Boy, I can’t resist the opportunity to debate the “get it done wrong” act. And let me tell you why it’s getting it done wrong, Speaker: This act is going to make the affordability crisis worse and it’s going to make the climate crisis worse.

Let’s start with the way this bill is imposing expensive sprawl onto communities in this province. Speaker, it takes two and a half times more money to service sprawl and to build the infrastructure for sprawl than it does to actually get it done building homes that people can afford in the communities they know and love. So this government, first of all, imposed sprawl on municipalities. Then they said, “No, we’re going to backtrack on that and not impose sprawl on municipalities.” Now they’re going to backtrack on the backtrack to impose sprawl on municipalities once again through enforced boundary expansions in this act.

Now, it would be so much cheaper for people, for municipalities, for government, for all of us if the government would just simply legalize housing, say yes to fourplexes and four-storey as of right across the province, so we can build homes that people can afford in the communities they love. If they would legalize building missing middle housing, six to 11 storeys, along major transit and transportation corridors, we could actually build homes that people can afford, and municipalities could actually afford to build the servicing for those homes. But instead, the government has been focusing their time, money and attention on sprawl that is there to benefit speculators and not people. So we’re going to be looking at property tax increases all across the province. We’re seeing municipalities everywhere in Ontario having to jack up property taxes to primarily line the pockets of speculators who are going to be the primary beneficiaries of the sprawl agenda.

So why is that going to make the climate crisis worse? Well, it’s going to pave over our farms, forests and wetlands—the very lands that feed us, the lands that protect us from the escalating costs of climate-fuelled extreme weather events.

So then, the government, in this “get it done wrong” act, basically did something I didn’t think the government could do: They’re actually going to even make the Environmental Assessment Act worse. Why are they going to make the Environmental Assessment Act worse? So they can speed up the construction of Highway 413, the $10-billion boondoggle that will save people 60 seconds when we have a highway just a few kilometres south of there that’s underutilized, underused, that we could actually divert truck traffic onto, again saving taxpayers money.

Interjection.

So the government had an opportunity to avoid all these costs, all this destruction, and actually say, “We’ll get rid of tolls on the one highway there are actually tolls on,” instead of talking about some mythical highway somewhere in the future.

Speaker, where else is it going to make the climate and affordability crisis worse? Well, if the government was serious about actually having a plan to address the climate crisis and set Ontario up for success in the emerging climate economy, they could actually take over the federal carbon pricing mechanism and up the rebate, and the Premier could write cheques to people as part of their rebate. But instead, the government wants to take our rebate away from us and disincentivize economic activity to lead to decarbonization, where $1.8 trillion was invested last year globally. We could be attracting that investment in Ontario, reducing climate pollution, creating jobs and putting more money in people’s pockets by raising rebate cheques.

I want to conclude with this whole licence plate scheme. I was the only MPP in the House—I’ll proudly say this—who got up and made it clear that I voted against this whole licence plate scheme. It passed on a voice vote. I got up and said, “Hey, I’m the one person opposed to it.” Do you know why I’m opposed to it, Speaker? It cost us $2 billion in the first year, $1.5 billion each and every year. So when people talk about not having money for health care, not having money for education, not having money for housing affordability, there’s where we could find money. The government is taking it away from us.

The government has a role to play in making life better and more affordable for people to ensure that people have access to the care and services they need. We can do that if we say things like, “Yes, I’ll pay $120 for my licence sticker, because I know it’s going to raise $1.5 billion to make my community a better, more caring place.”

I’m going to say something as an electric vehicle driver: One of the things I oftentimes hear from Conservatives is, “How are we going to pay for roads when all you folks start driving EVs and we no longer collect the gas tax from you because we’re in EVs?” Well, one of the ways that we can collect money to actually support the maintenance, safety, upkeep of our roads is to actually have a licence sticker fee that even electric vehicle drivers would pay for, that I would be happy to pay for, because we know that fuel taxes are going to go down as people switch to electric vehicles. We know that, so I just want to be honest with people about how we can pay for things in this province—