I’ll tell the Leader of the Opposition why they can trust us. You can look at the economy, the 700,000 people that are working that weren’t working five years ago. Then you look at the housing starts, record housing starts and rental starts over 30 years. We look at the infrastructure, building the highways and the roads and the bridges and the transit. We’re spending $70 billion on transit, $30 billion on roads. When it comes to MZOs, there’s 234,000 people that have a roof over their head today that wouldn’t have a roof over their heads. There’s 5,000 seniors that can call long-term care home because of the MZOs that were asked by the municipalities to do. There’s 150,000 construction jobs that happened because of those MZOs.

It’s a tool that we aren’t going to stop using. We’re going to continue building homes. The 1.5 million homes, that’s our target. We’re going to continue doing it.

But do you know what I find ironic? No matter if it’s MZOs or OPs or whatever, guess who shows up to all the announcements? The NDP shows up to the announcements, standing beside me when we’re announcing a long-term-care home. This happened numerous times. I find it very ironic they vote against it, but they want to take the kudos when we actually get the long-term-care homes built.

Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

We’re in the midst of question period. The member for Waterloo and the government House leader, if they wish to have a conversation, could perhaps do so outside the chamber—if they wish.

Restart the clock.

The Associate Minister of Transportation.

To the best of my understanding, the Nobleton greenbelt lands were not rezoned for housing.

It is no secret that when we took over government in 2018, we were faced with a province that had crippling debt, crippling taxes and crippling red tape. We are in a housing crisis because of the obstacles that the Liberals, supported by the NDP, had put in the way of building homes. Now we’ve started to release all of that. What we’re doing with our housing supply action plans is working. We have the highest amount of purpose-built rental starts in over 30 years, and the same great news for new home starts.

Listen, we’re not going to stop working to gets kids out of their basement apartments and into their first homes. That is our job, and we will get it done for them.

We will not stop ensuring that we reverse everything that that Liberal government did—cutting taxes, reducing red tape, building more homes for the people of the province of Ontario. They were incredible failures. We’ll get the—

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?

My question is for the member from Brantford–Brant. Earlier, the member from Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas spoke about housing being stagnant. I believe that’s the word she used, “stagnant.” To that end, the member has voted against every initiative that this government has put forward to build new housing.

I’m wondering, can the member clarify for this House the accurate state of housing starts that this government has achieved?

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.

Thank you, Speaker. I’ve been meaning to ask the member from Guelph this question because it’s been troubling me since I first heard the statistic and he brought it up in his speech. The 319 acres per day of farmland that’s going out of production in the province of Ontario. It’s a federal statistic. I’ve asked lots of people this question and I haven’t received an answer, but I know with his insights, he’ll be able to answer because he left us with the impression in his remarks that that’s going into housing. If you quickly do some math, if you average 12 housing units per acre, which is not many, but just 12 per day on 319 acres, that’s 1.4 million homes in a year. So if that 319 acres is accurate, we’re building 1.4 million homes a year. We’re not. So I’m wondering if the member could help me understand the 319 per acres per day that’s going out of production if that’s not going into housing?

He’s a Green member—Mr. Green, according to the Premier—and I want to know his explanation for that 319 acres. I just saw a statistic that the OFA actually took 35 years of information to get that 319 acres, but I need a real answer to the question. It’s been bugging me because we should fix the housing problem in a couple of years if it’s 319 acres a day.