Further debate?

It’s not sold yet. I was talking to Minister Surma about that property and about other properties. We all know that we can work together across the aisle to ensure that we have a Homes for Heroes project in the city of Hamilton, and I have boots on the ground ready to do the work. I can tell you, there are so many amazing people who I have met through this process, and other people—our current mayor; our former mayor—everyone is just looking together to find that perfect piece of property that has the accessible transit, that is part of the community, but yet still has its own space to really build a Homes for Heroes community that not only suits the Hamilton fabric, but shines in the light of what we can do to protect and serve our veterans who have so graciously served us.

I also want to give a shout-out to my own Legion, Legion 163, and the wonderful work that they do there. They’re also part of the Homes for Heroes project. Everybody is on board for this, just waiting for that opportunity to be able to move forward. Shirley Beaton and her entire executive, and the work that they do at our Legion—I’m eternally grateful for their friendship and their support, and the work that we’ve been able to do together. I look forward to the work that we continue to do.

Speaker, to complete my words today, I would just like to reflect and give gratitude to all those who have served, who are serving, and their families and communities who have shared them with us. I pay my respects to our veterans, to those who have been injured in the line of duty, and to all of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. Your courage to stand up for democracy, to build peace and to allow Canadians to live in freedom will never be forgotten. Lest we forget.

It’s not sold yet?

Further debate?

It’s truly an honour to rise to speak to this bill. We don’t often agree on everything here, but this is definitely something we can all agree on. I thank the member for Whitby for putting forth a noble bill, an honourable bill and a bill that’s the right thing to do.

We, thanks to this bill, will be observing two minutes of silence before Remembrance Day, and we will, in addition, be given opportunities to speak about it. Why do I think this is so important? Why do I think that this is necessary here? While generals determine the details of battle, for the most part it is politicians who send our sons and daughters to war—perhaps not in the provincial Parliaments, but certainly in the federal one—so it is we as politicians, perhaps above all, who should reflect on what that means and what has been lost.

We remember that once a year on November 11, but how much do we truly understand and think about it? How much time do we spend thinking about those who have paid with their lives for us to have our own? When you think about it, for the most part, we have been insulated from the horrors that exist in so many places because of those sacrifices that were made on our behalf.

Veterans who are out there, struggling to this day financially, physically, emotionally and mentally from what they experienced, from what they have seen: For the most part, do we honour them enough? This honours them more, and there’s so much more that we can do. This is definitely something we will all support.

I wanted to share a little bit of my personal reflections on it because, as was stated by another member, we are all touched by this in some way, shape or form—those here in the chamber who have served, those who have family members who have served or are serving. I’m sure each and every one of us has a family member.

As a relatively new, but not young, father, I often look at my sons, my five-year-old and two-year-old sons, and I try to put myself in their minds as they grow, as they evolve, as they get smarter and wiser, and hearing that this was to be debated here on the floor, I tried to remember my own thoughts and recollections about what Remembrance Day meant as a child.

I remember being ushered into the gym on Remembrance Day with all the other students. I remember observing a moment of silence, but unlike any other times we were brought to that gym and asked to be quiet, there was a different silence on Remembrance Day. There were higher expectations of us to be respectful and to be honourable. As a child, I didn’t fully understand it, but I could feel that weight. Our teachers would sometimes show us a video. We would hear the trumpet. I remember when we had that moment of silence, and even as a child, there was something in those notes that struck. I could not understand it at that time, but there was a depth of sorrow to it that, as a child, I could just start in the smallest fraction to grasp.

It touched all of us. My own grandfather on my father’s side died, my father told me, fighting on the Allied side in World War II, leaving my father’s mother a widow, leaving my father and his siblings as orphans. We don’t even know where or how it happened. My late father served. He died when I was a young man and he didn’t share his experiences or what he went through, so I’ll never know. My mother told me that a distant cousin, family of ours, had three sons who all died in the bombing of Pearl Harbour. As a child, I heard these stories and they had an impact, but only as I got older and older did it start to hit home a little more.

I speak about the freedom that we have because what we experienced as young people growing up—and sure, we faced challenges, but so much of the challenges we experience, we experience second-hand in our pop culture. As children, you’re almost groomed—as a little boy, all my toys fought each other. I didn’t know what it meant. As I got older, I was attracted to the action movies, but they always sensationalized and glorified things I didn’t understand. It wasn’t until my teenaged years, as I was instructed to read certain books and some films began to come out showing the real horrors of what people were facing, that I started to think a little more and grasp it.

Why do I bring this up here in the House? Because I don’t think we reflect on this enough. Perhaps some of us do; I can’t put words in the mouths of others. But as a society, there are moments when we think about our veterans, those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, those who never came back. They paid for us with their lives. We don’t do it enough.

Above all, as politicians in this House, we must understand it, because the decisions we make affect the lives of those veterans, of those soldiers we send off to war and the rest of their lives. We must make these decisions with knowledge, and we must do everything we can to make others in society and certainly here understand what that means. Lest we forget.

So, may God bless the veterans, their families, all those who have fought, died and paid the ultimate sacrifice so that I and my children can live in the relative safety that we have in this great nation.

I thank the member for Whitby for bringing this forward so we could debate it and respect our veterans. I thank the government for calling this bill to third reading and bringing this to pass. It is the right thing to do. It is necessary. God bless our veterans.

Further debate?

I would like to begin by thanking the member from Whitby, who brought this bill forward. I think it’s very important that we will be taking an additional moment of silence next week before the Legislature breaks up.

I also want to say how important it’s been to have this debate, because it’s an opportunity to learn. We’ve heard from many people who have had, I will say, much more direct experience than I have had, and I’m learning from this, and I appreciate that opportunity, so I thank the member also for providing that opportunity.

My uncle, who would have been 98 if he were still alive, served in the Second World War, but when he came back, he wouldn’t talk about it at all. We heard the member from Guelph make a similar reference earlier.

I know that my mother missed him enormously, that that was one of the effects of people going away to war, the people left behind. He came back alive, but she has never stopped talking about how much she missed having her older brother with her in a formative time in her life. And she still talks about how much she misses him and how important he was. I learned nothing, really, about his experience and just learned a little bit from her.

So then I think about the importance of the teaching that happens in schools. And I will say, I did not learn that much in my time in school—not enough that it really made a deep impression on me. But, over time, I have come to understand and respect and feel the need and the importance of honouring the people who have gone to war on our behalf.

And I think also of how important the work is that is being done in schools, and I do see it happening in schools. I know of school classes that write letters to veterans, for example. It is a way, again, to bring some reality to a day that perhaps the children don’t have direct experience of. Now, there are many refugee children in our schools, and they do have direct experience.

In my role as MPP, I have had the opportunity to meet veterans and also to meet Indigenous veterans throughout the community. Those Indigenous veterans are still very much leaders in their communities, and I want to thank them for their service—something that wasn’t really acknowledged at the time. They were left out of the benefits that were provided to other veterans when they came back. So I must say, I’m even more grateful for the work that those veterans are doing in their communities because they continue to serve in spite of not having received the kind of acknowledgement that they should have.

I also want to acknowledge that there have been recent deaths, and there was a recent death in the last few years of somebody who grew up in Thunder Bay. His name is Anthony Joseph Boneca. He was a reservist from the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment, which is based in Thunder Bay. At the age of 21, he was killed in a fire fight in Afghanistan. I know that people in the community mourned his loss deeply, and I also know that, in a sad way, his death brought home the work of people who go to fight on our behalf and made it real.

I’ve also walked into Superior View high school—I was actually there to look at their tech school, what’s going on there. I walked into a room and discovered photographs all around the room of young men just barely older than these high school students, and these were all men from Thunder Bay and the region who signed up. It was, again, a very moving moment to look at those pictures and realize that many of them did not come home—but that they were there for the students also, to make that connection, and make that connection real, so that they could understand on a deeper level the ceremonies that we attend, but to take it beyond the ceremony to some understanding.

I will just close by acknowledging the work of the Legions. I think we have at least four in Thunder Bay, and those Legions are places where men and women work together. They provide a safe social space, they do charity work, they do fundraising, they have a good time, but it’s all volunteer work and it also creates the safe space for people to be veterans.

I must say, it was another lesson for me—walking in with my ball cap on and learning that’s disrespectful. Being asked to take off that cap is always a reminder of the seriousness of where we are.

There are three ceremonies that take place in Thunder Bay. One at the Waverley monument, and it’s a beautiful ceremony; there’s one at Fort William Gardens, also a beautiful ceremony; and one in Fort William reserve, on Anemki Wajiw, which is the name of the mountain, and that is also a very special ceremony. In each case, there are pipes and drummers, and there will be a trumpet playing.

I appreciate everything that people do. Without the Legions, we would not have these ceremonies; they organize everything, so I want to pay tribute to them, as well.

Thank you again to the member. I know that we all support this bill and thank you.

It’s always an honour to speak in the House. I’d like to thank the member from Whitby for bringing forward this bill. I’d like to take a couple of minutes.

As someone of Dutch descent, my father grew up in Holland during World War II, and when the Nazis invaded and conquered, they were conquered. When the Allies came, as a young man, he thought they were conquerors—that they would come and do the same thing that the Nazis did. The Canadians came and liberated and went home. And that’s actually the reason I’m here today: because my father emigrated from Holland because he thought that people who come and liberate and go home must come from the greatest country in the world—and he was right. So people of Dutch descent owe a huge debt to Canadians in World War II.

But what I really want to mention, just for a second—we all have connections. And I don’t have a personal connection, but when you come over in my riding, you come over the hill at Temiskaming Shores and—it’s one of the most beautiful sites in Ontario, in my opinion—you come through two or three hours of Canadian Shield and you’ll come over a hill and there’s a huge agricultural valley there. On the right side of the highway, there’s a lookout, a park. I often go there, but especially when I drive by there—and if you ever go there, I urge you to go look and just ponder at that park, because that park—one of the first things that I was involved in as an MPP was that the Ministry of Transportation renamed that park in honour of Sergeant Martin Goudreault.

Sergeant Goudreault was just 35 when he was killed in action in the Panjwayi district of Afghanistan on June 6, 2010. It was his third tour of duty in Afghanistan; he was a 15-year veteran of 1 Combat Engineer Regiment and First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group. He continued the proud tradition of going to a place and trying to help as a Canadian, and he gave his life for it—on our behalf, and on their behalf, as so many others have done. It’s been an honour for me to recognize him in this House.

I’d like to thank the member from Whitby for giving me this opportunity. On all our behalves, I thank the veterans who, on all our behalves, defend democracy.

On a point of order: Speaker, if you seek it, you’ll find unanimous consent to see the clock at 6.

Further debate?

Mr. Coe has moved third reading of Bill 65, An Act to amend the Remembrance Week Act, 2016. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

Third reading agreed to.

Further debate?

I want to thank the member from London North Centre for his motion.

Speaker, the member means well, but it’s disappointing to see the NDP lose faith in the people of Ontario. They don’t trust Ontarians anymore—if they ever did.

On many occasions, many of us in this House have risen to speak about our unique stories and those of our families immigrating to Ontario and starting their lives in Ontario from scratch. Those are inspiring stories. They speak to the courage and ambition of the Ontarians that have built this province and continue to build our communities.

Despite hearing all these stories on several occasions here in this chamber, the NDP still has no faith, no trust and no belief in the people of Ontario. They think that they can do everything better than their constituents can do. They’re dead wrong, and they don’t even see it. When they held government, they couldn’t build anything. Under that party, Ontario lost jobs, lost businesses, and it lost homes too. And they were so happy about that, that they lost homes—

Interjections.

They’re happy about losing homes, everyone.

When we finally changed governments, this party still did everything they could do to partner with the Liberals to make sure Ontarians lost even more jobs, businesses and homes. And by 2018, Ontarians saw through it all. Look at how many of them are sitting here today, Speaker. Ontarians have said enough is enough. They don’t need the government to give them handouts; they just need a government that believes in them, that believes in their ability to start a family, work in a rewarding job and to start a business.

Speaker, we’re not in the business of taking power away from the people; we’re for the people on this side of the House. And I’m proud that our leader and our Premier has made a point of emphasizing that principle over and over, at every step of his years of service.

And I appreciate that the NDP is finally showing their true colours. They don’t like free enterprise. They don’t like new businesses in Ontario. They don’t like new hospitals or new long-term-care beds. They don’t like new homes. Speaker, they didn’t even like those things under Bob Rae. They didn’t like them when they propped up the Liberal government, and they’re making it crystal clear now, by voting against each and every one of our own government’s initiatives, that they don’t like them now. Speaker—

Interjections.

The NDP wants to take over the business of housing in Ontario. They want to ensure 30% of all new housing—

Interjections.

Or in other words, they want to encroach on free enterprise in this province, one of the most cherished freedoms that we have in this country, to destroy the integrity of the free market and fundamentally to instead replace it with a province where property is publicly owned. Speaker, they’re advocating for the elimination of private property in this province, and do you know what Webster dictionary defines that as? Communism. And the NDP values—he got up and mentioned NDP values. It’s socialism, right here in this House. He just said it in his speech.

The NDP thinks that not only do we need to shut down the free market, but they also say they will just take $15 billion—just $15 billion—of Ontario taxpayers’ money. Housing experts say it is going to cost $100 billion to build 250,000 homes. Who are they going to tax to get that, Speaker? Are they going to tax the hard-working family that puts gas in their car? I know they support the carbon tax federally. Are they going to tax small businesses to meet that?

Speaker, I’d ask the member from London North Centre how many constituents he has who themselves or their families chose to immigrate to Canada because of restrictive socialist policies in countries like the former Soviet Union, Venezuela or China or a number of other countries who have experimented with this disastrous policy throughout recent history. I would also ask those constituents—and, frankly, I’d ask any Ontarian whose family has fled their nation of origin for this very reason—what they think of this bill.

Under the Liberals and NDP, who starved Ontario’s economy for 15 years, thousands of jobs left this province and thousands of people left with them. They came after the auto sector, they came after the energy sector, and now they’re coming after the housing sector. What industry do they want to kill next? Who else do they want to lay off? Thankfully, Ontarians see right through the NDP’s socialist agenda. They’ve seen it before, and many of them even escaped it to come here, Speaker. We won’t let them go through the pain and hurt of that again.

Our government knows that the main reason behind the housing crisis is critically low housing supply, with more than 95% of the homes being built in Ontario by Ontarians employed in the private sector. Many of these private companies build non-profit housing. They work with great housing providers like Habitat for Humanity and build non-profit housing. They take time out of their day to build that, Speaker. They don’t need bureaucrats in downtown Toronto telling them what they need in their community.

Our government increased the Homelessness Prevention Program by an additional $20 million. We now provide $700 million to our service providers for homelessness prevention programs across the province. I know that, locally, my housing service providers appreciated that because they know what is best for their communities. They don’t need bureaucrats. Speaker, we have great bureaucrats that work for us in the civil service, but I don’t know one that builds housing. None of them build housing. Bureaucrats do not build housing. The non-profit sector and the private sector build housing in this province.

Unlike the NDP, our government knows there’s only one taxpayer in Ontario, and at a time when Ontarians are already struggling with the rising cost of living, we will never support increased fees or costly policies that would put more financial strain on hard-working families. We’re fully committed to working with the private sector and the non-profit sector to incentivize getting shovels in the ground faster and allowing families and individuals right across this province to live in the home of their dreams.

Speaker, I am pleased to say that from January to August 2023, this year, we have seen a 3% increase in housing starts from 2022—which was a record in 30 years. This year again, the same months, January to August 2023, we’ve seen a 49% increase in the number of purpose-built rental starts—a 49% increase from the historic increase last year.

We need people to build these homes, Speaker. Apprentice registrations this year have increased by 24%. Our Minister of Education’s making reforms to ensure that young people who want to enter the skilled trades can enter more quickly, because we know that in the construction sector alone, 72,000 new workers are needed by 2027. These are the individuals who will build the homes for our growing population.

The member across the way talked about seniors, whether it’s downsizing or having a home to call their own or staying in the community that they helped build. I have a very good example from my own riding.

There was a development proposed down the street from where I live in the riding for seniors’ retirement living—designed for seniors so they could stay in the community they helped build, move out of their bigger houses, so those houses can go on the market and new families can move into them. Speaker, do you know what happened? NIMBYs prevented that development. They sent it to the Ontario Land Tribunal—one appeal, which held it up for years. It cost the home builder an extra $1 million in costs. The development still hasn’t started because of the extra cost. So these units aren’t on the market for people to stay in their own community, stay where they were, stay where their family is and stay where their grandchildren are.

I was proud to be part of a government that changed that. Our government reformed the Ontario Land Tribunal and the appeals process around that.

Interjections.

Speaker—

Interjections.

In the same spirit, we’ll stop at nothing, on this side of the House, to protect the hard-working people of Ontario who get up in the morning to help build this great province. We’ll continue to work for the hard-working people of Ontario that the NDP socialists don’t want to see rewarded—their job-killing agenda, their killing of the free enterprise that has contributed so much to this great province.

I know members on this side of the House and the majority over there will continue to stand for free enterprise and will continue to work—

Interjections.

I’m going to interrupt the member; sorry. Stop the clock for a second, please.

I can hear the member because he’s speaking loud enough, but there is a lot of distraction coming from this side. I would like to be able to listen peacefully to the member who has the floor, so I will thank you for keeping the order until we’re done today. Thank you very much.

The member for Perth–Wellington has the floor. You can continue. Start the clock.

I’m pleased to rise on behalf of the residents of Ottawa West–Nepean to speak in favour of this excellent motion tabled by the member for London North Centre calling for the government to create and fund a public housing agency called Homes Ontario to finance and build 250,000 new affordable and non-market homes on public land over 10 years.

We are in a housing crisis, one that the government’s actions have only been making worse. While they’ve been focused on enriching wealthy land speculators, housing starts were down 18% in the first half of this year in Ottawa. In fact, we saw the lowest number of freehold housing starts in 25 years this year.

The government’s reliance on private developers and market incentives is just not getting the job done, Speaker, and it’s the people of Ontario who are paying the price. Rent is up 11% again this year. A one-bedroom apartment is now going for $2,055 in Ottawa. I hear daily from constituents who cannot find an affordable place to live, and so, so many stories of tenants whose landlords are squeezing them with above-guideline rent increases or trying to force them out so that they can jack up the rent on the next tenant. In one of the most egregious cases, Speaker, an apartment with high turnover because the landlord is refusing to address safety concerns saw rent go from $1,400 a month to $1,900 a month to $2,600 a month, all in the space of six months, earlier this year. This is not sustainable. The people of Ontario cannot afford this.

That’s not even to speak about the many people who have been priced out of our housing market entirely. Ottawa has 535 permanent shelter beds, Speaker, and yet that’s not nearly enough to meet the need. We have people living in hotels and temporary shelters, in some cases for years. We have people sleeping rough in our streets and our parks.

A big crisis requires a big idea to fix, Speaker. It’s time that we start marshalling all the resources that we have at hand to get the government back into the business of building homes and supporting deeply affordable housing, to use public land for homes, not for profit. If access to a home in Ontario depends entirely on someone making a profit, then many people will simply never get a home that meets their needs. So to the government: Please stop focusing on the profits of a few wealthy developers who are friends with your Premier and get to work making sure that everyone in Ontario has an affordable place to call home.

Further debate?

We are experiencing a major affordability crisis, and a big part of it is the housing crisis. We have a record number of people who are unhoused and sleeping on our streets. We are seeing record evictions.

We’re seeing rising mortgage payments. We’re hearing of terms like “negative amortization period,” which I had never heard before—where payments don’t even cover the interest portion, and the remaining unpaid interest is added to the principal amount owing. Imagine that: making payments but owing more. We’re also seeing longer amortization periods—90 years. Imagine that: a lifetime of paying for your home, only to end up not owning it.

We are seeing generations of people feeling like their dream of owning a home is just that: a dream.

We need to build more housing. The Conservative government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force has said we need 1.5 million homes in the next 10 years. Speaker, I want to be very clear: The housing crisis we’re facing right now is both a supply crisis and an affordability crisis. I have always said that the affordable housing crisis is of such a massive scale that if we’re truly going to address the crisis in a meaningful way, the response must be of a similar scale. The scale of the response must meet the scale of the problem.

We need to build more housing, but we also need to build different kinds of housing, because people’s housing needs are different. After World War II, there was a huge need for affordable housing in Canada, especially as veterans were returning home and the population was growing, and then there was the realization that the private market alone was not going to build the kind of housing that was needed for people who were of low and moderate incomes, because it wasn’t profitable. That’s why the CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., was created with a mandate to improve housing access for everyone.

Shamefully, the federal government—both under Conservatives and Liberals—abandoned that responsibility, and in Ontario, the Harris government abandoned that responsibility. In the 15 years of Liberal government since, they did not reverse course. This is among the many Harris policies that the Liberals maintained.

And here’s the thing: Private developers have said that they alone cannot solve the housing crisis, and yet the Ford Conservative government is leaving it only to private developers to meet the demand and the need. What the NDP is proposing through this motion is that governments resume their responsibility of building non-market, deeply affordable housing based on people’s needs—housing that the market won’t build. We can do that by establishing a new public agency, Homes Ontario. Let’s get it done.

Thank you—with all housing providers, whether that is co-op, non-profit, and, yes, the private sector. I know, when we all work together with our communities, we can achieve great things, because this is the province of Ontario—and I still believe in the Canadian and Ontario dream.

I want to reintroduce the House to reality here.

I want to thank the member from London North Centre for bringing forward this bill to create a Homes Ontario agency to actually build housing. The solution to our housing crisis is to build 250,000 units of affordable housing as well as the 1.5 million units of housing that we need to address the supply.

This government believes that the market will solve the problem. While they give the market a little bit of money—they actually gave $5 billion in development charges that they downloaded the cost of onto municipal taxpayers. They also have flown all the way to Las Vegas and made deals on massage tables, to try to build housing. And the result? Housing starts are down in Ontario.

And not only are housing starts down, but when I talk to people in my riding, tech companies—I’m the tech and innovation critic. When I talk to tech companies, they say the biggest competitive disadvantage we have in Ontario is housing costs, because talent want to come to Ontario, but they can’t afford to live here. So we need affordable housing. Speaker, 100,000 people—mainly young people—are leaving this province every year because of housing costs.

The other result of this government’s policies—we have tent encampments in every community across this province. The nickname for them is Fordtown. We have Fordtowns everywhere. When you travel to any city in this province, you’ve got tent encampments. That’s this government’s solution to housing.

But what the NDP want to do is to leverage public land to build not-for-profit housing. We want to build on the Ontario Line stations, like the one in my riding. The government is going to be building condos on top of them. We’re asking that 30% of those condos be affordable. This government is not mentioning anything about affordable housing being built above the Ontario Line stations.

In my riding, we’ve got 18 co-ops, 10 TCHC housing units; we’ve got supportive housing run by agencies like Evangel Hall—all of them date back at least 25 years, because since the Conservatives and the Liberals have been in power in the last 25 years, they have refused to build housing. So we need to build affordable housing in this province.

The housing crisis was created by government policies of the Conservative and Liberal governments, and it can be solved by government policy—like the one brought forward by the NDP today.