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.

But now it’s MZOs, because 18 MZOs were handed out as wedding favours to developers who sat at the table at the Premier’s daughter’s wedding—unbelievable.

There’s so much here. At the risk of getting bogged down with my own papers and getting bogged down with the government’s own evidence of their own malfeasance, let me just say that looking into the issue of the MZOs and the urban boundaries was something that we as the official opposition wrote—again, Marit Stiles, MPP Burch and myself wrote to the Auditor General, and we also wrote to the Environmental Commissioner to ask about these MZOs and the process. We know that the MZOs, the urban boundary expansion and the official plan amendments were done in the same way. The same preferential treatment, the same lack of due process resulted in all of these lands being forced into development. We know now that all of these amendments to official plans, these urban boundary expansions, these MZOs—who do they benefit? The people of the province? No. They all benefited—largely, the vast majority—99% of them fell to benefit a few developers who sat at the table at the wedding, a few developers who are connected to the Premier, a few developers who had—what was it called, the massage? It was called the good luck golden massage?

Interjection: The good luck massage.

Interjections.

So we know that this was equally as questionable a practice, and it’s equally of concern to the people in the province of Ontario. It’s of concern to the Auditor General, because she said that she’s already looking into this—that she’s going to be conducting an audit and she’s going to look at other issues like the amendments. We also know, of course, that it’s of interest to the OPP and the RCMP, but we’ll get into that in a minute.

How do we know that the urban boundary expansions and the MZOs was a process that benefited a few? Well, we had leaked documents. We had the ministry’s own documents that said that when they were considering the urban boundary expansion—not just in Hamilton, but with Waterloo, Barrie, Wellington—that the same day that they opened up lands for development, the government forced expansion on many communities, like Hamilton. Hamilton’s urban boundary was forced to be expanded by 2,200 hectares, overriding what the people of the city of Hamilton wanted—and the city council. They did not follow the decisions. We received the documents that showed that the government knew that this was bad policy. The government’s own documents show that they knew that doing this would cause the loss of farmland, environmental concerns—and that the costs were not to be calculated. When we talk about costs, we’re talking about all those servicing fees that taxpayers have to pay, that developers don’t have to pay. We’re talking about sewer and water, roads, schools, hydro—all of those things that they knew that the costs were not calculated, but they still went ahead and forced the urban boundary expansion.

Who really wanted this, let’s just say? The records show, in these leaked documents from the ministry’s own records, that unnamed parties requested dozens of the changes Ontario made to Hamilton’s plan. More than a third of those 77 changes had no listed purpose or rationale—it all just said, “Third party.” So, really, my question is, is that what the province is? Are we a province that’s run by Mr. X? Are we a province that’s run by third parties? There are planning rules. Where is the concern for good planning that helps not just you as a government, but helps people who are trying to live their lives, communities that are trying to grow their communities appropriately? None of that. That was all thrown out the window to serve the pecuniary interest of a few insider friends.

We’re not really sure why this government has overlooked the interests of the people of the province of Ontario, but we do know for a fact that, in one instance in Hamilton, developers requests were copied word for word into an official planned amendment. They said, “Can you make this change?” The minister made this one particular amendment—very unusual. It just said, “See that piece of land there on your official plan? Can you change that for me?” “Sure thing.” The minister’s pen made that change.

Do you know what? These speculators weren’t just any speculators, yet again. The Premier took direction from the exact same people who were at his daughter’s stag and doe this time. They’re the same people who were interviewed by the offices of the Legislature, the Auditor General and the Integrity Commissioner, because of preferential treatment in the greenbelt.

An Ancaster councillor—and this is where this particular amendment happened, which is Wilson Street in Ancaster—said, “It’s entirely undemocratic for the province to accommodate for-profit interests that are in complete contradiction to the public’s interest.”

So, really, are we going to find out how many changes to official plans came directly, word for word, from speculators? It’s really shocking.

So these are the leaked documents, or this information—we don’t have time for that; there’s so much of it.

But I want to say, sadly, where are we now? We’re in a province where the RCMP are investigating this, and we have what has been assigned a special prosecutor. Does that sound good? No.

A criminal probe and the RCMP investigation: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has officially launched a criminal investigation into the greenbelt changes made by the Ford government. The investigation centres around the controversial decision to open up protected greenbelt lands for housing development, which sparked intense debate and scrutiny.

And what is the role of the special prosecutor? An RCMP officer mentioned that the special prosecutor would be involved in the case. The special prosecutor’s role is connected to the complexity of working with witnesses who may be bound by confidentiality—and we know that 93 NDAs were signed with Amato’s work—and that one possibility is that the special prosecutor serves as an independent outside legal adviser to police during the investigation. We know that the special investigator looks, in particular, into these instances of fraud, looks particularly into interests that are exactly what we suspect has transpired here.