I was peeking around the room, and I see a familiar face from Oshawa, a strong voice: Kristen McKinnon is here. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I would also like to extend my very warm welcome to all the members of the Ontario Caregiver Coalition, including the chair, Bhavini Patel; general members who are here, Victoria Freeman, Mark Fawcett; as well as the CEO of Community Living Ontario, Chris Beesley; and a very good friend of mine, Liv Mendelsohn, the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence.

It’s my pleasure to welcome university student Asia Vrazalis and my high school friend Jerry Gain from Riverdale Collegiate, the best high school in the GTA.

I think they’re trickling into the gallery, but I want to thank ACORN, who are in the building today—an advocate for tenants, low-income Ontarians. I’m proud to be a member myself.

Welcome, ACORN, to your House.

Let’s all get out to the reception at lunch.

I don’t see them yet, but I want to welcome members of CareNow.

Sunday is international awareness day for myalgic encephalomyelitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, environmental sensitivity and multiple chemical sensitivities.

CareNow will be holding a Zoom meeting on Wednesday at 1 o’clock. Everyone is welcome.

I’d like to welcome to Queen’s Park the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence; the Ontario Caregiver Coalition; Young Caregivers Association; Alzheimer Society; MS Canada; Community Living Ontario; Canadian Cancer Society; Ontario Community Support Association; AdvantAge; the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, Niagara chapter. I want to thank them personally for coming to our press conference this morning to talk about our caregivers motion.

Thank you very much, and welcome to Queen’s Park.

Also, it’s always an honour when my staff comes to Queen’s Park. I want to welcome Quinn and Josh. One is a constituency assistant, the other is an executive assistant.

I just want to say thank you for all your hard work today.

I would like to introduce my friends Candy Wang and Michael Yu, who are here today, sitting up in the public gallery. They are coming in from North York. Candy and Michael are the proud creators of the neighbourhood watch in their communities.

Thank you for working hard in fighting the auto thefts in the region and helping keep the neighbours safe. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

This question is for the Premier.

Brighton council approved a six-month agreement for $60,000 with Atlas Strategic Advisors. I want to remind everyone, Atlas Strategic—or Atlas Strategies—is a company led by the Premier’s infamous Las Vegas-massage-table-loving principal secretary Amin Massoudi—boy, that’s a mouthful. Atlas Strategies has now dropped the contract after they were exposed by recent reports for boasting about their relationship with the Premier’s office.

The question is, where did this town in the Minister of Labour’s riding—the same minister with connections to Mr. X—get the idea that in order to get action from this government they needed to hire a friend of the Premier to lobby for preferential treatment?

I guess what happens in Brighton doesn’t stay in Brighton.

Is the Premier really okay with his government’s reputation of catering to insiders in the backrooms?

This government made such a reputation of catering to insiders and the Premier’s friends that local governments are using it as a strategy.

One councillor said this: “This government sometimes talks to its friends more than other folks, it might as well work for us from time to time.”

Backroom deals, Vegas massage tables, RCMP criminal investigations—I’m going to ask again, is this Premier going to tell us today whether he is okay with that being the legacy of his government?

Interjections.

One of the first things that this government did was to take away rent control for tenants living in new buildings, allowing these big corporate landlords to raise the rent to whatever they wanted.

Last year, a tenant here in Toronto faced a rent increase of $7,000 per month. Why does the Premier think that corporate landlords should be allowed to raise rent by $7,000?

I would like to welcome to the House my good friend Tyler Mackinnon, who was actually one of the first people to encourage me to run for MPP. He brought his class today. He’s a teacher at Willowdale High School, and his class from Willowdale is in the House today.

I look forward to having lunch with you guys today.

I’d like to welcome to the House today Tim Neeb, Maureen Houlihan, Michelle Nanton-Whyte, Heather McDonald, Jessica Whelan of Fred Victor, and Abi and Rima Goldshmidt. Welcome to your House.

It is my very great honour to welcome our newest intern to team Thornhill and also a long-time member of the Thornhill community, Ms. Emma Bellamy.

Frankly, I don’t know where a town or any community in this province of Ontario would think that it would ever be a good idea to hire an outside lobbyist to try to connect with the government or members of this Legislature.

I would suggest to our municipal partners, should they want to meet with members of the Legislature, that they pick up a phone, go to a computer, or come to this place and talk to us. I know that members of this caucus are always available to our partners, and I think the dollars that are spent on outside consultants would be better spent on focusing on infrastructure and other things that move their communities forward, and not on outside lobbyists.

Should you wish to reach out to members of this Legislature, do so. We encourage you to do so. We have ROMA. We have AMO. We have NOMA. Many of our ministers just came back from Sudbury, where they were meeting with municipal leaders. You have a Premier who hands out his cellphone number to every single Ontarian; I know that is the same process that many of our colleagues on this side do.

So, very clearly, again, to any municipal council that is watching, focus your resources on what matters to your people.

But what the people of Ontario know is that the job is not done. We inherited a fiscal and economic mess from the previous government. The work needs to continue. We’re not done yet. We’ll continue on that path.

What we are doing has seen the highest amount of purpose-built rentals in the history of the province, putting more supply online.

When you talk about affordable housing, colleagues, what we inherited in 2018 was an absolute disaster. We have had to focus the last six years on renovating, rehabilitating, restoring old, outdated affordable housing, to the tune of 123,000 units across the province of Ontario. Do you know why? Because for 15 years, they, supported by them, did nothing. They didn’t care about the tenants who lived in those affordable housing units. We’re investing billions to make sure that those units are up to code, and not only that; that they are beautiful places for people to move, live and create memories going forward.

Yesterday, the member from Toronto Centre raised a question regarding a constituent, and I committed to follow up. In fact, I have confirmed that the constituent was reimbursed, and the member from Toronto Centre was notified of that information prior to question period.

Thank you for the resolution.

That concludes our introduction of visitors for this morning.

It is now time for question period.

Government House leader.

It is my pleasure to welcome MLA Lisa Lachance from Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotia Legislature. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I’d say the minister needs to get with this century and the reality of people today.

Do you know what happens when you get rid of rent control? Two things. First, corporations make more money off people who have no money, and then rent goes up and people lose their homes. That’s what happens. Do you know why? Because unethical corporate landlords know that if they can get rid of their existing tenant, they can raise the rent to whatever they want. The NDP have called over and over for this government to take away this harmful incentive.

We need to protect the supply that we already have of affordable housing by bringing in stronger rent control.

Why won’t this Premier ensure any new tenant will pay what the previous tenant would have paid?

Interjections.

I want to talk about another loophole that is exploited, and that’s the above-guideline increase, or what we call AGI.

Last month, CBC found that over half of all AGI applications came from just 20 large corporate landlords, friends of this government. AGIs are supposed to be used just for things like extraordinary and unexpected expenditures that aren’t covered by basic rent. I’m explaining this to the members opposite so they can follow along. But the government is allowing AGIs for things like routine maintenance or for luxury renovations that aren’t necessary.

I want to ask the Premier again: When will this government crack down on the unethical use of AGIs?

The supplementary question.

I want to talk about how the housing crisis is affecting people, Minister.

Maria is a senior in my riding. She looks after her disabled son. She pays $3,640 a month for two rooms in a home, because it’s all she can find in Toronto. She’s due to be evicted in three days because she cannot afford the rent. She’s looking to move into a shelter, but that means she will be separated from her disabled adult son. Maria is one of 65,000 people who are on a wait-list for an affordable home. She has been waiting 12 years.

Minister, do you think it’s acceptable that a senior is being forced to move into a shelter because there is no available affordable housing?

Minister, I want to talk about Helen. Helen is a new parent. A developer bought her home and the eight homes next to her, and now the developer is systematically kicking out the tenants one by one. The developer is no longer doing basic repairs like stopping sewage from leaking through the ceiling, making the homes unlivable, and the developer is also filing eviction notices saying family members are about to move in. These are clearly illegal actions.

Minister, do you think it’s acceptable that big landlords are allowed to engage in illegal activity to drive out tenants from their homes?

What the Leader of the Opposition would do, and what they constantly do—they talked about this yesterday. They create enemies out of everybody. So if you are somebody who builds a home, you’re an enemy; if you’re somebody who builds affordable rental housing, you must be an enemy—because that is what the NDP want to do. They want to drive down the province of Ontario.

But what are we doing? We’re building up the province of Ontario. The policies that we have brought in have seen the highest level of purpose-built rental housing in the history of the province.

More importantly, we inherited a province where affordable housing was on the brink of collapse, where so many of our units were outdated. They needed to be renovated. We had to move people out of those units across the province of Ontario because they were unfit to be lived in. Why? Because for 15 years, the Liberals, supported by the NDP, refused to make those investments. We have made investments so that 123,000 units can be lived in by people, in dignity, in communities that they’re helping to build.

Let’s remember that Ontario has the strongest rent control guidelines in the country—2.5% is what we allow, right? We still have rent controls.

There is not one purpose-built rental housing provider in the province of Ontario that has done what she is suggesting has happened—not one. They are keeping rents down. They are within the guidelines. That is what is happening across the province of Ontario. Our purpose-built rental housing community is doing what they’re supposed to do: provide affordable housing in communities where people want to live so that they can build better lives for themselves and, more importantly, Mr. Speaker, they can live in communities that they are helping to build. Do you know why? Because this government has removed obstacles.

We have put in place the rules and the guidelines and the supports brought on by this Minister of Finance that are getting people back into the business of building purpose-built rental housing. Imagine, under our policies, the highest level of purpose-built rental housing, not in a decade, not in two decades, but ever. That’s—

Interjections.

For 15 years, they kept them in power. And for 15 years, this coalition here—the same as the federal coalition—refused to invest in affordable housing. In fact, what they did is condemn people who lived in that type of housing to units that were old, units that were outdated. They forced people to move out of those units because they were below code.

What have we done? We have renovated, across the province of Ontario, 123,000 units while unleashing the power of Ontario’s building and construction crews so that they could build the highest level of purpose-built rentals in the history of the province.

But she is right: The job is not done. And that’s why Ontarians will trust us to move it forward.

But what is more important—and again here, question after question after question—if you produce something in Ontario, the NDP don’t like you. If you build something in Ontario, the NDP don’t like you. If you drive on a road in Ontario, they don’t like you. If you go to a school or university, they don’t like you. The only thing the NDP want to do is drive down the province of Ontario. And how does the province of Ontario respond? They drive down the results of the NDP in every single election.

When you’re fighting elections and “other” gets more votes than you do, you might be on the wrong path.

We’ll keep on the path of prosperity.