It’s always a pleasure to stand up in the House and speak to the greenbelt bill, one that is very interesting to me. We have a bill before us that Conservatives put forward to protect themselves from the greenbelt—because we all know what happened here.

I’m going to talk about the Premier quickly. The Premier, prior to the last election, met with a bunch of developers, which we all know about, and he told them that he would develop on the greenbelt. But what he didn’t know was somebody was taping it. Then it got out into the community, it got out to Ontarians, and then the public outcry started. And I can tell you, it was led by Niagara. Niagara led that public outcry. Do you know why, Madam Speaker? Because of what we have in Niagara and how important the environment is to our communities, whether that be in Niagara-on-the-Lake, whether that be in Fort Erie or whether it be in Niagara Falls. But quite frankly, the member from Niagara West, who belongs to that party, has a very, very important part of the greenbelt in his own riding. He has 50 small and medium-sized wineries yet he never once stood up and said, “What you are doing is wrong.”

So what happened is, people across the province, a few months before the election, went after the Premier and said, “You are not going to develop on the greenbelt.” So what did the Premier do? He went in front of the TV cameras, very clearly, and said, “I’m not going to be like those Liberals that were there for 15 years and misled Ontarians for 15 years. I’m going to be up front with the residents and everybody in the province of Ontario.” You know what he said? “I’m not touching the greenbelt. I’m listening to people. I’m different.”

And people believed him. That’s obvious, because they got a majority government. And that was one of the biggest issues in the election, bar none. Yes, we’ve got issues with affordability and all those other things—rents and all those things that go with it—but the number one issue people cared about was the environment, because if we can’t have clean drinking water and we can’t breathe the air, we are not going to be on this planet very long.

The environment became a big issue, and the Premier saw that. So every one of those MPPs over there and the Premier said, “I’m not touching the greenbelt.” They knocked on doors, and Mrs. Gates would answer that door—that happened to be my wife; they came to my house, knocking on my door, thinking they could sway my wife’s vote, but it didn’t work. They said it to her: “We’re not touching the greenbelt.” When I came home from my office, my wife said, “Oh, the PCs came by today”—the candidate who was running against me. I said, “Oh yes, what happened?” She said, “They’re not touching the greenbelt.” I said, “Well, that’s good. I’m glad they’re not.” We left it at that.

Then guess what happened after they won the election? We found out they were having secret meetings. We found that through those documents. I think I’ve got 700 pages of documents, now that they’re being charged by the RCMP. And guess what? They were already planning to touch our greenbelt. That was wrong.

It went on for months—actually, it went on for a year—and they hid behind the fact that they said they wanted to build housing. I want to be clear, because every one of my colleagues who is here today and all the ones who aren’t here today all said one thing: We support building 1.5 million homes. We want homes for our kids and our grandkids. We want to make sure they’ve got a future. We want to make sure that they don’t have to live in our basements for the next 20 years. There are a lot of reasons around that but one was they deserve to have a home, they deserve to have family, they deserve to raise their family in our communities.

But what happened? The Premier said, “I’m going to develop on the greenbelt because we need to build homes.” Then his own task force—his own task force—said, “We can build 1.5 million homes without touching the greenbelt.” What did they do? “Oh, no, we need to build those homes on the greenbelt.”

We all know that wasn’t accurate because their own task force told them and made 17 recommendations—that they now think are good recommendations, but which we said they should have followed in the first place—that they didn’t have to develop on the greenbelt. But they were going down the greenbelt. They were going to take over our greenbelt.

Then they went a step further with MZOs. I’ll talk real quick about long-term care. They put an MZO so they could build long-term care, even though that council in Pickering said, “No, Orchard Villa has a terrible record. They had over 40 people die in their long-term-care facility. We do not want this company to continue to have a contract here and take care of our seniors.” This government said, “Well, that’s too bad, because we’ve got to build and we’re going to do it, no matter what.”

And that was wrong. You’re wrong on MZOs when you go against elected officials in the community that they represent.

We’re getting back to the Premier. He got off the greenbelt. He stood up here and he said, “Oh, I’m sorry. We made a bad decision.” But guess what happened? They lost two ministers and two, kind of, chief of staffs because of what happened, but the big issue is—and you can’t say it in here. For people that are listening at home or people that are here listening, you can’t say that they lied. You can’t say that in the House because then the Speaker will stand up and tell me I have to retract. I think that’s wrong, by the way. I’ve said that to not only you as a Speaker but to all of our Speakers. I believe if somebody stands up in this House and doesn’t tell us the truth and they know it’s not the truth, I should be able to stand up here and say, “You know you lied to the residents of the province of Ontario.” I think we should be able to do that. If I stand up and do that, then that member over here should call me out and say, “Gates, you’re not being truthful here.” But I can’t do that here. I can do it in Ottawa. Think about that. You can do it in Ottawa; you can’t do it here.

I can’t say the Premier lied. I can’t say that. But follow the balls. He said he was going to develop on the greenbelt. And then, because of all the public outcry, because the environment is really so important—I know my member right here from Toronto would tell you that—he said, “I’m listening to Ontarians. I’m not going to be like the Liberals. I’m going to listen. We’re not touching the greenbelt.” The minute they get elected, guess what happens? They’re touching the greenbelt.

Follow the balls. First, he says to the developers, “I’m going to develop on the greenbelt.” Then, the second step is, he says to the residents, so he can get some votes, so he can come to my door and say, “I’m not touching the greenbelt.” The minute they get a majority, what do they do? They hide behind building 1.5 million homes, even though his own task force—this is important during this discussion, for the amount of time that I have—made 17 recommendations, and guess what they said? “We have lots of land. We can build those homes, all different types of homes, all the homes that people and young families need in our communities. You don’t have to touch the greenbelt.”

Guess what happened? They made a deal with developers that were going to get $8.2 billion in profit the minute that they’re allowed to develop on the greenbelt. That’s what it was about. It was about taking care of 10 or 12—whatever the number of developers is. That will come out, obviously, in the RCMP investigation. That’s all going to come out. Guess what happened? They got caught. Then, the Premier, even though he knew exactly what he was doing, because the balls were very clear: “I’m going to develop.” “I’m not going to develop.” “I’m going to develop.” “I’m sorry. I’m not going to develop.” Now, they bring a bill forward to protect themselves from the greenbelt.

It really upsets me that this is what we’re standing up here talking about when I know, because I watched the news last night—we saw our new Canadians sleeping outside in Toronto. We saw young families going to food banks in record numbers. That’s what we should be discussing, finding those types of solutions. Instead, we have all of this corruption around us. I hope the RCMP gets to the bottom of it. If they did what everybody thinks they’ve done, they deserve to have the RCMP probably charge them.

I want to talk quickly about Niagara, because I don’t think I can do my whole time. I’m not sure how it works on the timing part of this. In my area—let me get back to Niagara. It is by far one of the most important areas in all of the province of Ontario. We have some of the best area in Ontario by far: our tender fruit, where we grow our apples and our peaches. Why would we ever want to destroy that? Why would we want to take away our food source? I’m having struggles right now, today, with our grapes that are rotting on the grapevines because we have laws in place and policies in place by your government that are not protecting the grape industry and are allowing, if you can imagine, other countries to ship their grapes into Ontario as our grapes that are freshly on the vines and that could be used in our wine are going to end up rotting on the vines. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s what we should be discussing today.

Interjection.