SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
November 22, 2023 09:00AM
  • Nov/22/23 10:40:00 a.m.

Speaker, that’s actually incorrect. We’ve been moving on the recommendations of the task force; the Leader of the Opposition knows that full well.

We’ve also reached out to our municipal partners to ask them to identify which of the task force recommendations we can move on very quickly, Mr. Speaker. We are having a housing forum next week in Toronto with many of our partners so that we can identify, again, further actions that were identified in the task force recommendations. It is our intention to ensure that we move very aggressively. We’ve also told our municipal partners if growth is not going to be out and if it’s going to be within existing boundaries, then they should all expect to do their part and we will accept nothing less.

I will say this, Speaker: The NDP have brought forward a plan that is uncosted, that literally cannot happen. We saw yesterday the very disappointing federal economic statement when it comes to building housing across the country. But we are going to continue to double down, work with our municipal partners, work with home builders, work with advocates that across the system to build a full range of housing—market housing, affordable housing, attainable housing—because that is what is needed to build a bigger, better, stronger province of Ontario.

But at the same time, what we saw in the province of Ontario is that there was a supply problem, particularly on the rental side. People just were not getting back into the rental construction business. Thanks to the policies of this government, we have seen record-high purpose-built rental starts.

At the same time, Speaker, we started advocating more than a year ago, and the Minister of Finance put in one of his budgets, that we wanted to remove the HST from purpose-built rentals. Unfortunately, it took the federal government a little over a year to confirm our ability to do that. But the results have been spectacular. Partners are getting back into it, and we’re very encouraged by what we’re seeing across the province.

She talks about tuition, yet she voted against reducing tuition by 10%. She voted against the freeze. Yesterday, they were asking questions, asking us to increase tuition fees for students. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to make sure that we have a vibrant post-secondary education. They voted against removing tolls. They voted against removing the licence plate stickers. When the Minister of Finance brought in a tax credit for the lowest-income-earning Ontarians, virtually eliminating them from the income tax rolls, the NDP voted against that. They voted against the Minister of Education’s groundbreaking daycare reforms that saw rates halved—

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