Of course I have great confidence in our community builders, the home builders who build the homes for the families and the individuals and the seniors—not one size fits all. But to the member’s point, our plan in this proposed bill is to reduce the cost of development so that higher costs are not passed on to consumers, and also to reduce delay. We can reduce delay by up to 18 months just by eliminating the Planning Act third-party appeals.

What happens, to the member’s point, unfortunately, is that the third-party leverage associated with these appeals can make demands for modest but unnecessary changes, such as reduced height, footprint and setbacks, in exchange for not filing an appeal. We happen to believe that that kind of blackmail, so to speak, that procedural bureaucracy associated with the appeal process, is unnecessary. Some 67,000 housing units were tied up with that. We want to eliminate that.

It is about getting out of the way. When this government was first formed in the 42nd Parliament in 2018, there were so many obstacles in the way of growth and prosperity.

Again, as we’ve said many times in this House on behalf of this government, it’s not that this government creates jobs, it’s not that this government manages things directly, but it creates the conditions for prosperity. It creates the conditions for job creation and well-paying jobs.

So what we’ve done is, over the past several years, with a series of red tape reduction bills, including this proposal now—but even without this proposal—we have reduced the burden of red tape and saved Ontario businesses and the broader public sector over $958 million in gross annualized compliance costs. This creates the conditions for success and prosperity and for building the Ontario of tomorrow.

But to this specific question about the building code, the 2024 edition: The proposed next edition of Ontario’s building code would become 12% more harmonized with the national construction code. Our government harmonizing the building code will help build more homes by helping to standardize supply chains across the country, especially for modular home building. The new building code will reduce red tape by over 1,730 provisions; that’s good news for the future and for building Ontario.

Speaker, the way it is done is, first of all, by listening—by listening to the people who sent us here; by listening to all the people and especially the small business owners. What they’ve told us time and again is that government is large enough and there are many unintended consequences of big government. That is this reality of red tape, regulation, high fees.

And so, a previous PC government had a red tape commission. We’ve taken the next step: A full ministry is devoted to red tape and regulation reduction. That is a track record of our government in this 43rd Parliament. This is one of a series of red tape reduction and regulation reduction initiatives—it’s one in a series.

The conversations began in 2018. They continued through the last Parliament. They’re continuing in this Parliament. We’re going to keep going with these conversations and get it right and create the conditions for success and for growth.

I have a question for the member regarding schedule 8. Just in case he hasn’t had an opportunity to take a look at that, it’s on page 14 of the proposed Bill 185. I’m looking specifically at section 4(2), where it says:

“When the clerk of a municipality is notified under subsection (1), the clerk shall serve notice, in the prescribed form,

“(a) on the owner mentioned in subsection (1), the adjoining owner and the occupant of the land of the adjoining owner.”

That’s what I want to concentrate on, “the occupant of the land.” In the previous act, the occupant did not get official notification. But under this act, the occupant will get official notification. As an individual who has dealt with this type of thing in rural areas before, I think that’s a very important change. Does the member agree, and will he vote for it?

This proposed bill contains an ambitious series of changes for the better—and the member from Guelph touched on some of them: our government’s proposal to streamline something as simple yet as brilliant as accessible parking permits, the application process. I worked, as a university student a few years ago, actually processing and delivering these accessible parking permits. I thought, how frustrating to have someone with a disability of some sort, a walking impairment, come in with crutches, canes or walkers, like my father uses right now, to get something as simple as—we called them “disabled” parking permits; now “accessible”—parking permits. This proposed bill actually addresses this simple, beautiful, common-sense redesign: have a 30% reduction in form rework to actually issue permits for people from your community in Guelph and mine. So would the member from Guelph not support initiatives like this?