SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Hon. Mike Harris

  • MPP
  • Member of Provincial Parliament
  • Kitchener—Conestoga
  • Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario
  • Ontario
  • Unit 3 & 4 63 Arthur St. S Elmira, ON N3B 2M6 Mike.Harrisco@pc.ola.org
  • tel: 519-669-2090
  • fax: 519-669-0476
  • Mike.Harris@pc.ola.org

  • Government Page
  • Nov/23/22 4:10:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 23 

It is no small task to stand up in the Legislature and speak for that long, so, to the member from University–Rosedale, kudos to you for that. However, I do take issue with a few things that you did bring up. One of them—and we did talk about this a little bit earlier when we were debating this this morning—is development charges. There’s a lot of that that always comes up. I’ve had municipalities at home say, “Oh, you know, we’re going to have to raise taxes, we’re going to have to do this.” There are some municipalities in Waterloo region, if you total them all up, our seven municipalities, they’re sitting on over $200 million—$200 million—of reserve funds from development charges that have already been collected.

The member opposite was talking about developers sitting on land or what have you. What about municipalities that are sitting on this money that aren’t using it for the projects that they’re supposed to be going towards? Why wouldn’t she support incentives or discounts—I’m being very honest; I’m not trying to be overly political with this—that will spur on not-for-profit development and that will spur on purpose-built rentals? These are important. They’re things that they talk about all the time. Will she support that part of the bill?

236 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
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