We could have 20 minutes of questions, Speaker. Look, I have a lot of respect for that member. He knows that. But earlier, two of your colleagues, the member from Beaches–East York and the member from Scarborough–Guildwood were talking about highways.

The member from Scarborough–Guildwood was bringing up some of the safety concerns along Highway 69. You know, good concerns, talking about how that highway needs to be twinned, good concerns, talking about some of the other highways in the north that need to be twinned. But then the member from Beaches–East York talked about how Highway 413 shouldn’t be built, how it’s a bad highway, talked about the climate crisis that would come if we built those highways. So my question is—and I didn’t get an answer when I posed it to those two members—what does the Ontario Liberal Party stand for? Do you want to build highways or not? Yes to highways or no to highways?

It’s always great to stand and rise on 162, the “not getting it done” bill. But I’m going to ask my colleague from the Liberal Party: Do you support tolls, and do you agree with the NDP that we should take the toll off the 407 east, knowing full well that there are five MPPs from that side representing that area, and the Durham council has just said, “Listen, take the toll off the 407 east.” You can’t do it on the 407 because they sold it off and signed a crazy deal for 99 years, something like they do in long-term care. But my question to you: Do you agree with the NDP that they should take the tolls off the 407 east and support the councils that are representing that area?

Thank you.

There we go. I didn’t want to miss out on the questions, guys. That’s the best part. I want to hear great questions.

Have I gone over 10 minutes yet? Can the table—have I gone over 10?

Interjections.

I don’t want five minutes of questions. I want 10 minutes of questions, and they better be good questions, guys.

Again, “omnibus bill” sounds like it’s this heavy-duty thing that’s coming down on all of us, and we will not be able to sustain the weight of the omnibus bull—bill, or bull. Actually, that’s it: It’s the omnibus bull. That’s the best way to put it. My God, sometimes your mistakes work out.

Pardon me, Speaker. Pardon my irreverence.

In this—and I’m not going to stop saying it—omnibus bull, they’re not doing very much. At least with certain kinds of bull stuff, you can grow things—but not with this bill.

Anyway, I digress. Sorry. I’m off on a bad spot. Now it feels alive in here, folks. You feel alive.

We’re here, it’s Thursday afternoon, and we’re talking about really important things to Ontarians, like road tolls that will never exist but ones that will continue to go up; or licence fees that won’t go up, but somehow that’s putting money in your pocket; and referendums about things that governments should just damn well figure out for themselves. We have one—I’ll support it—every four years. Right? So it gives you the power to make decisions. The problem is you can’t over-read your mandate. If you want to look at it as a referendum, I think a plurality is something over 50%. And I’m not going there. You guys are the government; you earned the right; you worked hard. But as a referendum, it didn’t give you carte blanche to do whatever you like.

Anyways, I think I’ve gone over my 10 minutes, so I’ll get 10 minutes worth of questions and they better be good, folks. Thank you.

Now, in fairness, that happened when we came into government. So here’s the thing: The north needs safe roads. The member from Scarborough–Guildwood, who is not from the north, can see that. She saw that when she went up north and that’s why she mentioned it.

Now the 413—because I’m trying to get this in under a minute—if we actually still owned the 407, maybe you wouldn’t need the 413. So the things that I get concerned about are the same things I saw in the greenbelt giveaway, aligning along 413, so I would hope that it’s not about land speculation.

The premise of the question, that we didn’t do anything, is nonsense, because if you even look economically, we led the G7 in jobs and growth for five years until 2018. We were top three for foreign direct investment. We had historic investments too in public transit, in hospitals—all sorts of things.

And you know what? When we did those investments, guess who voted against it? Not you guys, but there are a few who did vote against it on the other side. So let’s not—

Interjections.

Here’s the other thing: I know you guys are big on auto, but guess what? In 2009—the bailout, the crisis—we had a vote in this House. Guess who voted against the bailout? Your party. So don’t throw that stuff out. It was a good question, but forget that stuff, because you guys voted against as many things as we did, and far worse.

Yes, the government is collecting tolls while it’s outlawing—okay. Did I say that? They’re collecting tolls while they’re proposing a law to outlaw them—collecting tolls but outlawing them.

There’s a solution to that: Amend your bill; take the tolls off the 407 east. And you know what? You’ll get support from all of us.

And I think the member from Scarborough–Guildwood just said, “Look, I was up north. I heard this.” She doesn’t live there. Those aren’t her constituents. She’s not searching for votes up there. There’s a big problem.

I just said earlier, if you hadn’t sold the 407 or if the tolls were lower or if you took some of the tolls off it, maybe you wouldn’t need quite as much as you’re building right now. That’s the kind of thing you have to think about.

I would just say to members of this House, go and take a look at the map of who owns all the land on the 413 and their connections to the government. You might find some of the same names that you found in the Auditor General’s report—

I didn’t hear an answer to the primary care question posed by the ray of hope for Perth–Wellington, so I’ll give you an opportunity—to the honourable member—to answer either that question on primary care or maybe my question, because—

In Peel region you don’t have a single seat. In fact, all of Peel region’s seats and York region’s seats sit here on the government side, and I think the voters speak the loudest. They clearly said they wanted those highways. So the question is, which is it? Do you stand for highways or do you not stand for highways?

It wasn’t answered.

Further questions?

I recognize the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills.

I’ve been here a while, and sometimes you hear things that just defy logic. One of the things was, years ago when the Ontario Liberal Party, when they were in government, sold off 60% of Hydro One and said that the province would retain control. That just defied logic.

I’m not from here; I’m from farther north, so I didn’t know there was a 407 and a 407 east. We’re now told that the government is banning tolls while they’re still collecting tolls. I don’t think the government is going to explain that, but perhaps my colleague on the Liberal side could explain that.

My question, very quickly: This schedule 1 where they’re cutting the environmental assessment protections again—in it, they’re also giving the government more extraordinary power to expropriate land, and farmers along the route are concerned about that. What do you think about this government giving themselves the power to expropriate land even before they’ve done an environmental assessment?

To the member from Mississauga–Erin Mills: Do you feel that electric vehicles alone will solve the climate crisis?

My question is to the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills. Bill 23, just to be clear, has removed the fee that developers have to pay to affordable housing projects. Every development no longer has to pay the fee for affordable housing projects, and that part of Bill 23 is in force. What that has meant is that municipalities have lost funding for affordable housing and shelter at a time when we have a homelessness crisis. The city of Toronto has lost $200 million in funding just for affordable housing and shelters.

My question to the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills is, what is this government going to do to make municipalities whole so there’s funding available for affordable housing?

Thank you to the member from Mississauga–Erin Mills. Climate change—I wanted to say that for the benefit of the member from Beaches–East York. This government is quite aware of climate change. That’s why we are leading the way in EV production. We’re fitting steel plants with electric burners. And we’re building new transit and taking thousands of cars off the road.

Can the member expand on how this bill assists with the expansion of our transit systems?

Thank you to the member from Mississauga—

I noticed you said that your government hasn’t increased the tax, but that’s not quite true because in the city of Mississauga, this government passed Bill 23, which waived development fees and those development fees cost the city of Mississauga $90 million per year. So this is downloaded onto the taxpayers.

It’s downloaded onto the taxpayers of the province and off to the municipality of Mississauga. And in spite of giving $200 million—actually, for Peel region it’s $200 million but for Mississauga it’s $90 million a year. In spite of giving a $90-million gift to developers from the taxpayers of Mississauga, Mississauga was only able to achieve 27% of the housing target starts that they were supposed to build. So you’re raising taxes and—

It’s now time for questions and answers.

Erin Mills.

Number two: Despite the fact that Mississauga was only achieving 27% of the goal, because we kept pushing, I can count from one traffic light 11 cranes or 11 risers at the same time in Mississauga.

We are in a housing crisis. No matter what we are pushing, it looks like we still have not yet gotten what we want. This government will continue pushing to get those housing targets done.

My question for you: In Mississauga, I didn’t see affordable housing development for many years. Now we are removing some obstacles to get more entities interested to build affordable housing. Why should you expect that every developer fee has been waived? This is not clear in the media and in the talk about affordable houses. Affordable houses are supported and subsidized for the low-income.

There’s many items in this bill, actually. As I mentioned, changing the procedures to get things done faster, building the 413, putting infrastructure in place because, if you stay on the highway in gridlock for half an hour, you are not arriving to your destination and you are emitting more gas emissions while you are delayed on the highway. If the whole trip would take, let’s say, an hour, and we save 20 minutes, which is one third, I have saved one third of the emissions, hypothetically. So this bill is helping in this.

And again, the other thing which is not helping is, every time we do a gas tax cut of two cents or three cents, the federal guys say, “phase 5, phase 9, phase 11,” and add more taxes and more taxes and more taxes.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s not on the table. We don’t know. It can be added. I don’t know. But we, at least, are taking a few steps towards that. We are trying to remove the tolls and make sure that we save the people some money.

Point of order, Speaker.

I’m very pleased to be standing up here this afternoon on a Thursday to speak to the Conservatives’ new bill called the Get It Done Act. When I read the bill, when I think about what this bill is going to get done, I think this bill is going to spur the construction of expensive and very large single-family homes that very few people can afford and it is going to make it easier and quicker to build a multi-million dollar highway, Highway 413, that no one is recommending be built. I’m also concerned about what this bill reveals about this Conservative government’s terrible approach to addressing climate action because, instead of moving forward with a price on pollution, this government wants to politicize action on climate.

I want to first talk about sprawl. I feel like I’m watching the same movie again and again and again. When I open up this bill, Bill 162, and I look at it again, what I see is the same movie playing out once again. The movie that we are talking about is the move by the Conservatives to meddle with planning processes again and redraw municipal boundaries of Halton and Waterloo and Peel and York and Wellington county, areas that abut some of the most productive farmland in North America. They have rezoned this land in order to green-light development. That is what is happening in this bill.

This is a government that is being investigated by the RCMP for allegedly making secret, sweetheart deals with a very small handful of developers to rezone their land so they can make a whole lot of cash extremely quickly at the expense of the environment, at the expense of farmers and at the expense of the greenbelt. It looks to me like this bill is going to be doing the same thing, but you’re hoping that having the municipality officially request it makes it all look okay and it makes all the dodgy stuff go away.

We are already seeing reporters go through the rezoning that is now going to be happening because the municipal plans have been rewritten and then rewritten again and then rewritten again and now, they’re rewritten again. Reporters are already going through this new rezoning that’s happening and they’re seeing some—I don’t know—interesting stuff.

For instance—I’m going to read at this point—there is a residential development in Caledon that will now proceed on a patch of green space in an “island” of housing in a sea of warehouses. This land—surprise, surprise—is owned by big donors to the Conservative Party. Okay. Coincidence?

Interjection: I think not.

Interjection.

Okay. Protections will now be removed from agricultural land to build 120,000-square-foot industrial building with an approximately 400-to-500 truck-and-trailer parking near the future Highway 413. So, when we’re talking about land speculation, maybe this could be it. Once again, the land is owned by a Conservative Party donor. Is it a coincidence? Let’s let the RCMP decide.

Then there’s a golf course that is now going to be rezoned to allow for residential development, and this golf course is owned by—

Interjection.

The golf course is owned by a PC Party donor with links to the De Gasperis family. Once again: Is this a coincidence? Let’s let the RCMP investigate and find out, because chances are, they will. It looks kind of fishy.

My question, and this is a question that a lot of Ontarians are asking, is that is this government making decisions to help the people of Ontario or is this government making decisions to help their developer-donor friends? Which is it? Because that’s the question that a lot of people are asking. Is this the Get It Done bill or is this the “go to prison” bill? I don’t know.

What I would like to hope for is I would like this government to move forward on the kind of laws and policies that are going to address our housing affordability and our housing supply crisis. That’s what I would like to see. That’s what I would like to see in this bill. That’s what I would have liked to see in Bill 23 and a whole lot of the other bills that you’re introducing.

When we’re talking about fixing the housing supply and housing affordability crisis, I think about the recent bill that the leader of the Green Party introduced—a plan that is also in our own election platform, that we advocate for ourselves, which is to allow fourplexes on residential lots in towns and cities across Ontario. Three parties support it. Where are you? When we’re talking about building more housing for Ontarians—families, newcomers, students, people who want to downsize, people who want to buy their first home—building more homes and apartments in areas that are already zoned for development will give people more affordable housing options to rent and buy. And this government, when we ask them this question, it’s absolute crickets.

How about increasing density on transit routes, building more apartment buildings near transit routes? This government has given a whole lot of good talk about that, but the city of Toronto has been waiting two long years for this government to approve Toronto’s official plan so that Toronto can build more density as well as affordable housing near transit stations. We’re still waiting for that. I would have really liked to have seen that in this bill.

And it would be amazing if this government fast-tracked affordable housing projects—

I want to address my colleague across the row when he talks about EVs. You have not mentioned the fact that the reason why we’ve been successful at EVs in this province is because of Unifor and their incredible bargaining that they did at the bargaining table in their last round of contracts. If it wasn’t for their bargaining committee, Oshawa would have been closed. And if you guys remember, not that long ago, your Premier stood up and said, “That boat has sailed. It’s gone away.” So thanks to the union workers and brothers and sisters there that provide the best things.

But to my colleague, I’m going to ask this question again because my colleague the MPP from Oshawa really came up with something that kind of makes this bill laughable when you say you’re not going to charge tolls. The 407 east tolls, which are owned by the province of Ontario, which are paying tolls as we stand here today, the Durham council in that Oshawa area have asked to have those tolls taken off—