Just to point out and respond to the comments that the associate minister said: Unfortunately, in the provincial planning statement, now municipalities don’t need to demonstrate that prime agricultural farmland is at risk before they approve a development, so we’re very concerned about the potential loss of prime agricultural land and the government’s decisions to do that.

I want to speak about third-party appeals. This government did some last-minute dealing where they’ve banned third-party appeals to the lands tribunal except for a few key players, including developers, major industry and companies near a site. Why bias the lands tribunal in that fashion?

I’d like to thank the members from Niagara West and Essex for their presentation. As I’m sure they both know, representing rural ridings, Ontario is losing 319 acres of prime farmland per day, which represents 5% of the province’s entire farmland that will be lost in just five years. Bill 185 will make that loss even quicker. It will happen even faster.

Now, developers, airports, big manufacturers and cities are being provided the opportunity to appeal the Ontario Land Tribunal rulings that restrict building on farmland, wetland and environmentally sensitive areas, but this bill also takes away the ability for third parties. It takes away the ability of third parties to appeal these decisions. Is this yet another example of this Conservative government disrespecting rural Ontario and farmers?

I want to rebut something that the member has raised and I’ve heard—inaccurately, unfortunately—in this chamber a few times now. The overall acreage of arable farmland in Ontario is growing each and every single day. If you look at the great northern clay belt—and this is from the Grain Farmers of Ontario—they look at 16 million acres that are coming online up in the Timiskaming–Cochrane region. If you look, since 2008, we’ve seen that the acreage in northern Ontario has increased from 53,000 acres to over 102,000 acres.

There are obviously downfalls and challenges to the rise of climate change across this land, but one of the impacts of climate change in the north is actually that there is more arable land coming online today than there ever has been. There is more farmland available to farm in the province of Ontario than there ever has been at any point in our history. Because if you look at the amount of acreage in places like eastern Ontario and northern Ontario, there is now land that, before, they were not able to grow on; the heat units have increased to such an extent that they’re actually able to grow beans and corns. I was even just reading this morning, they’re looking at growing potatoes in some of these places—

Again, I think one of the pieces that I spoke about in my debate as well was that is an iterative process, right? It builds on the 13 previous red tape—sorry, 11; 11 or 13—reduction packages that have come forward, and each of those have sought to make, perhaps, individually, not enormously consequential changes, but when taken as a whole, a really positive step forward to streamlining that process for home builders and also for providing certainty to municipalities. One of the pieces that was a challenge for some municipalities was uncertainty, and this is about providing that certainty and good governance.

In under six years of the Conservative government, we’re losing 319 acres of prime farmland every single day. Ontarians can’t afford to buy groceries. They can’t afford to pay their rent. They can’t afford to buy a house—homeless encampments in every community in Ontario. They can’t afford to buy a house. Poverty rates are the highest level in our history—highest debt in the province of Ontario’s history.

So my question is, other than your friends, your developer friends and the Weston family, who are you guys really helping?