Thank you for the compliment of my two terms as mayor of the city of North Bay. One of the real joys of my life was being mayor of our hometown.

I congratulate Mayor Peter Chirico and the 10 new councillors in the city of North Bay and all of the new mayors and councillors—the entire 11 mayors in my riding.

I can say that we really look forward to this Better Municipal Governance Act. The whole purpose of it is to address the housing supply crisis by working specifically with our municipal partners on our shared provincial-municipal priorities. I think that the whole goal is to build a million and a half new homes over 10 years, and this will be a critical piece in that puzzle of getting these million and a half homes built.

About five hours ago, when I spoke to this bill, we talked about the fact that Ontario is without question the best place in the world to call home. But there are two things that are in the way: fast, increasing demand and a lack of supply of homes.

This bill, if passed, will help our government with local decision-making powers. That’s what this really is all about. It’s to get these homes built faster so that in areas like Barrie–Innisfil, where there is such a huge demand for employees—there is an equal demand for housing, and there are so many impediments in the way of building those houses today. This bill, the Better Municipal Governance Act, is intended to speed up the process of building the hundreds of thousands of homes we need each and every year.

Young families, newcomers, anyone who has come to Ontario with the dream of having their own home, hopefully near where they work—that dream is falling out of reach. We delivered an historic 100,000 new housing starts last year—that’s the single greatest increase in housing starts since 1987—but there is much, much more work to be done if we want to reach our goals and have these families have a place to call home.

This bill will increase the pace of construction and make housing attainable for all. That’s what this bill will do, by providing efficient local decision-making that will speed up the approvals. A sped-up approval makes a lower-cost house.

Our government has been very clear that we will expand the strong-mayor powers to municipalities that are shovel-ready and committed to growth and cutting red tape.

I didn’t even know you were here. Not in my backyard—NIMBY. He’s got a new one now. He’s got a new one, and I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been sharing it every day. BANANA: build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone. That is exactly what is happening.

So when you want to know why there’s a lack of supply, there’s a lack of supply because we’ve got all of this NIMBYism that is happening, all of that activity. I look in my hometown of North Bay, and there’s one project—we had the civic hospital and St. Joseph’s General Hospital. They were both demolished and we built a brand new, billion-dollar hospital in North Bay. On the civic hospital site—now, I was mayor at the time these buildings were demolished. I was mayor from 2003 to 2010. So these buildings were demolished. Since then, there’s nothing built on the civic site. At least on the St. Joseph’s site, there’s a new long-term-care facility that’s under way, but on the civic site it’s just been blocked and blocked. It’s an entire city block. The hospital is gone, but there’s not one thing built on that because it continues to be blocked. For a decade, it has continued to be blocked.

That is exactly the issue. We’ve got that “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.” That is exactly what’s happening. As a result of it, I can drive to the Commanda, which is in the southwest end of my riding, I can drive to Powassan—the little town of Powassan, 3,200 people; their first house to hit $500,000 in Powassan. That’s what’s happening when you can’t build anything, anywhere, near anyone. That’s what’s happening. In Port Loring, they’re having bidding wars for houses. That’s absolutely unheard of north of the French River. That is just absolutely unheard of, and that’s what’s been happening, Speaker. Because there is a lack of supply, it’s driving the prices out of reach of families, and so we, through Bill 39, intend to resolve that.

We look at last year’s 100,000 housing starts. I think that was the highest since 1987, far greater than the 30-year annual average of 67,500. But that was just the start. We need to have this bill in place so that we continue to work hard so that all Ontarians, both newcomers and long-time residents, can actually, for the first time, have the dream of home ownership become a reality.

So we’re taking steps to fix the problem. It’s bureaucracy. It’s the red tape. All of that stands in the way of the much-needed housing.

Speaker, I’ve talked about the fast-increasing demand. I’ve told this Legislature all about the $16-billion investment in the auto sector that’s created tens upon tens of thousands of new jobs. The 2,700 people that went to work in Oshawa this morning for the first time in a long time since that plant was reopened, the 2,500 people who are coming to Windsor after the thousands—it’ll likely be 10,000 people that work in that building there. All of these people need a place to live.

We will continue to make sure that we expand the strong-mayors powers to the municipalities that are shovel-ready, municipalities that are committed to growth and municipalities that are committed to cutting red tape. We want them to look at what we’ve done as a province.

We listened to Sergio Marchionne tell Premier Wynne that you’ve got to become competitive, you’ve got to cut costs, you’ve got to cut red tape, and that’s what will help us. Because I can tell you, Speaker, by the emails and texts that I send the Premier every night, that fast-increasing demand? That’s not going to slow down. That is not slowing down in the province of Ontario.

They look at us. I was in Germany and Austria and Japan and Korea earlier this year; every one of those countries, every business that we visited, said to us, “In this turmoil, in this tumultuous world that we’re facing right now, we look at Ontario as a sea of calm.” They can’t wait to get here, not only to work here but to open companies here.

I’m going to India on Friday, and I will meet with about a dozen companies, and they have all told us the same thing: “We just need to hear from you the facts. We believe Ontario is safe for our workers, safe for our families, safe for our executives. We believe that about Ontario. We want to hear that from you. And we believe that our investments will be secure. Ontario is stable. They promised low costs; they promised low energy rates; they promised to reduce the red tape”—all promises that we’ve kept. They need to hear that from us, every single company in every single country; they’re ready to invest here.

We think there will be great news out of the trip to Germany. We think there will be spectacular news out of the trip to Korea and Japan. We’re looking for really solid results coming out of India as well. We’re there to thank Tata for the 5,000 employees that they’re hiring here. We’re there to thank HCL and Infosys for the 500 employees each of them hired in Mississauga.

These are thousands of people, Speaker. It’s not slowing down. The demand will not slow down in Ontario. Now we need to work on the supply.

All of these investments, by the way, created jobs and have new workers in them. I think of you voting against the expansion of the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. dollars—a portion of that $8 million went to J.S. Redpath in North Bay, one of the mining companies that we expect to help us dig the lithium out of the ground in northern Ontario. All of these provided 500,000 workers in the province of Ontario.

Thank you very much, Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to Bill 39, the Better Municipal Governance Act.

I would think everybody in this Legislature would very quickly agree that Ontario is the best place in the world to call home. I know that everybody in my community—that, I think, we can all agree on. Unfortunately, there are a couple of issues. Fast-pacing demand and a lack of supply: Those are the two things I’m going to talk about today. That is what has driven house prices out of reach for many families in Ontario. Again, it’s fast-increasing demand, which I want to talk about for a moment, and then lack of supply, which I’ll also address.

Think about the fast-increasing demand. What has happened in Ontario in the last five years? What has changed in Ontario that has caused this demand? We need to go back a few years ago to 2017, 2018, when the previous Liberal government gave up on manufacturing in Ontario. They just gave up.

I’m going to read you two sentences from their long-term report on the economy. It told you what the Liberal government saw coming up. It said, “The structure of the Ontario economy will continue to shift from goods-producing to service-producing sectors,” and, they went on, “shifting employment from goods-producing industries, in particular manufacturing, to service-sector industries.”

The previous government gave up on manufacturing. They hiked hydro rates, they hiked taxes and they added red tape, and as a result we saw a loss of 300,000 jobs in the province of Ontario. That’s in the past. That’s what happened. That’s how we started.

I’ll give you one more reference, because I think it’s important that we hear. Unfortunately, Sergio Marchionne has since passed. He was the chair of then-called Fiat Chrysler, in Windsor. The headline in the Toronto Star was, “Fiat Chrysler Chief Worries about Ontario’s Competitiveness.”

Sergio was sitting on a stage in Windsor with former Premier Wynne. They were talking auto because auto was declining in Ontario. Every single auto company was reducing, closing, stopping certain vehicles in their production line. Sergio Marchionne was sitting with the Premier and she mused about Chrysler expanding. He delivered a very blunt message directly to Premier Wynne, who was sitting beside him. He said, “This is not what I would call the cheapest jurisdiction.” He was referring to hydro rates, red tape and higher taxes. He said to her, “I think you need to create the conditions to be competitive.”

So exit Premier Kathleen Wynne, enter Premier Doug Ford and our party. This is fundamentally why there is fast-increasing demand in housing today. We looked at the situation that the previous Liberal government left, of high taxes, high hydro rates, 300,000 jobs that had left, Sergio Marchionne saying that you’ve got to create the conditions to be competitive, and Premier Ford said, “All right, this is what we are going to do. We are going to lower the cost of doing business.”

We visited Ford and GM and Stellantis. We visited Toyota. We visited Honda. We visited all of the auto companies, the engine manufacturers and the parts makers. There are 700 parts makers in Ontario and 450 tool and die makers. We visited as many as we could. There are 300 companies that are in connected and autonomous vehicles: GM up in Markham, Ford in Ottawa and BlackBerry QNX in Ottawa. They each employ hundreds and hundreds of people designing the cars of the future, these connected and autonomous vehicles. We visited them all and they all gave us the same message: You’ve got to lower the cost of doing business.

And we did, Speaker. We began by reducing WSIB premiums—workplace safety costs—by 50%. That is a $2.5-billion annual savings to business. We put in an accelerated capital cost, which means they can write off the cost of their new equipment in a year. That’s a $1-billion savings. We reduced commercial and industrial hydro rates by 16%; that’s $1.3 billion. We lowered the provincial share of local property taxes by $450 million. We reduced the burden of red tape on business—at that time it was $400 million and it’s now over $550 million. All in, we reduced the cost of doing business by $7 billion annually.

So when I say to you that yes, Ontario is the best place to call home, but fast-increasing demand and lack of supply is what the problem is, the fast-increasing demand comes from the fact that we reduced the cost of doing business by $7 billion, and because of that, companies have flocked back into Ontario.

I’ll start just with the automotive because that was the immediate response. Premier Ford and myself, we went to Washington; we met with Ford. We went to Plano, Texas; we met with Toyota. We went to all of the companies and we said, “We did what you asked. We lowered the cost of doing business in Ontario. We are now competitive. What are you going to do for us?”

Ford, in Oakville—$1.8-billion investment; Honda, in Alliston—$1.4-billion investment; LG-Stellantis, in Windsor—$5.2-billion investment, their first investment in North America; GM, in Oshawa and Ingersoll—$2.3-billion investment; Stellantis, in Windsor and Brampton—$3.6-billion investment; Umicore, out of Brussels and now in Loyalist township—$1.5 billion. There’s $16 billion in new investment, just in auto—in EV—that has created tens of thousands of new jobs.

To build LG’s plant in Windsor—just to build that plant—are thousands upon thousands of employees. It’s a 4.5-million-square-foot building. To put it in our terms, in Canadian terms, it’s the size of 112 hockey arenas. That’s what’s being built down there. It needs thousands of people to build that facility down there, and once it’s built it will employ 2,500. Look at GM in Oshawa: 2,700 men and women—in fact, 50% women, 50-50—showed up at work today, in Oshawa, in a plant that was closed. All these people need a place to live, so when we say “fast-increasing demand,” you can see that just the auto sector alone has created tens upon tens of thousands of jobs. That’s why there’s demand.

Since we were first elected, pre-COVID, there were 300,000 new jobs created in Ontario. Those people need a place to live. Since the pandemic—yes, of course, like everybody else, we lost 1.1 million jobs, but we gained 1.3 million back. We added 200,000 jobs, just since the pandemic, throughout the pandemic and now. That’s 500,000 new men and women who went to work in a job this morning—more than when we were first elected, only four and a half years ago.

So when we say that fast-increasing demand is causing a problem—why we need Bill 39, the Better Municipal Governance Act—it’s because we have so many people here who are working, who need a place to live. So it’s not just automotive.

I made a couple of notes while I was sitting here, listening, earlier. I’ll just rhyme off a few to show that this is so diversified around the province and around the sectors:

—AXYZ Automation, a company in Waterdown: $25-million investment, hired 50 people. I think they mentioned the member from Flamborough–Glanbrook in their news release;

—Barry Callebaut, a chocolate manufacturer in Brantford: $104-million investment; they hired 200 people;

—Laurysen Kitchens, in Stittsville: $26-million investment, hired 20 people;

—Dot Foods, in Ingersoll: $39-million investment, 200 people;

—Justworks, in Toronto, an HR management platform in Toronto: $20-million investment, 75 new people;

—Lastman’s Bad Boy built a new facility in Pickering: $70 million, 200 new employees;

—Trusscore, in Palmerston—they make plastics and paint—$10-million investment, 68 people. They all need a place to live.

On some bigger numbers:

—Telus, $23-billion investment; they’re hiring 9,500 people over the next five years;

—Tata Consultancy Services, from India, is here today on University Avenue; 5,000 new employees they’re hiring over the next four years;

—Nokia—we did the announcement in Ottawa—hundreds of millions of dollars, 340 new employees and 100 interns that they’re hiring. All of these people need a place to live.

So when we talk about what’s happened—“Why all of this now? Why, all of a sudden, are you doing this?” Well, good heavens, there are 500,000 people working today who weren’t working just a few years ago, and I’ve just rhymed off a list here of about 20,000 more people who—these announcements are only made in the last couple of months, from Telus’ $23 billion and 9,500 employees all the way through to the Nokia one. All of these; that’s 20,000 employees I’ve listed.

Every single morning of every single day, I send Premier Ford what he calls and what I call his “one-a-day vitamin.” It’s the name of a company, where they’re locating, how many millions they’re investing, how many people they’re hiring and whether the province has any skin in the game or not. Every single day of every single week, that’s what’s happening in the province of Ontario. Every single day there are millions of dollars of investment coming into the province of Ontario. That hasn’t stopped.

Speaker, I’m going to take a moment and I am going to read yesterday’s—this is fun. Oh, that hasn’t been announced yet. But there’s good news coming in Niagara. MPP Sam Oosterhoff is going to make a $6-million announcement and 30 new jobs.

That hasn’t been announced yet either. Well, I’ll have to go back. Cambridge is getting some very good news about 40 jobs coming.

Every single day we’re reading—Unbun in London, $4 million. They are creating to provide gluten-free products to Mr. Sub and Pizza Pizza and Burger’s Priest. They’re going to sell all of these products—23 new jobs. Very nice.

Every single day of every single week, Speaker, there are great announcements coming, millions coming. So when you ask why there’s fast-increasing demand—what I’ve said—that’s why, because we’ve created the climate in Ontario for job seekers and job creators to build these jobs. They all need a place to live.

When you now look at the other side of the coin, the lack of supply—Minister Clark, my great friend Steve, has said the word “NIMBY.” He has talked about NIMBY.