I would say that if we’re going to talk about examinations, I would send you both back to school, but hey. Because frankly, to simply parrot “supply and demand” without any understanding of the rest of the market is to show a lack of understanding of what people are actually dealing with.

Interjection.

I noticed that the bill did correct some drafting errors—reminding us, frankly, of Bill 23’s draconian elimination of planning appeal rights for conservation authorities and upper-tier municipalities, a reminder also of the broken promises about the greenbelt and certainly the appearance of widespread corruption in regard to the greenbelt—

The questions about who is benefiting certainly haven’t come from me alone. Those questions are widespread in the media and amongst people throughout the province who are very, very concerned at how easy it is to say one thing one day, and the next day say something completely different and do something completely different.

In terms of the greenbelt, in order to put luxury homes on conservation land—it certainly doesn’t make sense. And then, of course, this idea of taking even more farmland and subdividing it—well, we know that the farming community has organized itself and spoken against this, and it sounds like the government may be listening. I hope that’s the case, because we need that farmland. We need that food.

I am coming to the end of what I wanted to talk about. Again, I think that we have such an incredible problem with people being kicked out, with rents made completely unaffordable, and there is so little here to help. The problems keep getting worse and worse and worse, and then even when solutions are offered, there’s no support for those solutions.

Honestly, it boggles my mind that there is nothing there to support Suomi Koti or Giiwa on Court. Suomi Koti could even be coming out of a seniors’ fund for housing. Do we not have any funding available to support more seniors’ housing? Supportive housing? It doesn’t have to be fully staffed with PSWs. It might have one PSW. There’s a whole range of different levels that seniors are looking for when they can no longer—and no longer want to—manage a home and everything that goes with a home. What is the plan for that? Because I can tell you again, in my region—seven-year waiting lists. Well, in my mother’s case, she probably will be dead by then, I imagine.

So there are very, very clear problems that are not addressed in the bill. And there is so much more that the government could be doing to support housing so that everybody can afford to get into the market to get a place, to rent a place, to keep a roof over their heads.

Again, you point out that this is the fourth bill, and yet there’s no help for renters and there’s no help for seniors, for example. So I hope that the government will do more.

Oh, sorry. I am quoting something—

I’ll continue: “To be honest, it would mean a death sentence to the greenbelt as a whole.”

Apparently, Minister Clark says the class 1 agricultural lands will be swapped out for 9,400 acres that will eventually receive greenbelt designation.

“Used in conjunction with Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act ... which upends conservation authorities’ powers and the province’s wetland protection system, the Ford government is playing a dangerous shell game with ecologically sensitive areas and precious farmland. Progressives and environmentalists know that this is not going to end well.

“As if those changes weren’t bad enough, the provincial government overturned Halton region’s official plan amendments ... which contained development within the existing settlement boundary to 2051.”

So the concern that’s raised in this article, primarily, is sprawl—the spreading of housing and creating very expensive houses that require more transportation, more infrastructure and more cost to municipalities to actually provide that infrastructure, while doing nothing to actually produce affordable housing and have more dense housing within already existing planning zones

I’ll go back to the letter that had so many signatures:

“The government’s proposed changes would damage our existing neighbourhoods, towns and cities as well as the farmland and natural areas that sustain them, which in turn, would harm our ability to feed ourselves, protect ourselves from flooding, and address climate change risks.

“Taken together, the changes would:

“—do little or nothing to address the shortage of truly affordable housing;

“—facilitate expensive urban sprawl and inappropriate high-rises at the expense of more diverse housing types designed for all stages of life and ranges of incomes;

“—divert limited construction materials and labour away from building mixed and affordable housing, and direct them instead towards sprawl development, creating fragmented agricultural and natural landscapes;

“—remove from the greenbelt thousands of acres of valuable natural areas and agricultural land, and turn them into sprawl development;

“—undermine the protection of wetlands, woodlands, rivers, streams and wildlife habitat across Ontario;

“—destroy key land use planning processes that Ontario municipalities, conservation authorities and residents need in order to protect, manage and plan for climate-resilient ecosystems and communities.”

I’m going to move ahead to a specific concern from a lawyer in my riding:

“I ... want to bring to your attention the Lempiala gravel application to insert a new industrial use of aggregate extraction next to the cottage/residential uses at Trout Lake.... Removing existing rights of appeal by Trout Lake landowners will mean that our fight against this proposed intrusive use will be at an end, and the peace, serenity and natural beauty now enjoyed at Trout Lake will be forever lost.

“Premier Ford is saying that our multiple-year battle with Lempiala is retroactively wiped out as of Oct 25/22, all for the purpose of building houses faster in southern Ontario. It makes no sense. It is a long-standing principle of planning law in Ontario that neighbours have the right to comment and appeal proposed new uses nearby their lands. Buffering between conflicting uses is an important planning principle that will lose all meaning if citizens lose their appeal rights.

“Adjacent to the McIntyre River (Trout Lake is the source lake) ... is an area that has been noted as provincially significant wetlands.... The proposed Lempiala aggregate operation will no longer have to set back its extraction operations from the potential PSW lands which are partially found on the Lempiala lands. It is quite obvious that the Ford government’s Bill 23 favours land developers instead of residents nearby and entirely disregards PSW lands.”

I will move to conclude. I’d like to think about the International Plowing Match, where we had the opportunity to meet with so many farmers. One of the strong messages that I certainly heard from farmers was the need to protect farmland, to not lose any more farmland to development, and to do whatever we could to stop urban sprawl. We are seeing exactly the opposite of that taking place with Bill 23 and then with Bill 39.

We have a responsibility to our constituents, to our citizens, to be thinking about climate change, to be really protecting the future—for our children, for our grandchildren, for ourselves—from environmental degradation. Climate change is a real threat. We need more parkland. We need more wetlands; we need to preserve those wetlands. They protect us from flooding. In my region, flooding is a very serious concern, and we can’t pretend that it’s not there.

So I respectfully request that the government retract those elements of Bill 23 that undermine democratic participation, that undermine commitments made to protect the greenbelt, and that undermine the capacity of communities to manage their own flood lands and land planning processes.