I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak about Bill 185. It has a pretty serious impact on my region, the region of Waterloo. I’m grateful to see the member for Cambridge and the member for Kitchener South–Hespeler here.

We, as a region, rely solely on groundwater. We are not attached to a lake. We rely solely on groundwater. If we run out of groundwater, it will cost $2 billion at today’s estimates to build a pipeline to a lake to get more groundwater. So, by removing regional planning, we remove hydrogeologists from looking over our approvals. We remove the view of the watershed when we think about the land used for development. For example, recently, with the expanded boundaries put forward by lower-tier municipalities, we will now pave over the water recharge area. What that means is, this type of land is full of gravel and it helps our water from the sky replenish our groundwater to ensure that we have water for the generations to come. What I worry about is that that water will be scarce as we pave over the water recharge area and we create sprawl development, and we don’t have this level of oversight by the region to ensure that we have sustainable water resources going forward.

Also, our regional official plan: The region of Waterloo put a lot of time and energy into creating a plan that protected our countryside line, that recognized the Waterloo moraine and environmentally sensitive areas. Now, with that regional planning gone, we will jeopardize the protection of our farm economy, as well as our environmentally sensitive spaces that sequester carbon, that filter water and are important for our biodiversity.

I truly believe that this focus on sprawl development will actually hinder housing. If you ask any construction worker—I talked to a friend of mine this weekend and he said, “We are already building at 110%. We can’t double what we’re doing right now. We are maxing out our capacity.” We know there is a lack of labour, that we face labour shortages, and we also know that we face supply shortages. We have a construction price index problem, so our inflation rates have gone down, but our construction inflation has not, which needs addressing.

Sprawl development, we also know, is two and a half times more expensive for municipalities to service than density, and so we look to see more double-digit property tax increases going forward because of this focus on sprawl development. And we know that tall-and-sprawl only benefits a small group of developers, rather than the missing middle development that opens up the possibility of construction of more units to many more people, which is why we believe in ending exclusionary zoning.

In the region of Waterloo alone, in greenfield developments, we have over 38,000 units that have been approved that have not been built. We know that focusing on greenfield development will not get us further to our housing targets.

Our farming sector, the OFA in my area, has asked and written and sent emails. Our experts in the farming sector in my region have asked us today to not pass Bill 185. They know that we are losing 319 acres of farmland every day and that we can’t eat money. The price, because of speculation, because of this government’s focus on sprawl development and zones going out and then in and out and then in have not only delayed housing development in the region of Waterloo by two years—our regional official plan came out in the summer two years ago—because of flip-flops, all of that housing has been put on hold.

In addition to that, we know that farmers are struggling to buy land because now we know that—I could name about five developers who are buying up farmland only to sit on it. This leads to a lack of development. They are not going to put barns. They’re not going to invest money into the soil, because they’re renting it from developers who are sitting on it, waiting for the prices to go up, waiting for the right moment to flip it or sell it or turn it into something else.

So I beg that this government focus on density, focus on all kinds of housing, not just sprawl, because this will lead to better transit access. It will lead to more affordable housing, and it’s a better, more efficient way to use the scarce resources we have to put more units on the market. Instead of building big mansions, we can build multi-plexes, and that will service a lot more people in the province of Ontario.

I hope you will not support Bill 185, because I want to see water and food for my kids going forward.

So, yes, I agree with speeding up the process, but I think we really need to be keyed into the labour issues we’re facing in our planning departments. One way we could speed up approvals is ending exclusionary zoning. To be honest, we wouldn’t have to bring these small and medium-sized builds even to council at all if we got rid of exclusionary zoning. When we’re building a subdivision, let’s just allow schools to be built. Instead of—

Thank you very much to the member from Kitchener Centre. Really, this all begs the question: Who’s in charge of planning in this province? Because we know it’s not the planning departments of municipalities across the province, it’s most likely developers that are leading planning. It’s most likely the OLT that’s going to make the decision on planning. It’s not going to be the people who live in communities, who have no say now because they do not have any longer a third-party right to appeal any decisions that are made on land that could be theirs, in fact.

So my question to you is, do you think that the chaos you’re talking about is simply a function of the fact that this government has taken planning out of the hands of expert planners and put it into the hands of speculators, land speculators and developers and their OLT that they are stacking with their friends and—

I appreciate the member from Kitchener Centre’s eloquent defence of her region and the financial and environmental cost of low-density sprawl development. I’m wondering if the member can tell us what are the financial and environmental benefits of intensification through gentle density and missing middle housing.