It’s a pleasure to join the debate today. This is actually the first time I’ve been able to get up to speak to a broad piece of legislation or, as today, a concurrence motion.

I just wanted to start with some good news. In my family, just before Christmas, my son, Aidan, proposed to his long-time love of nine years, and she said yes. So I think you should be prepared to hear a lot about the wedding industry and that sector. I can tell you one thing that won’t be happening, though: I will not be inviting any stakeholders to the stag and doe. I’ve learned the lesson here from Queen’s Park.

The other thing that happened is that now I have VIP parking at Rexall because I turned 55, and it’s a really good program. I’m taking all the perks that I can get wherever I can get them.

Also, I just want to say, we had a very successful pre-budget consultation, and this is my first opportunity to thank the broadcasting staff, the Clerks and, of course, the research staff. I’m really hopeful, when the government reads the report that we prepared for the finance minister ahead of the budget, which will be on March 21 or March 28—he will not tell me—that those voices across Ontario inform that budget, because that is actually our responsibility here in this House. I want to thank the Chair of the finance committee, who I see here in the House as well.

I also just want to say, before I get into the substantive comments about the finances of the province of Ontario, that this morning’s tribute to Brian Mulroney was really touching. I have to say I think that our leader really brought it home, the impact that public service can have, the long-standing impact on communities, on our reputation as a country, on our own families. I thought everybody did a very good job. I also want to say, including to the Premier—he actually made me cry a little bit and not for the usual reasons. That is my attempt at humour in that regard.

It is also worth noting that in my office here at Queen’s Park, I have this beautiful scroll that is signed by Brian Mulroney. It was signed to my father-in-law, Walter Fife, who is deceased. It indicates how politics used to be so very different, because it’s a thank-you note for his service to the country in national defence. I keep it there as a reminder that none of us do any of this work successfully, meaningfully, without the people who help us, the staff in this place and our own research staff. We really are very fortunate and very privileged to be in this House, to hold this responsibility.

It is with that that I will make some commentary on where the finances are in the province of Ontario. I’m going to start with housing, because in every riding across this great province, housing is the number one issue, I would say. It’s very much connected to the cost of living, which will underpin my entire commentary.

When you look at where we are right now, in March 2024, I don’t think anybody expected the housing crisis to worsen. Housing starts are down significantly. They are down from 96,000 in 2022 to 89,000 in 2023, and 24 of the 50 municipalities are below 80% of their annual target of housing, including my own city of Waterloo. I’m going to talk about why they are there and the role that the provincial government could strengthen, to come to the table as a true partner to municipalities in the housing crisis.

I’m going to quote from one of the first articles. This is a CBC article by our own Mike Crawley. It examines the tools—or the stick; whatever you want to say—and how this government is trying to motivate housing. Based on the housing starts, based on the fact that we are losing ground, those mechanisms that this government is using—those tools at your disposal, some of them legislative tools—are not succeeding. This could be a very dangerous tipping point for this province, because without shelter, without stable housing, it is so difficult to move forward as an economy, to ensure that people in this province reach their potential. Housing underpins the economy and we must get it right, and I would argue that right now the government is not doing that.

This article is called “What Should the Ford Government Do about Developers Who Go Years without Building Homes?” This is happening in all of our ridings. “Some Ontario cities want power to slap ‘use it or lose it’ penalties on stalled housing projects.”

Let me tell you why this is so important. Some of you will know this very personally. “The town of Newmarket approved rezoning of [a] property along Yonge Street to allow a high-rise development of more than 500 housing units back in 2018, but construction is yet to begin.

“At least 20 Ontario municipalities are so far away from reaching their provincially mandated targets for new home construction starts that they have virtually no chance of hitting the mark, and will face stiff financial consequences in 2024.

“The problem is something municipal politicians say puts Ontario at risk of failing to meet the goal of 1.5 million new homes.” This is a fictional goal as it stands right now, Madam Speaker—essentially just talking points.

“Under current rules set by” the Premier’s “government, cities that fall short of the 2023 target for housing starts will not get any money next year from the province’s $1.2-billion fund to help cover the costs of housing-related infrastructure.”

Now, we all know there is such a strong connection to having that infrastructure, those roads, those sewers. Without that, you cannot build houses, right? With this partnership, the government has intentionally created an imbalance between municipalities and the province.

Now, I will admit that municipalities are creatures of the province. This is a well-known relationship, but it has never become this hostile. It very much feels to many cities across this province that this is a very punitive measure of this government.

One councillor, who happens to be in that place called Mississauga, Councillor Tedjo, “feels particularly frustrated when he looks across the half-empty parking lot” that I just referenced. So cities have made these approvals. They have approved these developments and developers are not moving forward. And then, in turn, what happens here? The government punishes those municipalities.

But he goes on to say, “I don’t think it’s fair at all that the province is measuring our success on housing starts and not on housing approvals.” He's not the only one. He’s not the only municipal politician raising concerns about the role developers play in Ontario’s housing crisis. They’re pointing to housing projects that have all the necessary municipal approvals, but developers have yet to put a shovel in the ground. Some of those nine municipalities in York region include the cities of Vaughan, Markham and Richmond Hill. They’ve approved more than 49,000 housing units that are not yet under construction. That’s a lot—49,000, Madam Speaker.

So these councils are doing their work. They are fast-tracking and streamlining the approvals, but at the end of the day, the housing is not coming to fruition and that leaves so many Ontarians really—some of them, literally—out in the cold.

Some of these titles are—“Ontario’s Road to 1.5M New Homes Has Gotten Rockier, Construction Insiders Say.” So whatever you are doing, you’ve actually put up more barriers to housing. The question this provokes in city halls around Ontario is, why is this government taking such a punitive approach to municipalities? It really does. This is a really important question. We know that the minister has said that he’s not even considering changing the rules on how municipalities qualify for the fund, so this $1.2-billion pot of money is held out here in front of municipalities, and yet, even when they go through a successful approval process, they can’t build the houses themselves. This is the role of the developers. Some developers are land banking, right? They’re banking that land until prices go up, until things become more stable—who knows? But this is what Newmarket Mayor John Taylor calls “the policy not only unfair to municipalities, but also potentially damaging to the government's own plan … because he believes it will hamper the building of the water and sewer facilities needed” to build housing.

So some people think that some pressure should be put on some of those developers, but I actually have an example in my riding of Waterloo where we do have a progressive developer. It’s called Solowave. His name is Richard Boyer. These are 3,400 purpose-built rental units—that’s a huge number. It’s up by the Conestogo Park Square. But right now, it isn’t the city of Waterloo who is holding up this development and it certainly isn’t the developer. The developer has been working on this plan for almost four years; that’s how slow it has been.

The city of Waterloo—they’re on board. The region of Waterloo—on board. You know where the problem is? The problem is with the Ministry of Transportation, because MTO expects this developer to upgrade the highway to address traffic. And then every time there’s a new housing development, they have to do another traffic study. I think they’ve done three traffic studies. So what’s happening right now? Instead of building houses, developers are paying for traffic studies. It makes zero sense.

This developer, by the way—and I did write to the Minister of Transportation and there is a letter coming to the Minister of Housing—he’s about ready, if there’s one more barrier that’s set up in front of this project, to plant beans. So instead of building houses, we’re going to have non-descript farming. It doesn’t make any sense, Madam Speaker.

So the housing file is not going well. I think that would be an understatement. And just for context, in some part of Ontario, the number of homes sold in 2023 dropped to levels not seen for 20 years.

So we have a stagnant housing market in Ontario. The actions of this government have further destabilized that market, and the combination of high interest rates and buyers waiting for prices to tumble further certainly is not helping it.

But at the end of the day, the number of home sales in the greater Toronto area in 2023 is on track to be lower than in any year since 2001. And we all know that the population is increasing. So the housing specialists, the housing leaders across this province have said that we’re looking at housing stagnation. All of us need to make sure that the municipalities are supported in their work. This 2023 low, we have not seen it since the turn of the century.

When I looked at the FAO report this morning, and I see where some money is going some places and some money is not going some places, this government has to get your act together on housing. It’s long overdue.

This speaks, really, to the priorities of this government. We hear so many throwaway lines from this government, like: “We’re putting more money in your pocket. We’re taking our hands out of your pocket.” It’s really very interesting to see which pockets you are really concerned about, because the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. And one of the first things that this government did was freeze the minimum wage, you’ll remember. What a devastating impact this had on front-line workers. This happened in 2018. The government froze the recently changed minimum wage, which at that point was $14, and they did it for two years.

They also cancelled a series of planned increases that had been set to begin with the 2019. What Deena Ladd has said is that, “What he did was basically take away a dollar increase, then take away the adjustments for two years, and then start to adjust it again in 2021.”

It’s really interesting, if cost that out—and we did raise this during the debate at the time. If you cost it out, one estimate—and this was from a research study—confirmed that if this government had not “instituted the freeze, each minimum wage worker would since have earned between $3,000 and $6,000 more between 2018 and 2021. These lost potential wages came at a bad time, the authors of the estimate write: ‘Many minimum wage workers put their own health at risk to keep working on the front lines of our economy throughout the pandemic. The three-year delay in raising the minimum wage to $15 cost them dearly.’”

So once again: very selective about who you’re saving money for and who you’re not. And let’s remember, this study could not even quantify the impact on racialized minimum wage workers, and that gap and that disparity in wages is well documented.

When we look at the findings of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives around the minimum wage, because we hear lots of talk about how generous and compassionate some of these changes have been, this is a hard and cruel change which we are still feeling today. The impact of those decisions are still being felt today. But the findings from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report says, “The discrepancy between the rental wage and the minimum wage is such that, in most Canadian cities, minimum wage earners are extremely unlikely to escape core housing need. They are likely spending too much on rent, living in units that are too small, or, in many cases, both.”

So, I’m connecting your policy decision to freeze the minimum wage and that impact on people’s ability to be housed, to find shelter. These are core issues that Ontarians face.

Even with the catch-up, the 6.8% raise, “A full-time minimum wage worker in the GTA will still be short by $260 a week in trying to make ends meet.... There’s nowhere in the province where you can survive off the minimum wage, now, or after Oct. 1.” This quote was from Craig Pickthorne from the Ontario Living Wage Network.

These are important policy decisions that the government has made, that have not been in the best interests of Ontarians.

I’m going to move on to energy costs too, because as I mentioned in my opening comments, the cost of living is really having such a negative impact on the quality of life that Ontarians are experiencing. And what I will say about energy costs—I think that my parents from Peterborough may be watching. Energy costs are something that impacts their daily lives because most seniors are on fixed incomes, and there is not a lot of wiggle room there at all. But the decision by the Minister of Energy to override the Ontario Energy Board—and we read about this just before the House came back. This story, you couldn’t write this story because—please remember that I served with many of the PC MPPs that are across the row today. When the Liberals interfered and politicized the Ontario Energy Board, there was such a hue and cry. You could not believe it, quite honestly. What I’m seeing is such a complete reversal in how politicians act when they’re in opposition versus when they are in government, and I’m going to give some context for this.

This is an article by John Woodside. He writes: “Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government is tabling new legislation to overrule the provincial energy regulator in a move worth billions of dollars that benefits gas giant Enbridge,” and it goes on to say that if passed, this “move would effectively strip the regulator of its arm’s-length role.”

Now, we know that this government is not really big on independent arm’s-length agencies or, for that matter, independent officers, quite honestly, as demonstrated by their removal of the child advocate and the francophone—