Thank you very much, Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to rise today. Let me just say that I will be splitting my time with the Associate Minister of Housing and the parliamentary assistant, the member for Perth–Wellington.

Thanks again, Speaker. It is, of course, always an honour to rise in the Legislature to begin debate on this important piece of legislation that has a number of different elements to it, but ostensibly, to reimpose protections over parts of the greenbelt and the Oak Ridges moraine, and to also expand the greenbelt and to ultimately codify those boundaries into legislation.

As you know, of course, Speaker, the greenbelt itself is over two million acres, or 800,000 hectares, across the greater Golden Horseshoe. It is a protected area of land that has many different facets to it in an area that is expected to have very rapid population growth. Of course, the greater Golden Horseshoe is one of North America’s fastest-growing regions. It is an area whose population is forecasted to exceed 15 million people by 2051.

As set out in the Greenbelt Act, changes to the greenbelt boundary can currently be made through regulation. The Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, which is part of this, was established under the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act in 2002. It provides direction on land use and resource management for the land and water located within the moraine. The Oak Ridges moraine portion is 470,000 acres, or 190,000 hectares, of land. Together, allowing the Niagara Escarpment, they form the greenbelt lands.

The proposed Greenbelt Statute Law Amendment Act, 2023, would amend the Greenbelt Act, 2005, the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act, 2001, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing Act, and enact the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Act, 2023. So the legislation restores 15 areas of land that were removed or redesignated from the greenbelt and the Oak Ridges moraine areas in late 2022. These parcels of land amount to approximately 7,400 acres across 10 municipalities, those being Vaughan, King, Richmond Hill, Whitchurch-Stouffville, Marham, Pickering, Ajax, Clarington, Hamilton and Grimsby.

Those lands, as I said, will be added back into the greenbelt. We are also proposing to restore the protections to the greenbelt lands that they had before the 2022 amendment, and we will, as I said, be doing even more to enhance the protection of the greenbelt.

Speaker, I talked about enshrining the boundaries of the greenbelt in legislation. As you know and as colleagues will know, currently, changes to the greenbelt can be made through an order in council and with a posting on the environmental registry. What we are proposing to do is ensure that the boundaries, should they ever be changed in the future, would need to have legislative approval, meaning the government of the day would be required to bring legislation to the House and follow through the procedures of passing a bill in the House. All of the same tools with respect to postings on the environmental registry would continue in addition to the protection of the boundaries through legislation.

As I said, we are revoking the existing Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council regulation-making authority with the passage of this bill. Now, this is obviously an unprecedented level of protection across the greenbelt. It stems from the fact that people obviously want to see an enhanced level of protection across these lands while still making the lands available for important infrastructure, as was intended when the bill was passed by the House in 2005.

In addition, we will be adding over 9,400 acres of land to the greenbelt across 13 urban river valley areas. These include:

—Stoney Creek;

—Wilmot Creek;

—Soper Creek in Bowmanville;

—Harmony Creek by adding Darlington Provincial Park, which is partially located in both Oshawa and partly in Clarington;

—an expanded urban river valley for the Oshawa Creek;

—an expanded urban river valley for Fourteen Mile Creek in Oakville;

—an additional one for the Don River in Toronto by adding Burke Brook, Wilket Creek and Taylor-Massey Creek; and

—an expansion of the Humber River urban river valley by adding Humber Creek and Black Creek.

That is obviously good news for all of those areas—probably areas of natural heritage which should have been put into the greenbelt before but are being added in now.

At the same time, we will be restoring the protections that were brought to the area through the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Act, 2005. What we propose to do is reinstate the protections provided for the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve easements and covenants. This would recognize the importance of agriculture land and ensure its sustainable use for present and future generations, and I think that is obviously very, very important. It builds on the work of ensuring that these lands are not only protected but that we ensure we protect the lands that are reserved for farming in this area.

It builds on some of the work that was done by some of my colleagues who served federally when some 5,000 acres of land were removed from what is still on the books as the Pickering airport lands. Speaker, you know there is a massive swath of land in this very same area in the eastern part of Toronto which encompasses a huge part of Durham: Pickering, parts of Uxbridge, Whitby and Oshawa. These are the Pickering airport lands. It is still on the books federally, but back in 2015, thousands of acres were taken out of that on the York region side and put into the Rouge National Urban Park. Those lands, as they were transitioned out of the Pickering airport lands and put into the Rouge National Urban Park, were protected for farming—the first time that long-term protections were granted to our farmers in that area. Part of that was to ensure that farmers were given long-term leases in this area. Prior to that, they were on one-year leases, which made it very hard for the local farmers to ensure that they could make positive infrastructure improvements on the land drainage and so on and so forth. That was very good news. The restoration of the Greenbelt Act, preserving it through legislation and reinserting the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve covenants I think will all add to the protections that are in place without limiting future governments’ ability to add infrastructure to the area if this House should approve.

There is a provision in the original 2005 act. There was a provision in that act for a review, and it’s a 10-year review. I think the last time the review took place it was started in 2015 and concluded, if I’m not mistaken, in 2017. So I’m looking at making some changes to how the review process will take place in the future. I outlined a little bit of this already, but what we want to do is—obviously, when we do the review, we will remove the review from politics and put it back to where it belongs. We will ensure that any future review will be guided by non-partisan experts in conservation and agriculture, and environmentalists, and we’ll engage with Indigenous communities and municipalities.

Once final, the experts’ recommendations will be provided to the Auditor General and the Commissioner of the Environment for consultation to ensure that the review process was fair and guided by recent recommendations to improve the process. We have said that we will undertake a review, and the future review, of course, will be, as I’ve said, guided by protection of natural heritage, the protection of water resources and the preservation of agriculture across the greenbelt lands. We’ll have some additional information on that in the near future. I suspect that we will want to begin our consultations with a very robust process that starts with First Nations partners in the area who have been so instrumental in helping us arrive at this piece of legislation.

I also want to just briefly talk about some of the reasons or the rationale that began this process. I’ve said it on a number of occasions in the House, and as the Integrity Commissioner put in his own report, the initial impetus was, of course, to ensure that we could build housing across the province of Ontario as quickly as possible, in particular, throughout the greater Golden Horseshoe which, as I said at the start of my speech, is expected to grow to over 15 million people in this region by 2051. But what was very clear, as this process went further, was that people were not brought along in a fashion that engendered public support for removing the lands from the greenbelt. The decision, of course, was made to re-protect those lands and to move forward.

At the same time, it does not and will not diminish from the government’s commitment to build 1.5 million homes by 2031 across Ontario. We have seen over and over again how important a goal that is for people. You’ve heard the Premier, myself and virtually every single member of the Progressive Conservative caucus talk about the importance of building homes for people. We are welcoming to this province, thankfully, thousands of people each and every year who are coming to Ontario to help us build a bigger, better, stronger province of Ontario. These are people that we need.

But at the same time, we have generations of Ontarians who have benefitted from an Ontario that offered their parents endless opportunity, and many of them right now are feeling, in terms of housing, that they might not be able to enjoy the same opportunities that the parents had. At the same time, Madam Speaker, they’ve been very clear in a lot of instances in the sense that they are doing everything right: They are saving money; they are working hard; they’ve done everything that they have to do in order to be able to afford a new home. However, we have not been able to keep up pace to allow them to live out this dream.

So we will be doubling down on our efforts to ensure that all Ontarians can share in this dream. This will include, of course, ensuring that our partners in municipalities across Ontario are as aggressive as we are at getting shovels in the ground.

We will continue to remove obstacles. We will continue to work with our partners in the home-building industry to ensure that they have the opportunity to build communities as fast as we possibly can. We will continue to build long-term-care homes. We will continue to focus that development around transit and transportation infrastructure because we know, in order to build livable communities, that you have to not only build homes but you have to build communities around those homes, which include transit, transportation; which include schools; which includes offering a whole host of services that make a community great.

Madam Speaker, in a nutshell, this bill will restore the lands. It will improve the protection of the greenbelt lands. It will ensure a review process in the future that is guided by the original principles of the Oak Ridges moraine, that uses outside experts to ensure that review process is fair, that assesses that fairness through a reference to the Auditor General and the environment commissioner, and ultimately requires approval of the Legislature to make any further changes in the future. With that, I will yield my time to the Associate Minister of Housing.

The member from Perth–Wellington.

Perth–Wellington is a place of vibrant energy and growth, and today, I want to celebrate an incredible success story of one of our small businesses.

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending the grand opening of GRIT Engineering’s brand new, expanded location in Stratford. GRIT Engineering, founded and led by Montana Wilson, is a shining example of what small businesses can achieve when they combine determination, dedication and vision. They offer a wide array of high-quality services, including geotechnical engineering, civil engineering, surveying and environmental services.

It’s no exaggeration to say that GRIT Engineering plays a vital role in building our great province. It was wonderful to walk through their state-of-the-art facility, witness the cutting-edge technology they employ and meet some of their dedicated team. What’s even more remarkable is that GRIT Engineering is one of the few female-led consulting engineering firms in Ontario. The company also provides 24 individuals in our local community with well-paying jobs, with the majority of employees being under the age of 40. They’re not just building infrastructure, Speaker; they’re building careers and opportunities in Perth–Wellington.

Montana’s recent recognition as the recipient of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association inaugural Service Professional of the Year award is a testament to the outstanding professionalism and integrity that she brings to everything she does. She is truly a role model for young women everywhere.

Speaker, it’s great to see the continued success of small businesses in our rural community. I want to wish Montana, Nick and their whole team much success.