Good morning. It’s great to see you all here this morning. As I was sitting down and preparing my notes, I thought, why are we here? Why are we here right now? That’s really what the debate is all about. How did we get here?

But I do want to say in the spirit of the season that yesterday was Halloween, and what I did say with all sincerity is that I hope that the Premier can carve pumpkins better than he carved up the greenbelt, because that’s what he was doing this time last year and he made a mess of it, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re here this morning.

Interjection.

Interjection.

To be fair to all of you, it wasn’t all of you. It’s a couple of people, mostly the Premier, that we have to protect the greenbelt from. And I’m glad that he saw the light. I really do believe that he felt the heat.

Interjection.

So why are we here? Why are we here, Minister? We’re here because you tried to carve up the greenbelt and give it to your friends, give it away to your friends—and not a lot of your friends, just a few friends. You know what? Families are struggling right now. I’m sure they really like the fact that you wanted to give a handful of people, well-connected insiders, an $8.3-billion payday while they’re just trying to pay the bills. We should be here talking about a return to real rent control. Why aren’t we talking about that? No, we’re talking about protecting the greenbelt from the Premier.

So why are we here? I’m going to keep asking that question. Well, we’re here because the Minister of Housing resigned. Another cabinet minister resigned. Then the Minister of Labour thought he was better off going to Woodbine than he was staying here. What does that tell you? He literally pulled the chute the day after the Premier did his backflip. That’s why we’re here. Three cabinet ministers—three. Maybe there will be some more.

Speaking of flip-flops, it’s connected. We did this greenbelt flip-flop because the government was discovered. Everything was ripped back. So we did the flip-flop with the greenbelt. Then we did a flip-flop on the MZOs. Why did we do that? Well, we did a flip-flop on the greenbelt because the government essentially got caught red-handed trying to benefit a small group of well-connected insiders—by his own admission, the Premier’s friends.

If we’re reversing the urban boundaries now, is it because we’re doing it for the same reason we did it for the greenbelt? It certainly looks like that. This morning I read a story about a well-known Conservative, Quinto Annibale, who—Vaughan Working Families, if we all remember that, and God knows what else—successfully got his greenbelt excluded—sorry, his golf course, which is a bit of a greenbelt in some ways, excluded from the greenbelt. What’s with that? Another well-connected insider.