s more than that; it’s about building community. It’s about having democratic control over the place where you live. I’d love it. Fife Road co-op in my riding every year invites me to their holiday parties and their summer barbecues, where it’s an opportunity to build an inclusive community of people who are struggling to be able to find an affordable place to call home, who have an affordable place to call home because back before 1995, government was involved in helping build deeply affordable housing.

So it’s going to take non-market and non-profit solutions. The government is going to have to be involved in supporting non-profit co-op and, I would add, permanent supporting housing, with wraparound mental health, addictions, employment and other supports for people, because some people have acute needs. They’re going to need not only a roof on their head, but they’re also going to need those supports on-site to help them maintain their housing. And we will save money, because it will actually take pressure off our health care system. One of the largest drivers, one of the biggest reasons poverty costs our province $33 billion a year, is because the intersection of homelessness, mental health, addictions and poverty puts so much pressure on our health care system.

Finally, Speaker, I want to say that when we build these homes, we have to make sure these homes are energy-efficient, not only to help address the climate crisis but to also help address people’s bills each and every month to heat and cool their homes. I want to tell you about a project that I’m working with in my riding with Habitat for Humanity that will build 70 affordable homes for people with an array of solar panels on them that will save them $62,000 a year in utility costs. We can do this if we have the will to do it.

It’s an honour to be here tonight. I want to appreciate everyone for being here tonight, because this is an important question that mayors and city councils across the province of Ontario deserve an answer to.

Last year, when the government brought forward Bill 23, they removed development charges that municipalities need to service the building of new homes, according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, costing the province $5.1 billion in municipalities across the province. My own riding in Guelph: $227 million. So why is this money important? Speaker, I don’t have a problem with waiving development charges for truly affordable homes. But then the government is going to have to replace that money for municipalities if they’re going to be able to build those homes, because the municipalities have to pay for things like sewer lines and water lines and stormwater management and parks and libraries and police and fire stations. If the government is going to take their ability to pay for those things away from them, then one of two things is going to happen: Either we’re going to see double-digit property tax increases by a number of municipalities, or you’re not going to see them able to build the servicing needed to build homes. And, quite frankly, we’re in a housing crisis right now. We need to build more homes, and municipalities need to be able to make sure you can turn the water on and flush the toilet when you’re in that home.

So the Premier’s response, and this is what really made me think I’ve got to stand up and defend Guelph, is that—and I quote this from the Hansard today: “Your whole council in Guelph are a bunch of left-wing lunatics.” And then he goes on to say that they say no to housing. And I’ve just got to correct the record, because if you look at the facts, when it comes to new housing starts, Guelph is in the middle of the pack. We need to do better; there’s no doubt about it. I’m pushing that. We need to do better.

Guelph is reaching about 44% of our target that we’ve mandated. We’re not doing as good as Toronto; they’re on pace for 90%. And I told my friend from Brantford over here, even though he’s on the other side of the aisle, that Brantford is the best in the province at 109% of their target.

But I look at places like Mississauga, Ajax and Newmarket that are all around 29%; Barrie is at 23%; Burlington is at 5%. And I’ll remind the members that those are actually ridings represented by Conservatives. This isn’t a partisan issue; it’s just that these are what the facts are.

I also want to say that recently Guelph has led the way in saying yes to fourplexes, getting rid of exclusionary zoning. We just said yes to a major new student housing initiative. We’ve completed the building of three permanent supportive housing spaces, having a Yes in My Backyard campaign to get community buy-in for them. It’s one of the reasons that this so-called left-wing council—Guelph has the lowest unemployment rate in Canada, at just around 2%. We rank second out of 25 cities across Canada as a good place to do business. Over the last decade, we’ve consistently been one of the top 10 cities in Canada to live in, and we rank in the top 10 safest cities in Canada. It’s a great place to live, it’s a great place to do business, and one of the things that worries me is that the government, because of Bill 23, is going to make it more difficult for my community and communities across Ontario to maintain that affordability, because they’ve taken away the ability to service new housing.

I think one of the things that is infuriating so many Ontarians right now is that instead of implementing recommendations from the Housing Affordability Task Force over the two years, the government has been more focused on opening the greenbelt for development, expanding urban boundaries and other initiatives to have expensive sprawl go onto farmland, benefiting a handful of wealthy, well-connected insiders, when what people want are homes that ordinary Ontarians can afford, in the communities they want to live in, on the land that’s already approved for development to build up to two million homes. So let’s get to building those homes, and let’s provide municipalities with the financial support they need to service those homes so we can build them.