Good morning. My question is to the Premier—

Interjections.

My question is to—

Interjections.

Interjections.

My question is to the Premier. This government’s cut of $5 million this year to the Ontario Arts Council and continued failure to match funding to inflation is being felt deeply across Ontario, and Toronto–St. Paul’s is no exception. This year, Ballet Jörgen’s funding was cut by 16%. As a result, they have been forced to cut staff and free programming that serves racialized, northern, rural and underinvested-in communities, all because this government failed to deliver adequate funding to see it continue.

My question is to the Premier. Will you commit to restoring their funding to meet inflation so that communities, for which the arts are a social determinant of health and well-being, can thrive?

Back to the Premier: I wrote to the Premier and minister outlining just how important Ballet Jörgen’s programming is for its dancers as well as all Ontarians, because investment into arts organizations is a guaranteed return both economically and socially. As a harm reduction strategy, social determinant of health and building block to our jobs, our economy, our tourism—the whole nine—just to name a few, our province is better for it and will pay the price without a properly funded arts sector.

My question is back to the Premier. Will he commit to Ontario’s economic future by restoring Ontario Arts Council funding in line with inflation to meet the needs of Ontario artists and organizations who depend on it for their livelihood?

But yes, that’s what everyone says. When I say this anywhere in my constituency, anywhere I go, even here—we like to say it—but just average folks, I say, “Oh, the Premier is sorry,” and everyone says, “Sorry he got caught.” And I bet he is sorry he got caught. I can imagine that he’s sorry that he got caught.

He’s now saying he’s going to put the greenbelt back: “I’m going to put the greenbelt back. I’m sorry. I was a bad boy.” But do you know what? He just got caught with his hands in the cookie jar, and I think he thinks that just by putting the cookies back, which may actually be half-eaten, that’s the end of it—no harm, no foul, right? Well, do you know what? Not so fast. The people of Ontario aren’t buying it yet.

The rest of the story that I’m about to share—I want to quote Sir Walter Scott, who is known to have written a lot of epic sagas. I would describe this as an epic saga. He said:

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive.

Isn’t that going to be the truth when we unveil some of the things that have happened in this province? There are times when this information has been unfolding that I just think, “Is this real? Is this a political drama on TV? Is this really what’s happening in the province of Ontario?”

So, absolutely, I would say that what is happening here is really just like a whodunit. It’s like a mystery novel, a whodunit, and it’s a mystery with twists and intrigues and hidden connections that are starting to be unravelled. Picture: We’ve got the sprawling landscape of the protected greenbelt lands. We’ve got developers and speculators with vested interests; politicians making decisions behind closed doors; and investigative journalists, like the detectives, unearthing a lot of secrets.

The plot has been thickening as public sentiment has changed, and the truth remains elusive, but we’re getting to the point. Who orchestrated these land swaps? Who whispered in whose ear? Ultimately, who decided to reverse course—and really, the question is why? Why did they decide to reverse course? Why are they reversing course on something that they were so adamant about?

So yes, it absolutely unfolds like a gripping novel, and it really leaves us all wondering: Who is pulling the strings? Who is in charge of this province? Who is calling the shots? It doesn’t seem to be the people of Ontario, and it certainly doesn’t seem to be this government.

Think of some of the elements in a whodunit. Let me just say some of the things that we’ve seen. We have Mr. X. I mean, honestly, Mr. X—is this real? Is this real life? Because we have Mr. X.

Really, even though I’m kind of making light of this, this is not a small mistake—this is not, “Oops, sorry. I apologize.” This greenbelt scandal is a colossal scandal, and it’s still unfolding. We talk about $8.3 billion in speculative profits, but the cost of what this costs Ontarians, municipalities, taxpayers are still to be tallied up. There’s no way this hasn’t cost—all of the staff, all of the resources, all of the lawsuits, all of the legal advice—this has been expensive for the people of Ontario, and it’s probably not going to get any better any time soon, I’m afraid.

Like any good mystery novel or whodunit, there’s always what’s called the double narrative. If you’ve read any mystery novels, there are the things that unfold, and then there’s the underlying story that comes at the reveal. So there’s one narrative that is hidden and gradually revealed, while the other is the open narrative, which often transpires in the present time of the story. So there’s a double narrative, a hidden story.

The double narrative, or the convenient cover story, in this province of Ontario whodunit is the narrative that this was all about housing. I don’t believe it.

Caucus, do you believe this was about housing?

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.