Supplementary question.

If it wasn’t Halloween, that remark might not have been acceptable.

Start the clock. The next question.

I want to thank the great member from Carleton for her great work in the riding and for the question. Speaker, just yesterday, I met with Restaurants Canada to discuss the continued economic recovery of the food service industry. They made it unequivocally clear that owners are facing hardship over the federal carbon tax. For years, the NDP and the Liberals failed to stand up in this House and recognize what their constituents had been saying all along: That from the farm to the table, the carbon tax was a disaster for small businesses in our province.

Restaurants and small business owners cannot simply pass these unnecessary costs on to consumers, forcing them to cut staff instead. Meanwhile, the federal government turns a blind eye to their struggles. Speaker, this tax is the difference between doors open and doors closed. We demand better than empty words from those who champion this joint Liberal-NDP tax grab.

Interjections.

Interjections.

Meegwetch, Speaker. Good morning. My question is to the Premier. I have been speaking with First Nations leaders across Ontario and they are frustrated and confused about Ontario’s ongoing consultation of the Métis Nation of Ontario within First Nations territories. First Nations affected by these decisions have asked the government repeatedly to share the evidence Ontario is using to support this recognition. Ontario still hasn’t shared that evidence.

Will Ontario share the evidence as asked? Yes or no?

Thank you to the hard-working member for the important question. The federal government’s carbon tax is a worry for our seniors. Every product we have in Ontario is affected by the carbon tax.

Seniors across Ontario are very concerned that taxes will keep going up and life will be harder for them. Seniors should not have to struggle to pay high costs for food, heating and the things they need. Our government is working for Ontario seniors so they can live comfortably and with dignity. That is why our government opposes the federal carbon tax.

Speaker, the government of Ontario is guided by some legal decisions and we make it our business to engage Indigenous peoples across the province. I’ve never seen a leader of a political party be more accessible to Indigenous leaders, business leaders and political leaders to fundamentally change the dialogue, to create opportunities for Indigenous populations across the province, to settle treaty disputes, to settle flooding and land claims, and to ensure that First Nations communities and the Indigenous population across the province of Ontario writ large have the tools they need for greater economic prosperity.

We will always live up to the standard of a duty to consult. We make it our business to ensure that First Nations communities across this province play an important and equitable role in all of the economic opportunities available now and in the future of this great province.

My question is to the elder statesman of Scarborough and the Minister for Seniors and Accessibility. Across our province, many seniors are currently struggling to stretch their incomes. The cost of food as well as everyday goods and services keeps rising. For seniors with limited incomes, the carbon tax is creating even more difficulty and hardship. It is not right or fair that seniors should have to be worried about the extra burden that the carbon tax is placing on them.

Unlike the opposition Liberals and NDP, who support the carbon tax, our government is focused on making life more affordable for our seniors. Can the minister please explain what impact the carbon tax is having on seniors in our province?

Seniors are also concerned that higher heating costs due to the federal carbon tax will impact seniors centres and organizations that support them.

Can the minister please elaborate on how the federal carbon tax will impact organizations that support our seniors?

Ma question est pour la ministre de la Santé.

This morning, in the media studio, my colleague the MPP from Niagara Falls and I were joined by Erin Ariss, the president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association. She stated: “Our publicly funded hospitals and long-term-care homes are seeing their budgets drained by these greedy, for-profit” nursing “agency owners who bill obscene amounts of money.”

Is the Minister of Health taking any action whatsoever to stop for-profit nursing agencies from making millions of dollars in profit at the expense of quality care in our hospitals and long-term-care homes?

Will this government take action to ensure that health care dollars are paying for quality care, not lining the pockets of private nursing agency executives?

The bill enacts the Healthcare Staffing Agencies Act, 2023. The act provides that every hospital and long-term-care home in a municipality with a population of 8,000 or more shall develop a plan to limit its spending on health care staffing agencies in accordance with a specified timeline—leading to complete elimination within two years.

Every health care staffing agency established after the act comes into force shall operate as a not-for-profit. If a health care staffing agency receives more than $400,000 in total from the government of Ontario or any of its transfer payments agencies, the health care staffing agency is subject to oversight by the Auditor General, the Patient Ombudsman, the Ontario Ombudsman and the Integrity Commissioner. The agency’s employees are also included on the sunshine list.

A health care staffing agency shall not pay its workers assigned to a hospital or long-term-care home more than 10% above the existing rate in the hospital or long-term-care home for the relevant profession. The stipend for transportation, accommodation and per diem will be paid directly to the worker. A health care staffing agency shall not poach employees from hospitals or long-term-care homes.

Mr. Glover moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 145, An Act to amend the Building Code Act, 1992 with respect to bird-safe windows / Projet de loi 145, Loi modifiant la Loi de 1992 sur le code du bâtiment en ce qui concerne les fenêtres sans danger pour les oiseaux.

“Support Access to Spine Care in Ontario....

“Whereas people waiting for complex spinal surgeries, including for scoliosis, are forced to wait years in debilitating pain for the care they need, risking lifelong consequences and deterioration in function;

“Whereas surgeons are willing and able to help, but the system puts up many barriers. Surgeons face the difficult choice of offering routine spinal surgeries—which guarantee compensation—over complex spinal surgeries, further lengthening the wait times for patients with complex cases;

“Whereas the lack of collaboration between the Ministry of Health adjudicators and providers has led to challenges in conducting fair and accurate assessments of complex cases;

“Whereas Ontario’s funding for complex cases for spinal surgeries, derived from the general funding bucket, deprioritizes complex spinal surgeries, over routine/simple surgeries;”

They petition the Legislative Assembly as follows:

“—address the ever-increasing wait times and make complex spinal surgeries available in a timely manner;

“—immediately improve access to surgery for complex spinal conditions by increasing and equitably funding spine care in Ontario hospitals.”

I support this petition. I will affix my name to it and ask my good page Saniyah to bring it to the Clerk.

The carbon tax is hurting families, it’s hurting farmers and it’s hurting businesses in Ontario. The carbon tax raises the price of everything, especially for small businesses, who have no choice but to either suffer the loss or pass it on to their customers. Unlike the opposition NDP and Liberals, we in this party have always known that the carbon tax would drive up costs for everybody.

Speaker, can the Minister of Energy please explain the impact the carbon tax is having on hard-working families in the province of Ontario?

The most concerning part about the carbon tax is that it will only get worse. The federal government and opposition Liberal and NDP want to triple this regressive tax—triple it by 2030.

I absolutely agree with the Premier’s concerns about this tax, because while our government has remained laser-focused on lowering costs, the carbon tax is working against us.

Can the minister please share his views on the negative impact the carbon tax is having on so many Ontarians?

Today marks a very important anniversary: 110 years ago on October 31, Sir William Meredith presented a report to the Ontario Legislature that resulted in the creation of the workers’ compensation system, the first piece of social legislation in the province.

I rise on a point of order to welcome two outstanding Ontarians, Charles Taylor and Marilyn Heintz, who are visiting us from Burlington today.

Thank you for joining us. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

It is my very great honour to introduce the newest OLIP intern to team Thornhill: Kaitlin Gallant.

Madame Gélinas moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 144, An Act respecting healthcare staffing agencies / Projet de loi 144, Loi concernant les agences de recrutement de personnel de soins de santé.

This bill amends the Building Code Act, 1992, to provide that Ontario regulation 332/12, Building Code, made under the act is deemed to include the Canadian Standards Association bird-friendly building design standard A460, which will hopefully help prevent the 25 million bird deaths that happen from window collisions every year.

“Whereas the Haliburton Highlands Health Services board of directors has, without consultation with the affected stakeholders, closed the emergency department located in the municipality of Minden Hills, Ontario, on June 1, 2023;

“Whereas the loss of service is jeopardizing the lives of residents in the community;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to direct the Minister of Health to use her powers under section 9.1 of the Public Hospitals Act to immediately reopen the Minden emergency department.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature and pass it to page Beckett to take to the table.

Supplementary.

There being no further business this morning, this House stands in recess until 3 p.m.

The House recessed from 1140 to 1500.

First reading agreed to.

First reading agreed to.

What our government is doing is expanding the health care workforce across the spectrum, whether that is residency spots that are available in every single medical school in the province of Ontario, including the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, so that we are training more physicians and ensuring that they are in the system; whether that is as-of-right rules that ensure that medically regulated professionals who want to come to Ontario and practise in Ontario have the ability to do that immediately, while their licence gets transferred.

We’re making the investments to expand our health care workforce. The member opposite is concerned about something that, frankly, is less than 2%—and a tool, I might add, that is very valuable for rural and northern Ontario. So I’m happy that we’re making those investments and expanding, and I will not take that tool away from northern Ontario.

I am focused on expanding the ability and access to ensure that we have sufficient health human resources in the province of Ontario. I only wish the member opposite had the same focus.

Ontario seniors should not be taxed more. The federal carbon tax should be cancelled because it hurts Ontario seniors centres. Our seniors need these programs to remain active and socially engaged in their communities. Without this support, many seniors will be socially isolated, and this will harm their health.

Our government takes the well-being of our seniors very seriously. We’ll continue to support our seniors and to advocate for them.

I have a petition to the Ontario Legislative Assembly.

“Pause the Expansion of the Methane-Fired Electricity Generation.

“Whereas the Earth just passed through the hottest three months on record;

“Whereas Canada is experiencing the most severe wildfire season on record;

“Whereas the Ontario government is preparing investments for electricity supply for the long term;

“Whereas in light of recent reports by the RBC Climate Action Institute, Dunsky Energy and Climate Advisors and the Sustainability Solutions Group;

“We, the undersigned, call upon the government of Ontario to pause the expansion of methane-fired electricity generation and evaluate the role of renewable energy in the storage, conservation, distributed energy resources and municipal net-zero plans in meeting Ontario’s electricity needs.”

I’m happy to sign this and send it with page EJ.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on OW and $1,308 for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP);

“Whereas small increases to ODSP have still left these citizens below the poverty line. Both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to survive at this time of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a ‘basic income’ of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.”

I’m happy to sign this, support this and send it with page Isolde.

I would like to thank Trudy Funnell from Biscotasing in my riding for this petition.

“Gas Prices....

“Whereas northern Ontario motorists continue to be subject to wild fluctuations in the price of gasoline; and

“Whereas the province could eliminate opportunistic price gouging and deliver fair, stable and predictable fuel prices; and

“Whereas five provinces and many US states already have some sort of gas price regulation; and

“Whereas jurisdictions with gas price regulation have seen an end to the wild ... fluctuations” in the price of gasoline, “a shrinking of price discrepancies between urban and rural communities and lower annualized gas prices;”

They petition the Legislative Assembly as follows:

“Mandate the Ontario Energy Board to monitor the price of gasoline across Ontario in order to reduce price volatility and unfair regional price differences while encouraging competition.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my name to it and ask page Danté to bring it to the Clerk.

“Make PSW a Career....

“Whereas there has been a shortage of personal support workers (PSWs) in long-term care and home care in Ontario for many years;

“Whereas Ontario’s personal support workers are overworked, underpaid and underappreciated, leading to many of them leaving the profession;

“Whereas the lack of PSWs has created a crisis in LTC, a broken home care system, and poor-quality care for LTC home residents and home care clients;”

They petition the Legislative Assembly as follows:

“Tell Premier Ford to act now to make PSW jobs a career, with permanent full-time employment, good wages, paid sick days, benefits, a pension plan and a manageable workload in order to respect the important work of PSWs and improve patient care.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my name to it, et je demande à Danté, le page, de l’amener à la table des greffiers.

“Improve Winter Road Maintenance on Northern Highways....

“Whereas highways play a critical role in northern Ontario;

“Whereas winter road maintenance has been privatized in Ontario and contract standards are not being enforced;

“Whereas per capita, fatalities are twice as likely to occur on a northern highway than on a highway in southern Ontario;

“Whereas current MTO classification negatively impacts the safety of northern highways;”

They petition the Legislative Assembly as follows:

“To classify Highways 11, 17, 69, 101 and 144 as class 1 highways; require that the pavement be bare within eight hours of the end of a snowfall and bring the management of winter road maintenance back into the public sector, if contract standards are not met.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my name to it and ask page Gurkaram to bring it to the Clerk.

“Time to Care....

“Whereas quality care for the 78,000 residents of LTC homes is a priority for many Ontario families; and

“Whereas the provincial government does not provide adequate funding to ensure care and staffing levels in LTC homes to keep pace with residents’ increasing acuity and the growing number of residents with complex behaviours; and

“Whereas several Ontario coroner’s inquests into LTC homes deaths have recommended an increase in direct hands-on care for residents and staffing levels and the most reputable studies on this topic recommend 4.1 hours of direct care per day;”

They petition the Legislative Assembly as follows:

“To amend the LTC Homes Act (2007) for a legislated minimum care standard of” 4.1 “hours per resident per day, adjusted for acuity level and case mix.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my name to it and ask Gurkaram to bring it to the Clerk.

This petition is entitled “Pass Anti-Scab Labour Legislation.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the use of replacement workers undermines workers’ collective power, unnecessarily prolongs labour disputes, and removes the essential power that the withdrawal of labour is supposed to give workers to help end a dispute, that is, the ability to apply economic pressure;

“Whereas the use of scab labour contributes to higher-conflict picket lines, it jeopardizes workplace safety, it destabilizes normalized labour relations between workers and employers and it removes the employer incentive to negotiate and settle fair contracts; and

“Whereas strong and fair anti-scab legislation will help lead to shorter labour disputes, safer workplaces, and less hostile picket lines;

“Whereas similar legislation has been introduced in British Columbia and Quebec with no increases to the number of strike or lockout days;

“Whereas Ontario had anti-scab legislation under an NDP government, that was unfortunately ripped away from workers by the Harris Conservatives;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To prohibit employers from using replacement labour for the duration of any legal strike or lockout;

“To prohibit employers from using both external and internal replacement workers;

“To include significant financial penalties for employers who defy the anti-scab legislation; and

“To support Ontario’s workers and pass anti-scab labour legislation, like the Ontario NDP Bill 90, Anti-Scab Labour Act, 2023.”

I support this petition. I’ll affix my signature and provide it to page Clara.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas two-spirit, transgender, non-binary, gender-diverse and intersex communities face significant challenges to accessing health care services that are friendly, competent and affirming in Ontario;

“Whereas everyone deserves access to health care, and they shouldn’t have to fight for it, shouldn’t have to wait for it, and should never receive less care or support because of who they are;

“Whereas gender-affirming care is life-saving care;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam’s private member’s bill—the Gender Affirming Health Care Advisory Committee Act—to improve access to and coverage for gender-affirming health care in Ontario.”

I support this petition. I’ll affix my signature and provide it to page Beckett for the table.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas” anti-2SLGBTQIA+ “hate crimes and harassment are increasing across Ontario;

“Whereas drag artists have been specifically targeted for intimidation by” anti-2SLGBTQIA+ “extremists;

“Whereas drag performance is a liberating and empowering art form that allows diverse communities to see themselves represented and celebrated;

“Whereas drag artists, small businesses, and” 2SLGBTQIA+ “communities deserve to feel safe everywhere in Ontario;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to pass the Protecting 2SLGBTQI+ Communities Act so that” 2SLGBTQIA+ “safety zones can deter bigoted harassment and an advisory committee can be struck to protect” 2SLGBTQIA+ “communities from hate crimes.”

I support this petition. I will affix my signature and provide it to page Beckett for the table.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the use of replacement workers undermines workers’ collective power, unnecessarily prolongs labour disputes, and removes the essential power that the withdrawal of labour is supposed to give workers to help end a dispute, that is, the ability to apply economic pressure;

“Whereas the use of scab labour contributes to higher-conflict picket lines, jeopardizes workplace safety, destabilizes normalized labour relations between workers and their employers and removes the employer incentive to negotiate and settle fair contracts; and

“Whereas strong and fair anti-scab legislation will help lead to shorter labour disputes, safer workplaces, and less hostile picket lines;

“Whereas similar legislation has been introduced in British Columbia and Quebec with no increases to the number of strike or lockout days;

“Whereas Ontario had anti-scab legislation under an NDP government, that was unfortunately ripped away from workers by the Harris Conservatives;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To prohibit employers from using replacement labour for the duration of any legal strike or lockout;

“To prohibit employers from using both external and internal replacement workers;

“To include significant financial penalties for employers who defy the anti-scab legislation; and

“To support Ontario’s workers and pass anti-scab labour legislation, like the Ontario NDP Bill 90, Anti-Scab Labour Act, 2023.”

I support this petition. I’ll provide it to page Beckett for the table.

Before I begin, I just want to say how it is always an honour to rise in this House, representing the people from Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas, and I’m sure all the members here will share in my comments that I want to send out. Thank you to my family—all of our families. We wouldn’t be able to do what we do here if we didn’t have the support at home.

I want to say to, particularly, my grandson Sam, who’s celebrating his very first Halloween today—he’s going out as Daniel Tiger: I’m sorry that Nan’s not there, Sam, but have a fantastic Halloween evening.

To all those kids, be safe and have a lot of fun tonight.

I want to start by saying some of the things that the minister and the associate minister, when they talked about this debate, didn’t say: This rollback of the greenbelt grab is a significant victory for the people of the province of Ontario. This is a clear victory for all of us who worked to push back against the Ford government’s snatching away of our greenbelt lands. It’s significant for every citizen; for all the environmentalists; for all the housing activists; for all the regular folks who just didn’t like what they were seeing, who said to me, “I’ve never protested anything like this before”; for all the agricultural organizations, the farmers who stood up to the Conservatives. What they saw was, really, dirty dealing when it came to the greenbelt grab. So we came together, we pushed back, and we won. That shows you the power of the people. When the people really know that they’ve been wronged and they stand together, there’s nothing that we can’t do to make this province a better place.

We had First Nations who also acknowledged and understood what was at risk here. The Ontario First Nations chiefs wrote a letter demanding that Doug Ford’s government return the land to the protected greenbelt. First Nations chiefs across the province called on Doug Ford to return the land to the greenbelt. The Chiefs of Ontario said—and they were clear that the greenbelt move violates the Williams Treaties that were settled with the province and the federal government in 2018. The Chiefs of Ontario, which represents many First Nations leaders across the province, voted unanimously in an emergency meeting to oppose the land removal, and they had this to say: “The Ontario government’s decision to remove greenbelt lands did not respect obligations to First Nations, the treaties or its own policy-making process.” That was from Ontario Regional Chief Glen Hare. “The decisions made in a completely flawed process cannot in any way be allowed to stand.” I couldn’t agree more.

We had agricultural organizations, farmers, people who spent their entire lives—generations of lives—working the land and protecting the land, and see themselves as stewards of this land, who are very, very, very concerned about the loss of agricultural land.

As we have said many times in this House, 319 acres of agricultural land is lost every single day in this province, so this greenbelt grab was a risk to some of the most fertile farmland that we have—and in fact not just in Ontario, but in the country.

The National Farmers Union-Ontario had this to say: “Farmland is for those who grow food, not speculative investors. Return the 7,400 acres unjustly and irresponsibly stolen from the greenbelt.”

We also had many, many environmental groups—and honestly, I just have to shout out to Environmental Defence for the work that they have done to protect what is so valuable to all of us. And we do have Environmental Defence—for the 7,000 pages of documents that we received the other day, and those documents continue to unfold. In fact, to be frank, when I was preparing my hour lead, there was so much that I wanted to add, because these documents keep providing insight, and I’m sure that we’ll be hearing much more as people start to dig into those.

In a statement from Environmental Defence, when they were talking about the public giveaway, they said that this was a breach of MPPs’ promise not to touch the greenbelt; and that the bill is “a vast transfer of public wealth to a few select real estate investors”; and that it removes “strong legal protection for the greenbelt’s unique Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve....

“The passage of Bill 39 ... will enable a massive transfer of land value effectively held in trust for the public into the hands of a few well-connected real estate investors”—and we know that is true.

We have organizations like the Ontario Greenbelt Promise—and I don’t know if you saw them, but there were signs everywhere, in all of our neighbourhoods, and the signs just said, “Doug Ford, keep your greenbelt promise.” Those lawn signs had a significant impact on neighbourhoods across Ontario, so that people who didn’t really understand what was happening now understood that this Premier had broken his promise and that our greenbelt lands were at risk.

I attended, as did members of my caucus, so many greenbelt rallies. I saw people dressed up as carrots; I saw someone dressed up as a big fish; I saw kids, grandmothers like myself—all kinds of people who came out. Unprecedented amounts of people came out because they knew what was at risk.

I want to give a special shout-out to Stop Sprawl HamOnt. I’m going to say that Hamilton needs to take credit for being ground zero on the push-back to not only the greenbelt grab but the urban boundary expansion, which is really just greenbelt 2.0. So thank you for all your work.

And really, GASP, which is Grand(m)others Act to Save the Planet—fantastic work, and thank you very much. We see, we recognize you, and we have a debt of gratitude that we owe you from what you’ve done to save the greenbelt lands in this province.

I think that this government themselves might have been surprised by how many people actually cared about the greenbelt, and I think maybe this government is also surprised to see that when people stand up, that they know that they need to make changes—it took them a while to come back to it, but they did.

So the province of Ontario—we said no to selling off our natural heritage, we said no to cronyism and backroom deals, and we said no to a government that puts billionaire friends ahead of Ontarians and ahead of the future of our children when it comes to the environment and our green lands in this province. But it really should never have taken this—really, it shouldn’t have taken people to take time off work, to take time with their families to stand on the roadside, to stand in front of MPPs’ offices with signs, even though the signs were pretty fantastic. I saw some pretty funny signs, homemade signs, so that was also a great feature of these rallies. But it shouldn’t have taken this for the Premier to do the right thing, to undo the damage that he had done; it shouldn’t have taken this government and, really, the Premier and his ministers getting caught, which is really what happened—making backroom deals with speculators.

This whole scandal has really pulled the curtain back on a Conservative government that seems to be really all too comfortable operating in the backrooms. And this comes at a time when we know people are really hurting in the province. All of our constituents—we know they are really, really struggling. They’re struggling with an affordability crisis. They are struggling with a housing crisis. People are concerned about getting timely access to health care and to treatments in this province; they’re concerned about paying for treatments that are now privatized. People are genuinely concerned and hurting in this province, and really, this government has wasted so much time and so much effort and so many resources trying to implement this transfer of public wealth to his buddies. Really, we are nowhere nearer to addressing the housing crisis that people are facing. We know that the housing crisis was really something that this greenbelt grab was never about.

The Premier still has a lot more questions to answer. We will keep asking the hard questions. We hopefully will get some answers in this place—although I’m not a fool; I haven’t seen that so far. But we’re not going to stop asking the questions.

What we have seen work is that three ministers have resigned—Conservative staff resigned. Now there’s an RCMP investigation, as I said, with almost 7,000 pages of documents that tell us all roads lead back to the Premier’s office. The buck that the Premier talked about stopping stops at his office.

We’re going to continue on to make sure that people get accountability in this province for what has actually been the biggest scandal in the history of the province of Ontario. This is something that this government, without being insulting, should actually take to heart—and should say that they are part of a government that is now in the midst of the biggest scandal in the province of Ontario. That’s saying something.

I listened carefully to the minister, and I listened to the associate minister when they did their hour lead on this bill. I have to say, the one thing that stuck out to me significantly was that the minister said that the people were not brought along in this process. Can you imagine? The people were not brought along in this process—that is the biggest understatement of this whole greenbelt debacle.

No, Minister, the people weren’t brought along; they were taken for a ride. It is the developers and billionaires, friends, who were at the heart of all these decisions that were not in the interests of the people—that’s who was taken along—developers and the government’s speculator friends who stood to make huge profits. We know $8.3 billion in profits from these greenbelt removals, the forced urban boundary expansion, MZOs, zoning changes, official plan amendments—all of these interferences and meddling that have set us so far back in the province, all on behalf of not the people but insiders and billionaires, making rich people even richer—and, I would just like to add, without building a single home. None of this resulted in a single home being built. It is scandalous.

Let’s go back. This is such a sordid tale, and you will be forgiven if you’ve lost the plot a little bit. But let me just highlight. It goes sort of like this. Doug Ford got caught on video in 2018 saying that he was going to take a big chunk out of the greenbelt. It was a promise he made to developers, but he got caught. He said, “Oh, no, no. I’m not going to do this,” when he was campaigning in 2018. Then, when he was elected in 2018, they had some bills that were going to try and touch the greenbelt, but they got pushback. He said, “No, I guess I won’t do that.” Then, he campaigned in 2022 on a promise that he would not touch the greenbelt. That was a campaign promise.

Then, when he was elected, we started to get signals from the Premier. He called the greenbelt a scam. He called it a field of weeds, that a bunch of bureaucrats in a room with crayons drew up the greenbelt. We should have known then that the Premier had the greenbelt in his sights. He was signalling that he was moving behind the scenes against the greenbelt and really trying to get public sentiment on his side by saying that the greenbelt was a scam. He was trying to malign the greenbelt, hoping that when he did make his move, the people would have bought his lines on this, but clearly it didn’t work; they didn’t. Then what do we have?

We had two scathing reports from the Auditor General and the Integrity Commissioner. I have to commend my leader, the leader of the official opposition, Marit Stiles, who I’m fully in support of. She has done a fantastic job holding this government to account. It’s her actions—writing to the Auditor General, writing to the Integrity Commissioner—that helped result in these reports that have finally shed some light on what was going on in this government and in the cabinet.

The Premier has said that he was sorry—very, very, very sorry; very sheepishly sorry.