I’ll be sharing my time today with the amazing and passionate member from Scarborough–Guildwood.

The Get It Done Act: What does this bill actually get done for the people of Ontario? Does it help the health care crisis? No, no mention of that. Fix the education system? Nope, no mention of that. Housing affordability? Nope, no mention of that, just promoting more sprawl. Address the climate crisis? Nope, it will actually make that one worse.

This bill would amend the Environmental Assessment Act to explicitly allow provincial and municipal governments to expropriate land before environmental approvals. The bill, however, offers few details about how wide-ranging these powers would be or how they would play out on the ground, and we all know the devil is in the details.

The environment minister won’t even directly answer questions about how she will make sure these changes won’t harm the environment—wow, the Minister of the Environment not sure about how she will prevent harm to the environment. She said the goal is to streamline the environment and assessment process, which has been historically been “slow and complex” with “too much red tape.” Well, if the minister is so interested in red tape reduction, I hear there’s an opening in that ministry.

Biodiversity is one of the most precious and important things we have. Maybe this government thinks it’s merely something that’s nice to look at and enjoy spending time in, but actually, it’s so much more. Without biodiversity, our entire support system for human as well as animal life would collapse. We rely on nature to provide us with food and clean water, for a lot of medicines and to prevent flooding and other extreme weather events.

So much is provided by the natural ecosystems around us. They are truly vital to life on earth. The government may think, “Okay, we can just trash one bit or remove a species, and it will all be okay.” But the different plants and animals are interconnected in vital ways that we don’t even always understand.

Biodiversity loss is at an all-time high: Southern Ontario alone has lost more than 70% of its wetland habitats, 98% of its grasslands and 80% of its forests. Over 200 plants and animal species are classified as at risk of becoming extinct in Ontario. We need to tirelessly work hard to preserve what we do have left, not pave over paradise. We can’t survive if we don’t have our ecosystem. That means our farmlands, our wetlands, our flood plains—the very things that would be impacted by this bill.

Might I add that while the government continues to ram through Highway 413 they directly have a highway that runs along the same corridor. The government could be bold and fiscally responsible by moving truck traffic onto Highway 407. This would solve freight congestion right now at a much lower cost and a vastly lower upfront cost, less than the $10 billion it would cost to build the environmentally disastrous Highway 413.

In 2022, the Premier himself even admitted it was a big mistake for the Progressive Conservatives to privatize Highway 407, so why not rectify that now and instead of promising to impose no tolls on highways that already have no tolls take some real action and allow trucks to use the 407 toll-free? I would say, “Kill two birds with one stone,” but I believe in preserving biodiversity and the lives of wildlife, unlike this government.

Just for the record, Highway 413 will raze 2,000 acres of farmland, cut across 85 waterways and pave over 400 acres of protected greenbelt land. It would also disrupt 220 wetlands and the habitats of 10 species at risk. The Bradford Bypass would cross 27 waterways and slash through environmentally sensitive Holland Marsh lands, impacting about 39 hectares of wildlife habitat and 11 hectares of wetlands. The government hears that and says, “Let’s do it,” instead of using an underutilized highway that is already built.

They love cancelling things. Just look at the 758 renewable energy projects they cancelled when they first took office. Why not cancel the tolls on trucks for the 407?

Yesterday there was a 20-degree jump in temperature in a matter of one day. The climate change is in front of our eyes. If this government plans to continue on this, the Get It Done Act is a misguided attempt that sacrifices long-term sustainability and social equity for short-term gain. We cannot afford to prioritize hasty development over thoughtful planning and responsible governance. We must focus on the well-being of our communities and the preservation of our environment.

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?