SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
October 24, 2023 09:00AM
  • Oct/24/23 11:00:00 a.m.

Speaker, this government has issued more MZOs since coming to office than the previous 25 years combined. Just last week—

Interjections.

Since this minister is now so busy throwing the former minister under the bus, why won’t he just tell us what he’s concerned about?

Interjections.

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  • Oct/24/23 11:00:00 a.m.

A very good question from the member opposite. What I’m concerned with are those MZOs that have led to no action being taken. The MZOs that I’m pleased with, of course, are the ones that the Minister of Long-Term Care has asked for, the ones that the Minister of Education has asked for, the ones that the Minister of Health has asked for. Across the province of Ontario, we have received requests from municipal leaders, but there are a couple of MZOs where they were issued and no work has been done to advance the goal of building homes or building long-term care or building hospitals. So I’m reviewing those, and if we’re not seeing the action to do what the MZO was issued for, I’ll revoke them.

But let’s look at some of the things that we’ve done. Social housing in the city of Toronto: 44 additional social housing units in the city of Toronto; hospital expansions; in Ajax, a 320-bed long-term-care home; a long-term-care home in Oakville; a long-term-care home in Toronto; a medical park in Oro-Medonte. Do you want me to go on? I can go on if you like—modular housing; 252 supportive housing units in Toronto. The Leader of the Opposition doesn’t want that, right? I can go on, Mr. Speaker. If you give me extra time, I’ll go on.

At the same time, as I have been saying constantly and as this government has been showing, we will not stray from our desire to build 1.5 million homes for the people of the province of Ontario. That is our goal. It is the overriding goal of everything that we’ve been doing since 2018. It includes why—the reason why we’re building transit across the province of Ontario. It’s to support the over 700,000 jobs that have been created in the province of Ontario, not by government, but by the private sector. They’re coming back to Ontario, and the province is booming as a result. We want to build more homes, so we will not stray from that.

I know they’re going to try to put obstacle after obstacle after obstacle in the way. They’re good at that. We’ll untangle the mess that they left behind, and we’ll get the job done.

It really is an awkward question, coming from the member opposite. What it is an attempt to distract from the challenges that the opposition has. They’re offside with the people of the province of Ontario. They support a carbon tax; nobody else in the country does. They hold the balance of power in Ottawa. Tomorrow, they could have their federal leader insist that the carbon tax be removed and millions of dollars be put back into the pockets of the people of Ontario. Will they do it? No.

But what we will continue to do is focus on the priorities of the people of the province of Ontario, building strong communities, building the environment where we can continue to create jobs. We’re seeing jobs come back, housing starts are at their highest level—

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