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.

I’m going to change the dial as well. I think I heard the member from Sudbury say that they support the bill. We’ve heard the Leader of the Opposition as well as the housing critic say that they share our goal of increasing supply and building the homes that we need by 2031. So I’m going to dial back to a time when the member from St. Paul’s said building more homes may not necessarily be the answer. Now, the member from her party is saying that building more homes is the right answer but that the taxpayers should pay a minimum of $150 billion to build a maximum of 25,000 homes a year. So my question to the opposition is, what’s their plan to build 1.5 million new homes by 2031, and how much will it cost the taxpayers?

I address this to either member who has spoken. I have heard this bill referred to as “the bill stop the Conservative government from doing what they tried to get away with,” and I must say I agree with that description, but I have a very serious question. Across my riding I’m seeing communities struggling to get housing built because it’s too expensive to bring in materials and workers, so commercial builders are not going to do any building in these communities. What I want to know—certainly they’re not going to be able to meet any arbitrary targets that the government is setting—what is this government doing to address the high need for non-market housing in every single community in my riding of Thunder Bay–Superior North?

This question is for the member for Brantford–Brant. As this member can understand, the previous government, propped up by the NDP, built a very strung structure which is called a structural deficit. For this bill, we are talking about building more homes for Ontarians. Can the member let us know how this bill can reverse the course of the previous government, propped up by the NDP?

I appreciate the question from the member. And it’s true, Madam Speaker: We’re going to have to find another place to put those 50,000 homes that were going to go into the greenbelt now. I think that’s a reality that we all have to face and our communities all have to face too. Sometimes I wonder about this megacity that we will be constructing around the GTHA and how that will connect through the greenbelt lands that will be protected, but we are absolutely committed, both to environmental protection and to building homes for everyone.

We’ve heard suggestions about how government should just build everything. There was a Conservative Premier who tried that once, and I think that proved the fact, when Bill Davis tried that experiment, that government-built social housing just doesn’t work.

And I heard the mayor of Toronto asking for $550,000 per dwelling unit in order to build social housing in Toronto when I have people who could do that for $250,000 locally in the private sector.

And what’s interesting—and I’m sure the members in the opposition can check their own email inboxes, but I can tell you that no one in Brantford and Brant is talking about the greenbelt. What they’re talking about is affordability. What they’re talking about is getting rid of the carbon tax. What they’re talking about is decreasing interest rates on their homes so that they can afford to stay in our community. They want to be able to buy cheaper food. I know the NDP doesn’t understand any of those things, because they think that the government should take care of you from the cradle to the grave, but the people in my riding want the opposition to speak to Jagmeet Singh and ask him to remove HST.

Interjection.

That’s actually a really good question, and I appreciate your listening. I don’t have the task force right in front of me—I support the task force’s recommendation that, actually, shortage of land isn’t the main barrier to building more housing in Ontario, despite what the government says. I very much support that. And this bill proves it, because if shortage of land was it, then you’re definitely not going to be able to reach your targets.

Is the task force perfect? I don’t think so, but they provided some very good recommendations, and one of the biggest ones, you chose to ignore.