It’s a real honour to participate in the debate on Bill 136, the protect the greenbelt from the Premier act—oh, I mean, the Greenbelt Statute Law Amendment Act, or, as the previous member said, the protect the greenbelt from the Progressive Conservative Party act.

I think there are many ways we could name this bill, but the one thing that is clear is the people of Ontario are outraged. They are outraged and in the midst of a housing crisis. Instead of having a government focused on building homes that ordinary people can afford in the communities they want to live in and on the land already approved for development, the government prioritized land grabs so a handful of wealthy well-connected government insiders could cash in at a minimum $8.3 billion in windfall profits.

I just want to say to the people of Ontario, thank you for saying no. Thank you for standing up, farmers, citizens, community organizations, environmental groups, local city councillors—standing up and saying no to opening the greenbelt for development. This is what people power looks like, Speaker.

I want to say thank you to the journalists who investigated, investigated, investigated and learned about the massages in Vegas and all the other shady practices that were happening around this. By the way, I said earlier today at a protest on Ontario Place that if the Premier wants a fancy massage, he shouldn’t go to Ontario Place; he should go to Vegas—because we should be protecting Ontario Place too.

I also want to say thank you to the officers of the Legislature—the Integrity Commissioner, the Auditor General—who provided the guardrails of democracy to protect from the corrupt process that led to this decision.

And thank you to the RCMP for agreeing to investigate this, because the people of Ontario deserve honest answers to how a government could waste so much time, money and effort not building homes but creating a process that led to $8.3 billion in windfall profits for wealthy well-connected elites.

The Premier said he was sorry for breaking his promise, and that’s what has brought us Bill 136. But I ask, is he sorry that he got caught breaking his promise? Is he sorry that the well-connected wealthy insiders who are his friends are not going to be able to cash in $8.3 billion now? Is he sorry that he broke his promise? Or is he sorry that the government has failed to actually focus on building houses?

I can tell you that in the months leading up to Bill 136, the Premier compared the greenbelt to Communist China and North Korea. He repeatedly, over and over again, attacked the integrity of the greenbelt. He said it was drawn up with crayons. He called it a scam. So Speaker, does he really want to protect the greenbelt? Because I can tell you, the only scam was the suggestion that the greenbelt lands were needed to address the housing affordability crisis.

We’ve had the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force, we’ve had planners, we’ve had professional planners, we’ve had the Auditor General all say that we already have enough land approved for development in Ontario to not only build the 1.5 million homes we all want to build, but to build two million homes. So why aren’t we focused on actually building those homes?

While we’re looking at Bill 136, let’s take a moment to think about why these greenbelt lands are so important, because I think in the course of the debate around the corrupt process that led to this decision, we’ve actually forgotten why these lands were so important. First of all, the greenbelt was designed through a collaborative process led by experts, professional planners, hydrogeologists, farmers, scientists, academics and community leaders. A whole host of folks looked at how we can protect the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO heritage site; the Oak Ridges moraine, which is critically important to filtering the drinking water for the entire greater Toronto area; and some of the best farmland in all of North America, particularly the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve.

The forests and wetlands of the greenbelt are vital to protecting us from the climate-fuelled extreme weather events we’re facing right now. As a matter of fact, it provides billions of dollars of ecosystem services free of charge each and every year. It provides employment for economic activity of well over $3 billion each and every year. The extreme weather events it protects us from are things like the $3.1 billion of insured damages that Canadians faced last year because of the climate crisis, and according to the IBC, that’s likely three times as much when you look at uninsured assets. They protect us from the $26.2 billion that the Financial Accountability Officer has said we’re going to have to pay to protect public infrastructure in the next seven years this decade alone because of the climate crisis.

They also protect, particularly in the DRAP, some of the best farmland in all of North America. That farmland is vital to our food security at a time when global events, conflict, supply chain disruptions and climate-fuelled weather are creating spikes in food prices around the world. If there was ever a time that we needed to protect our local food supply, our local food supply chains and our farmland, now is that time—the very farmland that is the asset base that contributes $50 billion to Ontario’s food and farming economy, employing over 800,000 people in this province.

That’s what people are wanting protected. That’s why these greenbelt lands are so valuable, and it’s why it’s so valuable that we also push back against greenbelt 2.0—the abuse and misuse of ministerial zoning orders, the enforced boundary expansions—because we simply cannot continue to lose 319 acres of farmland each and every day. That threatens our food security and it threatens our food and farming economy.

This sprawl agenda that led to the desire to open the greenbelt for development and require municipalities to increase their boundaries also makes the housing crisis worse. We have great, good documentation showing that the cost of sprawl development is 2.5 times higher than actually building homes within existing urban boundaries. Why, Speaker? The cost of water lines, sewer lines, hydro lines, transit lines, roads, libraries, parks, schools—all of that is incredibly expensive.

As a matter of fact, the city of Ottawa conducted a study that showed that when you build through sprawl, it costs each taxpayer in the city an additional $465 per person per year, but when you build within existing urban boundaries, gentle density, missing middle, you save $606 per person per house per year. That’s $1,000-per-person-per-year difference. We simply cannot, on a financial and economic basis, afford the government’s sprawl agenda.

That’s exactly why we not only need to protect the greenbelt, but we need to be looking at things like creating a food belt to protect prime farmland, and it’s also why we need housing policy that’s going to build homes within existing urban boundaries. That’s exactly why I’ve put forward bills like Bill 44 and Bill 45 that would make it legal to build multiplexes and four-storey walk-up apartments; that would make it legal—remove all the red tape—to build six-to-11-storey apartment buildings along major transportation corridors, so we can increase housing supply in the most affordable way, that protects our farmland, protects our wetlands, protects our green spaces.

It’s also why I’ve put forward bills that truly protect the greenbelt, that close some of the loopholes that the previous Liberal government left in the greenbelt, like my Bill 111, No More Pits or Quarries in the Greenbelt Act, so we can say no to the Caledon mega quarry that would blast a hole on hundreds of acres of farmland; like my Bill 110, No More Highways in the Greenbelt Act, so we can say no to the super-sprawl 413 that would pave over 2,000 acres of farmland, 400 acres of the greenbelt, traverse 85 wetlands and threaten 100 waterways within the province. If we’re truly going to protect the greenbelt, then those provisions should be in Bill 136, Speaker.

In addition to increasing market supply—and I’ve put forward a number of solutions around increasing market supply, including the two bills I’ve talked about. Also, I’m going to continue to push this government to replace the $5.1 billion they’ve taken away from municipalities, money that’s required to build the servicing so we can actually build 1.5 million homes, so people can turn the water on, flush the toilet and have the services they need. We’re also going to need non-market supply as well, Speaker.

We’re also going to need a government that’s going to step up and support non-profit co-ops and supportive housing spaces in this province. Some 93% of the deeply affordable homes in Ontario were built before 1995. What happened in 1995? The provincial and federal governments got out of housing. We need government to be a partner with the non-profit and co-op sector again.

Finally, Speaker, we’re going to have to take action to get speculation out of the housing market. I mean, we saw a government try to benefit speculators by opening the greenbelt for development. We need to get speculators out of the housing market, Speaker. Nearly one third of Ontario’s housing wealth is owned by speculators. Speculators are driving first-time homebuyers out of the marketplace, which is why we need things like multi-residential speculation taxes, vacant home taxes and other measures to protect first-time homebuyers in the province—

I appreciate the member from Brantford–Brant’s question. When you lose 319 acres of farmland every day, it’s to multiple types of development. It’s to highways; it’s to commercial development; it’s to business development; it’s to housing development; it’s to quarries. Like, there’s a whole host of ways in which farmland is being taken out of production.

If you look at the Ontario Farmland Trust based out of the University of Guelph, 319 acres of farmland is being lost each and every day in this province. That’s equivalent to the size of the city of Toronto. That’s exactly why we need the kinds of solutions I’m calling for, for gentle density and missing-middle housing, along with smart single-family housing development to ensure that we build homes in a way that’s smart, that protects farmland.

Interjection: It’s 319.

Now that has moved up to 319 acres, for a whole variety of uses. I mean, Highway 413 alone, if they build it, that’s going to be 2,000 acres right there. Right there, that one highway alone is going to be 2,000 acres. I can’t argue with census data. I cannot argue with census data. The census data clearly shows we are losing 319 acres a day to all forms of development: business development, commercial development, highway development. There is a whole host of reasons. So I would suggest to the member—

So if the government was fiscally conservative, if we had a fiscally responsible government, they would pay for truck tolls on the 407. According to Transport Action Ontario, you could pay for truck tolls on the 407 for 30 years and not even get to half the cost of what it would take to construct the 413. So why not go with the fiscally responsible approach and utilize our existing assets to their full potential?

So why don’t the government agree with me and pass Bill 44 and Bill 45 so we can quickly increase housing supply right now in an affordable, responsible way? I heard the member opposite ask another member some recommendations that they would support in the housing task force. Two of the key recommendations in the housing task force to increase housing supply was to get rid of exclusionary zoning, and get rid of the barriers to missing-middle housing. Those are what my bill accomplish, Speaker.