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May 12, 2026

44th Parliament, 1st Session

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Hansard Transcripts

vol. A

Hansard Transcripts

vol. B

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcript 2026-May-12 vol. A (PDF)

L073A - Tue 12 May 2026 / Mar 12 mai 2026

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Tuesday 12 May 2026 Mardi 12 mai 2026

Orders of the Day

Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026 / Loi de 2026 pour la construction de logements et l’amélioration de l’infrastructure de transport

Members’ Statements

Ask for Angela

UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Ottawa Charge hockey team

Primary care

Online gambling

Kingsville Highland Games

Mental health and addiction services

The Blessing Centre

Canadian Italian Business and Professional Association

University of Guelph

Introduction of Visitors

Question Period

Hospital funding

Cost of living

Government jet

Government accountability

Government accountability

Government accountability

Housing

Trucking safety

Government accountability

Energy policies

Public transit

Special education

Conditions in Scarborough

Infrastructure funding

Tabling of sessional papers

Notice of dissatisfaction

Deferred Votes

Time allocation

House sittings

Introduction of Visitors

Reports by Committees

Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

Petitions

Labour legislation

Transportation infrastructure

Social assistance

Ring of Fire

Social assistance

Rare diseases

Education funding

Collective bargaining

Vision care

Gender-based violence

Health care services

Social assistance

Orders of the Day

HST Relief Implementation Act (Residential Property Rebates), 2026 / Loi de 2026 sur la mise en oeuvre de l’allégement de la TVH (remises relatives aux biens résidentiels)

HST Relief Implementation Act (Residential Property Rebates), 2026 / Loi de 2026 sur la mise en oeuvre de l’allégement de la TVH (remises relatives aux biens résidentiels)

Keeping Criminals Behind Bars Act, 2026 / Loi de 2026 visant à maintenir les criminels derrière les barreaux

The House met at 0900.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Good morning, everyone.

Prayers.

Orders of the Day

Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026 / Loi de 2026 pour la construction de logements et l’amélioration de l’infrastructure de transport

Mr. Graydon Smith, on behalf of Mr. Flack, moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 98,

An Act to enact the Fare Alignment and Seamless Transit Act, 2026 and to amend various Acts / Projet de loi 98, Loi édictant la Loi de 2026 sur l’harmonisation des tarifs et l’intégration des transports en commun et modifiant diverses lois.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the minister.

Hon. Graydon Smith: Thank you, Speaker, and good morning. Just note that I’m sharing my time with the member for Thornhill and the member for Simcoe–Grey this morning.

I’m pleased to rise and speak to third reading for Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act. At this stage, members have had the opportunity to review the bill, debate its contents and examine practical changes it proposes in second reading, but here in third reading I want to bring it back to what Bill 98 is really about. At its core, this legislation is about helping Ontario build better, build faster and build in a way that reflects the realities communities are facing across this province. It’s about removing barriers that no longer make sense.

It’s about making planning systems work better. And it’s about giving municipalities, builders, workers and families a process that is clearer, more consistent, and more focused on results.

Speaker, from my years in municipal government, I saw first-hand how good intentions can be undermined by outdated systems. I saw projects delayed because processes became too complicated. I saw duplication create confusion, and I saw costs continue to rise while approvals slowed down. When that happens, those costs don’t disappear; eventually, they make their way into the price of a new home.

That reality is felt by the young people trying to enter the housing market, families looking for more space, seniors looking for housing options that better fit their needs, and workers who simply want to live in the communities in which they work. Bill 98 is about addressing and meeting those challenges in a practical way. It contains targeted reforms to help Ontario’s planning and building systems function better for the people that they are meant to serve.

Speaker, municipalities today, they’re busy. They’re trying to do several things at once. They’re trying to keep their infrastructure functioning. They’re trying to manage growth responsibly in their communities. They want to keep their communities affordable, and that’s not easy. It’s laudable, but it’s not easy. Municipal leaders are planning for growth while maintaining roads and bridges, water systems and waste water infrastructure. They’re supporting housing development while managing rising costs and increasing expectations, and they’re doing all of this while the timelines matter more than ever.

Bill 98 recognizes that reality. It recognizes that planning systems should support good local decision-making, not bury municipalities in unnecessary processes, and it recognizes that local planning can remain local while still becoming clearer and more consistent across Ontario.

Speaker, one of the important areas Bill 98 addresses is official plans. Official plans are there to guide growth, to provide that clear framework for how a community develops over time. They should align land use infrastructure, servicing and community priorities, and they should be understandable to councils, staff and, most importantly, applicants and residents alike. But over time, many official plans have become increasingly difficult to navigate—organized differently from one municipality to the next.

One municipality uses terminology that’s different from another; policies get structured differently, and that creates uncertainty. Staff spend more time interpreting policies, applicants spend more time trying to understand requirements, and residents often find it harder to participate meaningfully because the documents themselves have become too difficult to follow.

Bill 98 proposes to simplify and standardize official plans across Ontario, creating consistency, creating that clear framework and planning documents that are easier to read, compare and implement. Speaker, I think we’d all agree that if somebody walks into their town hall, no matter where it is, and asks for a copy of an official plan, they should be able to crack the cover on it and understand what it means, where the community wants to go, where council has chosen those points to move forward in.

But, too often, it is just a jumble of planning talk and speak that is not in plain language, and so it becomes very difficult for people to follow along with that document that is the main narrative of where communities want to go. This legislation, if passed, would help create a planning system that’s more understandable, more usable, more user-friendly.

The Ontario Professional Planners Institute has recognized the value of this direction, noting that simplified and consistent official plans can help streamline approval timelines for municipalities and home builders. And that’s exactly the point: making planning more usable and more approachable.

The time where somebody could walk in, get the specs, get the plan, understand the zoning and build a home all by themselves is rapidly disappearing, because over time, incremental changes to the rules and regulations at the local level—while done with the best of intentions—have created a very difficult-to-navigate situation. I like to think of it as a multi-layer cake. The knife should be easy to go through that cake, but we’ve got cake that stops the knife almost instantly in terms of process before you’re trying to saw through it. You should never have to saw through a cake, as far as I know.

That would probably be the worst cake you’ve ever had.

We want to keep moving forward with changes that help municipalities and help the people who want to help municipalities grow, so we need to talk about siteplan control as well—an incredibly important issue. It helps ensure development functions properly, literally, on the site. It addresses issues like drainage, grading, access, servicing and compatibility with surrounding infrastructure. And make no mistake about it, those things matter. They matter for safety; they matter for infrastructure, for protection, for the long-term success of any development. But over time, in many cases, again, site-planning control has expanded beyond that original intent and purpose.

There is a difference between encouraging good design and making optional design preferences mandatory in ways that add cost and delay. Municipalities will continue to review development. They’ll continue to protect infrastructure, and they will continue to make sure that projects are safe and functional. But Bill 98 proposes to refocus site plan control on the matters it was originally intended to address: to prevent unnecessary requirements from driving up costs that are ultimately passed on to homebuyers.

The Ontario Association of Architects estimated that site plan delays cost Ontario’s economy roughly $3.5 billion annually. I know my voice is hoarse today: I didn’t say million; I said billion, with a B. That is an incredible amount of money, and all that money ends up on the plate of homebuyers in Ontario. The developers front the cost, but the buyers pay the cost.

We have a fundamental challenge in our province where it takes too long to build because the regulatory environment has become too complicated. I don’t say this to cast any aspersions at any municipality. They all brought the best of intentions to the processes that make their particular set of rules tick and their processes move forward.

But, unfortunately, Speaker, I think every member in this chamber probably experiences calls from home builders and people who want to get developments off the ground that will be incredibly positive for communities expressing frustration at things like site plan control, that it simply is taking too long, that there are components that, again, while full of good intentions, really result in bad execution, more cost, more time. And again, the cost of that time makes things end up on the plate of the homebuyer.

So we can do better, and Bill 98 proposes the framework to help communities do better. We can take a look at minimum lot sizes in communities. Our planning systems need to continue to evolve, and, in some areas, overly large minimum lot sizes limit the number of homes that can be built on already-serviced land. Every time we do that it’s a reduction in flexibility. Every time we do that it’s an increase in cost. It can make it harder to create those obtainable housing options for that first-time buyer, that young family, that senior looking to downsize.

So Bill 98 is going to allow the province to establish more consistent minimum-lot-size standards through regulation, particularly in urban residential areas. Let’s use the land that we already have serviced better, supported by existing infrastructure. Give those builders flexibility to respond to what people actually need. Support more starter homes. Support smaller homes and housing options that get people that first step through the door.

Speaker, I want to talk a little bit more about infrastructure. I mentioned it a few times already. We know subdivisions can’t proceed where water and waste water capacity is unavailable. Communities can’t grow responsively if infrastructure planning doesn’t keep pace with that growth. It’s important in rural, northern, small and fast-growing communities, and I count the communities that I represent in Parry Sound–Muskoka among those. Many municipal leaders have told us the same thing: We’ve got land; we’ve got demand; we’ve even got local support, but we don’t always have the servicing capacity needed to move housing forward.

Bill 98 proposes a framework for communal water and waste water systems, and systems that can serve multiple homes provide another servicing option where the full municipal system may not yet be available. They are regulated. They are structured to protect public health. They are designed with long-term accountability and sustainability in mind. And so if we’re serious about building homes across Ontario, we need to recognize that communities do not all face the same servicing realities.

Speaker, a lot of us attended the Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus reception yesterday. They had a lot of great people there, municipal representatives from all throughout eastern Ontario, but also a number of businesses that are surviving, thriving and growing in eastern Ontario. I commend them all.

One of them was a service provider that focuses on just this issue, on communal water systems that can be deployed to allow housing to occur in areas that might otherwise be problematic. And you know the old saying that this isn’t your father’s or grandfather’s Oldsmobile, or whatever it was—that tells you how old I am, pulling out old marketing lines like that—well, communal water systems ain’t your father’s Oldsmobile. They have come a long, long way in terms of technology and scalability and quality, to a point where, if we aren’t using communal systems to solve the challenges we have around housing in Ontario, we are simply missing a huge opportunity.

Bill 98 allows us the window to take that opportunity to make sure that these things that are essential to growth, these new tools, can be brought to bear, because we can’t ignore the infrastructure challenges, as we’ve talked about. But we can’t also pretend that endlessly increasing costs on new housing has no consequence for affordability. We know that infrastructure costs, again, go into the mix of what ultimately that new home cost. So we need to help keep the input costs as manageable as possible for people trying to buy or rent a home.

Speaker, people need to understand what those costs are. They need to understand how development charges, for example, affect what they’re paying for that home. There needs to be more transparency around that. Bill 98 helps accomplish that.

Development charges are talked about a lot. They help municipalities fund growth-related infrastructure, supporting roads, water, waste water, parks and other community services, the real costs that municipalities have. Nobody disputes that. But we also know that development charges are a significant contributor—and, in some cases, a barrier—to housing prices. Some communities have DCs as high as $150,000. Others, in smaller communities, may be less, but for all families, no matter where you are, that additional cost to a home is significant when you look at the total cost of a home. They deserve to know what those costs are.

Around development charges—I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating: There’s an opportunity for municipalities to view DCs in a different light. In the past, DCs have been viewed as a tool to build infrastructure, and maybe when things were flying high, people weren’t paying attention to the costs they were paying quite as much. They just paid the shot and on they went. But it’s different days today, and we know the cost of these DCs, as I’ve talked about, can be very impactful on the price of a new home.

Back after the financial crisis in 2008, when I was mayor in my community in Bracebridge—of course, Bracebridge is part of Muskoka—we had some choices to make. We saw home sales dry up, and we saw the toll of a global financial crisis hit a small town. You have one of two choices, I think, when a situation like that arises. You can say, “Okay, we’ll just take our lumps and ride it out and hope things get better. We’re not going to really make any changes. We’re pretty satisfied with the way things are at from a process, regulatory, DC basis.

And we hope it changes soon.” Or you can take a bolder approach and say that we want to do something about this. We want to intervene and make sure that this tool, which can be punitive on the cost of a new home, gets dealt with, and look at it from an economic development standpoint and look at it from a community growth and opportunity standpoint. That’s what we did in Bracebridge and Muskoka.

We lowered development charges, not because of any one particular project that was happening in any one particular community, although I did have a builder in my community close their sales office and leave two phases into a 10-phase project. We did it because we knew that, region wide, if we didn’t take that moment to intervene, lower costs and signal to everybody involved, not only the home builders but the homebuyers, that we could have your back, things weren’t going to change, they weren’t going to get any better.

So, we took that step. We worked with homebuyers. We talked with the real estate community that were representing the homebuyers. We got builders and buyers and the municipal government around the table, planners talking about what we can do to make things better. In the end, we lowered development charges by 50%. And I’ll tell you, the return on that was massive and monumental. We saw building come back in the community. We saw sales offices open again. We saw the other eight phases of that project get built out, just in my community alone. In the end, the municipality was in a far, far stronger financial position because we had taken that step, because we had taken that intervention.

You need to pick your spots when things are maybe not going exactly the way you want them to go, and say, what can we do better? What can we do better as a municipality? We’ve asked ourselves that question as a government. How can we provide the flexibility and the guidance for municipal governments to be able to take the steps they need to impact real local positive change for homebuyers in their communities all throughout this province? Bill 98 along with other bills that we had passed prior to Bill 98 do just that. They give municipalities the direction and the tools to remove that latticework of regulation that gets in the way of getting things built.

We need to keep in focus at all times what the number one goal is. The number one goal is to have homes built for people to live in our communities, whether it is a city, whether it is a small village. Everybody needs the same thing. Every regulation that gets passed, every barrier that gets put in the way needs to be pushed aside and swept aside. And we need to continue to work on behalf of homebuyers in this province so they can realize and attain the dream that we had, that they have and that the generation that comes after them will have.

Speaker, thank you very much, and I now share my time with the member from Thornhill.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Thornhill.

Ms. Laura Smith: I’m so pleased to rise today in support of Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026, and I do so in my capacity as parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. I want to thank the minister from Parry Sound–Muskoka for his leadership in his role, not only here in the House but also as a mayor in his area. I also look forward to hearing from my friend from Simcoe–Grey as we share our discussion today.

Speaker, our government has been very clear about the challenges before us. It takes too long and it costs too much to build in Ontario, and we’re fixing that. This is not just a catchphrase. It is the reality facing too many families, too many workers, too many seniors and too many young people who are looking at the housing market and wondering whether they will ever be able to find a home that they can afford.

For far too long, the system has become slower, more complicated and more expensive. Projects get caught in layers of review. Requirements differ significantly from one municipality to another, requiring boutique approaches that inhibit the ability of smaller builders to access the market. Planning documents have become longer and harder to understand, and infrastructure costs are pushed up front. By the time a project finally moves forward, the costs have gone up, the timelines have stretched and the people who pay the price are the homebuyers and renters of Ontario.

This is why this bill matters. This bill builds on the progress our government has already made through Bill 17, the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, and Bill 60, the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act. It builds on our work to cut costs, streamline approvals and our efforts to increase and improve the streamline approvals and make the housing system more predictable. It builds on major actions our government is taking to make life more affordable, including cutting the HST on new homes, securing historic support to reduce development charges and investing in the housing-enabling infrastructure that communities need.

Bill 98 is another step in that plan. It’s about getting shovels in the ground faster, it’s about lowering unnecessary costs, and it’s about reforming how Ontario plans, approves, services and builds housing. It’s about protecting Ontario’s future by making sure that the families can continue to live, work and build their lives in the communities they call home.

Speaker, one of the most important parts of this bill is the work to simplify, streamline and standardize official plans. Official plans are supposed to be about planning for growth. They should help municipalities make clear decisions about where housing, employment, infrastructure and community services should go. They should give residents, builders and municipal staff a clear understanding of how a community is expected to grow. But in far too many cases, official plans have become bloated, complicated and detached from that core principle.

They can be hundreds, or even thousands, of pages long, and they can vary dramatically from one municipality to another. They can be difficult for the residents to understand and difficult for the builders to navigate. When every municipality has a different structure, a different format and a different way of organizing the same basic planning information, it creates uncertainty. Uncertainty leads to delay, delay leads to costs, and costs lead to homes becoming less attainable for the people of Ontario.

Our government is clear on our message: It is time to simplify, streamline and standardize official plans. By moving towards a more consistent format, we can make official plans easier to read, easier to compare, easier to review and easier to implement. That helps municipalities, it helps builders, it helps residents and, most importantly, it helps get homes built faster.

This is not about taking away responsible planning. It’s about making planning work better for everyone. Because when a young family is looking for a home, they’re not helped by a 1,000-page planning document that takes years to update. They will be helped by a system that is clear, efficient and focused on results.

Bill 98 also takes important action on site plan reform. The site plan process was created for a practical purpose: It’s meant to look at how a site functions, things like access, safety, grading, stormwater, servicing and how a project fits on the land and into the surrounding community. These are important considerations and they will remain important considerations.

But over time, in some municipalities, site plan control has moved far beyond its intended purpose. It has become a place where additional requirements are added, where projects are redesigned again and again, and where costly, enhanced development standards can be imposed, even when they do not improve health or safety.

Our government has been very clear: The days of premium and costly design standards that do nothing to enhance building safety while adding unnecessary cost must come to an end. It’s as simple as that. When municipalities impose out-of-scope requirements at the site plan stage, the costs do not disappear; they are built into the final price of the home. When a project is delayed by repeated rounds of comments, the cost does not disappear; it gets passed on. And when builders are focused to redesign projects to satisfy inconsistent local requirements, the cost does not disappear. It lands on the shoulders of the families, the renters and the first-time buyers. That is not acceptable.

The site plan process is not working as intended. The legislated 60-day timeline has too often become the exception rather than the rule. According to the Ontario Association of Architects, costs associated with site plan delays are estimated at $3.5 billion per year. That’s a B—$3.5 billion a year. This is $3.5 billion in lost opportunity. This is $3.5 billion in additional costs. That is $3.5 billion standing between Ontario, families and the homes they need to buy.

Bill 98 takes action by prohibiting unnecessary enhanced development standards and by consulting with experts on how best to modernize site plan control. The goal is simple: a faster, more predictable, more coordinated and more cost-effective approval process.

Let me be clear, Speaker: This is not about weakening health and safety. This is not about ignoring stormwater management. This is not about saying that responsible development does not matter. It’s about focusing on the process on what actually matters and stopping the use of unnecessary requirements that add costs and delays without improving outcomes for residents.

Bill 98 also recognizes that if we want to build more attainable homes, we need to look honestly at the rules that shape what can be built. That includes minimum lot sizes. In many communities, outdated local rules require lots to be larger than they need to be. That limits the number of homes that can be built. It makes it harder to create smaller, smarter homes. It pushes up the land costs and it reduces the options available for people who are trying to get their foot in the door.

Our government is giving home builders more flexibility to meet the needs of communities and future homeowners by establishing minimum lot size standards. This is practical. This is common sense. It’s about making better use of land in the communities where people already live and work.

Not every family needs the same kind of home. Not every buyer can afford a large, detached home on a large lot. Not every senior wants to remain in a home that no longer fits their needs. A healthy housing system needs options. It needs starter homes. It needs rentals. It needs seniors’ homes. It needs family-sized housing. It needs homes in large cities, small towns, rural communities and northern communities. Bill 98 supports that broader housing continuum.

One way it does this is by extending development charge exemptions to not-for-profit retirement homes. Through Bill 17, our government exempted long-term care homes from development charges. We’re building on that work by extending relief to not-for-profit seniors’ housing, and that matters because seniors’ housing is not separate from the housing supply conversation. It’s a key part of it, and when seniors have more opportunities to downsize into housing that meets their needs, that can free up existing homes for families and first-time buyers. It creates movement within the housing market.

It supports older Ontarians who want to remain close to their community, their family and the services that they’ve relied upon. And it helps build a housing system that works for people at every stage of life.

A well-functioning housing system is a fluid housing continuum. It means young people can find rental options. It means families can move into homes with more space. It means seniors can downsize with dignity. It means workers can live closer to where they work. And it means communities can grow in a way that supports people from one stage of life to the next. Bill 98 helps move us closer to the goal.

Another important part of this legislation is development charge transparency. For far too long, many homebuyers have not had a clear picture of the government-imposed costs that are built into the price of a new home. Development charges and other fees can add significant costs.

I’m just going to give you an example. In some cases, development charges can increase the cost of a home by more than $150,000. That’s real money. That’s money that can affect a young family’s mortgage. That’s money that affects whether a renter can move into ownership. That is money that affects whether a new home is within reach or out of reach.

Homebuyers truly deserve to know where their money is going. When somebody makes the biggest financial decision of their life, they deserve transparency. They deserve to understand the how much of that purchase price is connected to municipal fees, charges and government-imposed costs. That’s why Bill 98 includes measures to consult on disclosing development charges and other hidden costs in an agreement of purchase and sale. This is about consumer protection, this is about transparency and it’s about having an honest conversation about what is driving the cost of housing in Ontario.

If we are serious about making housing more affordable, we have to be serious about the costs built into the system. We cannot pretend those costs do not exist. We can’t hide them; it’s as simple as that. We have to show them clearly and work to reduce them. That is what our government is doing.

Bill 98 also addresses one of the biggest barriers to growth in many communities: water and waste water infrastructure. Housing cannot be built without infrastructure. Homes need roads. They need water. They need waste water servicing. They need the basic system that will allow communities to grow safely and sustainability. But this infrastructure is very expensive, and too often the cost of new infrastructure is placed upon an upfront on new housing through development charges. That makes homes more expensive before a family even moves into the home.

Our government continues to advance our plan for publicly owned municipal service corporations. And I want to be very clear on this: These are publicly owned corporations—public, not private. They are a tool to help municipalities finance and deliver critical infrastructure in a way that supports growth, spreads costs more fairly over time and avoids placing the full burden on the new homebuyer.

Municipal partners have been very clear that they need those tools. They need these new tools, and they’ve been clear that water and waste water infrastructure is a major challenge. They have encouraged speed and efficiency in establishing municipally owned public service corporations. I’ve personally heard from many of our municipal partners, and they are very interested in this possibility. This model gives municipalities other options—another option. It supports long-term planning and it helps protect continuity of service. It helps support workers and existing contracts. It helps ensure that infrastructure can keep pace with the housing growth Ontario needs.

Our government will continue to protect Ontario by advancing innovative policies that ensure everyone has a place to call home. That includes recognizing that different communities face different servicing challenges. In rural and remote communities, the issue is often not a lack of demand for housing. It’s not a lack of interest in growth. It is the fact that traditional municipal servicing may not be available, and individual wells and septic systems may not always be the right solution.

That’s why Bill 98 supports a framework for communal water and waste water systems. These systems can serve multiple homes, often in the range of approximately 20 to 200 homes. They can enable new communities to be built in areas that cannot currently access municipal water systems. They can act as a bridge between large and municipal servicing systems and individually owned systems, and they have been used successfully in other jurisdictions.

This is about unlocking housing in communities that have been held back by infrastructure limitations. It’s about rural Ontario. It’s about northern Ontario. It’s about smaller communities that want to grow but need practical tools to do this. Like all public utilities, these systems will remain highly regulated. They will subject to safeguards. They will be required to be safe, financially sustainable, properly operated and properly maintained. This is responsible, this is practical and this is exactly the kind of innovation we are thinking of and we need if we are going to meet Ontario’s housing needs.

Speaker, Bill 98 also forms part of a broader planning reform, and our government is not just reforming how Ontario builds but we are reforming how Ontario plans. People are looking for homes. They are looking for results. They are looking for a place to live, raise a family, build a career and remain in the communities they love. But the status quo is not working. It’s too slow, it’s too expensive and too complicated. It has left far too many people wondering whether home ownership will ever be possible, too many families facing higher rents and fewer options, and too many communities struggling to build the infrastructure and housing that they need to grow.

Our government will not accept that. We will no longer accept obstruction, duplication or unnecessary costs escalating. That stands in the way of families trying to find a home. We are working with municipal leaders, home builders, workers and community partners who share our commitment to building a stronger, more self-reliant Ontario.

Bill 98 is not a stand-alone action. It’s part of a broader plan. It works alongside our HST relief on new homes, its historic support to reduce the development charges—these are historic, monumental moves; they’re bold moves—investments in housing-enabling infrastructure and the reforms already advanced through Bill 17 and Bill 60.

This bill is about people, essentially: the young person saving to find a first home, the couple hoping to start a family, the senior looking to downsize, the worker who wants to live closer to the job and the small-town community that wants to grow. And that’s why we’re acting. Bill 98 simplifies official plans, reforms site plan control, reduces unnecessary costs, supports attainable housing and expanding senior housing options, improves development charges transparency and advances publicly owned water and waste water tools. This is how we make life more affordable, support growth and protect Ontario’s future. I hope you will support Bill 98.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Simcoe–Grey.

Mr. Brian Saunderson: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and good morning.

It’s a pleasure to join this debate on Bill 98, on behalf of the hard-working residents of Simcoe–Grey. I’m particularly pleased to be involved in this legislation because of my responsibilities as a parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, but also because I have eight years’ experience in municipal government. I served on town council in the great town of Collingwood and on the upper-tier government, the county of Simcoe.

As well, I serve on the standing committee for infrastructure, housing and cultural policy, and we had the hearings on this bill, so I come armed with many of the comments that we heard from the witnesses before the committee that went into bringing this legislation back for third reading.

During the time that I served on local council and county council, I got first-hand experience in terms of dealing with official planning issues—which is the overarching framework—permitting issues and planning processes that go into issuing the permits, issuing site plan approval and then issuing the building permits that will get houses built. What I saw during my time on the municipal level was that it’s not just about getting the permits issued; it’s about having the infrastructure in place that can accommodate the growth.

I saw first-hand in Simcoe county how the lack of servicing can lead to what I would call opportunistic growth. In other words, the areas that don’t have the servicing barriers can grow, and perhaps they grow faster than they should, given the other infrastructure that they have in terms of hospitals, schools, roads and transportation that are critical to sustaining and promoting what we call complete communities. And that is the ultimate goal in the planning world, is to have complete communities throughout your town, throughout your region so that those communities can thrive and grow as an organic whole independent of some of the larger framework issues.

It is with that framework and experience that I stand before the House today to speak in support of this important legislation that is part of this government’s ongoing and iterative agenda to address the housing crisis. We want to address that crisis in ways that are sustainable, planned, forward-thinking and, as I said, give rise to the development of complete communities.

And that challenge, Mr. Speaker, is very real. Because across Ontario, people are feeling the pressure of a housing system that has become too slow, too costly and too difficult to navigate. As we heard from both the associate minister and my colleague from Thornhill—and I will be repeating some of the things they said, and that’s only because it bears repeating, because it is important given the crisis that we are facing.

We have young people who are trying to get into the housing market, and we have seniors that are trying to downsize and remain in the communities that they grew up and thrived in. We want to get workers living in residences that are close to the jobs and the lives they lead so that they spend less hours commuting every day.

We see these challenges across the province. We see it in the GTA, but we also see it in rural Ontario. And I’ve said many times in this House that this government—not only on this side of the House, but as rump on other side of the House—represents people from all area codes across this great province. That cannot be said of the official opposition or the third party. We represent all of Ontario and we have to come up with plans, particularly in housing, that are going to make all communities strive across this great province, both in the GTA and to the north.

Our province is growing faster than any other province in Canada. Our population is 40% of Canada’s population and we are the economic engine of Canada as well. We have brought over one million jobs to Ontario since 2018, and we have attracted over $77 billion in foreign investment to Ontario in the automotive sector, the tech sector and the health sciences sector.

We are growing our school system, our education system, skills development programs and we have created two new medical schools, all in an effort to make sure that we have the pipeline for the employment of the future, to make sure that we give our young careers to last them a lifetime and to serve and grow our province as we move forward.

People from across the country and around the world continue to choose Ontario because of the opportunities that exist here. That growth is a sign of confidence in our province, and it also places enormous pressures on housing, on infrastructure and on transportation systems. That’s why this government is acting and that’s exactly what this legislation is to address as part of our agenda.

As part of this legislation, Mr. Speaker, we are modernizing planning rules. We are working to streamline approvals. We have and continue to invest in housing-enabling infrastructure. We have supported municipalities that are meeting their housing targets, and we continue to remove barriers that have slowed projects down for far too long. This is an ongoing process and Bill 98 is directly part of that work.

This legislation recognizes that something critical has to be done to move our housing supply forward, and we know that housing does not happen in isolation. As I said, it requires critical infrastructure to support the developments, whether that be roads, transit, water systems, waste water servicing, electricity or transportation connections. It depends on a planning framework that is clear, predictable and consistent, and it depends on infrastructure systems that can support growth instead of holding it back.

That is why Bill 98 takes a broad and practical approach to address a number of these issues. It recognizes that if we want to build more homes, then we must also build and modernize the infrastructure to support that growth and promote the complete communities throughout our region and our province.

The legislation before this House includes measures to reduce delays, lower costs, improve coordination and modernize systems that have become unnecessarily fragmented, duplicitous and complex over time. Speaker, that work matters and that is why we’re before the House today on this legislation.

One of the key components of this legislation is the modernization and standardization of planning tools across Ontario, and a big part of that are official plans for each community.

Official plans are master frameworks that are the guide to growth and provide clarity about how communities will develop responsibly and sustainably over time. They address housing, they address commercial districts, they address industrial or employment lands and they also address things like hospital lands in areas. These official plans are the overarching framework that then the municipality fills in with their planning bylaws that will implement that growth strategy on the ground, from site plans right down to permitting processes.

Unfortunately, Speaker, over the years, many official plans had become lengthy, inconsistent and increasingly difficult to interpret. As a former municipal politician, I know these plans have become too big and too cumbersome. I know during my term as mayor in Collingwood, we were overhauling our official plan, and good practice is to make sure you review your official plan every 10 years, and the plan process took four years to get that, done and through. We were offered many add-ons and additions and nice-to-haves, but the reality is you need to get these plans done. They need to be succinct, they need to be concise and they need to be clear.

Different municipalities have different plans. They have different terminology. They have different formats. This creates confusion and uncertainty in the planning and building community. It slows approvals, it increases the administrative burden and it adds cost to the process. This bill proposes a more standardized approach to official planning across the province. That means a common structure, clear land use designations and more consistency between municipalities. This is about making the planning system easier to navigate and more efficient for everyone involved.

It means reducing the time that a municipality must spend in developing their official plans so that the plans can be put into action, bylaws can be created and permits can be issued. A more predictable planning framework means less time spent deciphering process and more time focused on homes built.

Bill 98 also takes important steps to address delays associated with site plan control. Site plan review exists for a reason, and it plays an important role in ensuring developments function properly within the community, but, in many cases, site plan requirements have expanded well beyond what is necessary for health and safety. Again, over time, it has been a case of mission creep. In some municipalities, increasingly prescriptive aesthetic and design requirements have added significant costs and delays to projects without improving housing outcomes.

This bill also launches broader consultations on structural reforms to the site plan process itself, including measures to reduce repeated rounds of feedback that can stall projects indefinitely. Every month a project sits idle means additional carrying costs, additional financing costs and additional uncertainty. All of those costs eventually show up in the final price of the house while also delaying its time getting to market.

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated at the outset, a very major part of this legislation is infrastructure, because housing cannot proceed if the infrastructure needed to support the housing is not available. As indicated, that includes water and waste water systems, it includes roads and highways, and it includes public transit.

Bill 98 contains several important measures related to water and waste water infrastructure, particularly in areas where servicing has historically limited growth. That is a particular concern for residents in my area of Simcoe county and rural areas where there’s not necessarily access to municipal services or significant expansion of municipal services is required. It’s difficult to get new homes built and to get growth, and growth is necessary for the municipalities to sustain themselves, to be able to meet their budgetary needs, to continue to provide the services that their residents are used to.

The challenge is not whether there’s demand for housing in smaller municipalities and rural municipalities; the challenge is whether the infrastructure exists to support that housing. Communal water and waste water systems can help address that issue. These systems, which can support multiple homes in areas without full municipal servicing, are already used successfully in other jurisdictions around the world. In fact, there’s a development in the Town of the Blue Mountains, in Grey county, which has a communal system, and there are easements that run across all of the titles to the land to allow for the system to reach the homes.

This legislation creates a stronger and clearer regulatory framework for those systems in Ontario while maintaining strong public health protections and oversight. That means more opportunities for growth in communities that would otherwise struggle to support new housing.

The bill also reinforces Ontario’s existing framework around public water systems by ensuring that drinking water systems owned by publicly owned water and waste water corporations continue to be treated as municipal systems under provincial law, and

schedule 8 to the legislation makes that very clear by adding publicly owned water systems to the Safe Drinking Water Act, which we all know—those who have served in the municipal world—is a critical piece of legislation to protect our residents and also imposes personal liability on all council members if they fail to maintain a safe drinking water system.

That will apply to the proposed municipal service corporations that we are proposing in this act. That means, whether the water system is directly operated by the municipality or by a municipal services corporation, it remains subject to the same rigorous licensing, testing, operator certification and public health standards that Ontarians already rely on today.

The discussion around the publicly owned municipal service corporations is a very important one and one that’s very much in my mind coming from council in Collingwood. In my riding of Simcoe–Grey, there’s a great deal of infrastructure sharing. Collingwood takes water from Georgian Bay and sends it down to New Tecumseth and Alliston to provide safe drinking water for the residents there. So it services about 80,000 people and it has, in the 60-kilometre pipe, joints where other municipalities can attach to draw their drinking water.

It’s a critical piece of infrastructure for our region and one that received HEWSF funding from the government of $70 million, as well as some additional funding to help make sure that they get the plant expansion done to make sure they can continue to provide that water and to accommodate the growth that’s coming to the region.

The town of Clearview sends waste water to the municipality of Wasaga Beach. It also sends waste water to the town of Collingwood, and the town of Bradford West Gwillimbury is drawing water through Innisfil from Lake Simcoe. So these things are happening organically because what the municipalities are seeing first-hand is that the cost burden of doing these projects on their own is too much so they need to share it.

When you take planning and you lift it up for infrastructure, and do it across all 16 member-municipalities in the county of Simcoe, there’s a huge upside to that. That upside is it takes it off the municipal tables, so it takes off the cost of the implementation, it takes off the cost of maintenance, it takes away the asset management planning burden and it also reduces and relieves some of the DC burden. These are all things that we’re seeing first-hand that are either affecting the front-end cost of a home or affecting a municipality’s ability to grow in a sustainable and planned way.

By putting it in the hands of a publicly owned municipal services corporation, Mr. Speaker, I want to draw your attention to

schedule 9 of the bill, because it says in the very first section, “Subsection 2(2) of the Water and Wastewater Public Corporations Act, 2025 is repealed and the following substituted:

“Same

“

(2) A corporation may be designated for the purposes of subsection (1) only if,

“(

a) the corporation is incorporated under the Business Corporations Act; and

Further down:

“Limitation on sale or transfer of shares

This prescribes the way that the company can be owned. The shareholders of the company will be the governments that respond to the people. These assets are owned by the public. They will continue to be owned by the public and no shares can ever be transferred to anyone other than one of these levels of government that are, again, ensuring that these critical assets are publicly owned.

So what does that do at the end of the day, Mr. Speaker? It does a number of very important things. Under the Municipal Act, municipalities have a debt load restriction—they cannot have a debt load that’s greater than 25% of their own source revenue. And at the cost of these types of infrastructure, that makes it very difficult for a municipality to do.

Secondly, municipalities have restrictions about the type of financing they can enter into and the terms of that financing. If it is owned by a publicly owned municipal corporation, the debt load is different. If we look to the local distribution units in the energy sector under the OEB, their mandate is to be 40% equity, 60% debt, to allow them to finance the type of infrastructure they need to make sure that when someone hits a switch, the lights go on. It would be the same in the water world.

To allow those municipal service corporations to enter into different types of debt arrangements where they can finance longer, they can pay over time—because these are the type of assets that should be paid for by multiple generations. You can’t pay for it all upfront, and that’s what the municipalities are finding out. That alleviates that stress, and it allows for the regional planning to move forward in a way that’s responsible, intentional and planned for the long term.

If you consider the fact, Mr. Speaker, that across the province of Ontario, we have an infrastructure deficit in excess of $200 billion, this is the type of forward thinking that we have to implement in order to crack that nut, to get moving, to get the infrastructure in the ground that can support the development that we need so that we can get the houses built of all types across the continuum.

We know that this government is taking aggressive steps with the HST rebate, also with an $8.8-billion DC plan over 10 years with the federal government to help municipalities recoup DCs and make these types of planning decisions. It’s all part of the business case to get homes in the ground.

We know since we passed the HST that the housing starts have taken off. We know with the DC reductions, it’s going to make upfront costs cheaper, and that, we have seen, is stimulating growth right away. We’ve seen these things take effect.

While this is an iterative process, we are getting there. We have much to do, and Bill 98 is a critical piece of that agenda moving forward, Mr. Speaker. That is why I support it wholeheartedly, and that is why the municipalities that I have talked to in my riding all support this type of initiative moving forward, because it’s making critical changes to the existing infrastructure to make sure we can move forward responsibly.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): It is now time for questions.

Mr. Chris Glover: Recently, it was announced in the city of Waterloo that they’re actually going to have to cancel a housing project, in part because of the downloading of development costs onto municipalities. Municipalities across this province are facing double-digit tax increases because of the consistent downloading of not only this Conservative government but the last Liberal government.

So what is your government going to do to actually get housing built? Because everything you’ve done so far has resulted in Ontario having the second-lowest number of housing starts of any province in Ontario.

Hon. Graydon Smith: Thank you for the question.

I would beg to differ. Putting infrastructure dollars into municipalities, which we have done by the billions of dollars, is exactly the kind of thing that gets housing built. Removing the HST on the cost of new homes built in Ontario is exactly the kind of thing that gets housing built. Having a development charges program that supplements the cost of development charge implementation in municipalities is exactly the kind of thing that gets housing built.

We are seeing the results of that, Speaker—we are seeing the results of those changes. If you survey sales offices throughout Ontario right now, you will see a real uptick in the number of new homes being built and constructed.

But, of course, we’ll continue to be there for our municipal partners to make sure that the questions around infrastructure, the challenges around infrastructure are met. We’re all eyes wide open on that and continue to make investments with municipalities to ensure that what they need to make sure that they can grow into the future is what we can provide.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Question?

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: Good morning, Mr. Speaker. Good morning, everyone.

Ontarians want to save money, especially on energy bills. They want to live in comfort, they want to reduce greenhouse gases, and they want to help create good, green jobs, which is the green economy, which is the way of the future. The rest of the world is going that way.

Ontarians are writing to me so upset that this government is killing the green development standards. So I would like you to give me—any of the speakers—a concrete example of how and when green development standards have slowed down housing.

Mr. Brian Saunderson: The government is doing no such thing. We’re not killing green standards. What we are doing is defining in the building code to make sure that it sets out the minimum standards.

We don’t require people to buy EVs. Actually, the federal government did for a while, but they’ve now abandoned that, because it’s not working. What we’re doing is enabling people to make the choice: Do you want an EV or no EV? Do you want green standards or no green standards? That’s your election, and if it makes economic sense, as my friend opposite has said many years, then people will do that for the right reasons. We’re not taking away the ability to do that. We’re giving people choice.

What we’re doing is making sure homes are built, codes are consistent, planning is consistent so that developers know what they need.

If you want a green roof, if you want an EV, go ahead and buy it.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Brantford–Brant.

Mr. Will Bouma: I appreciate the opportunity to ask a question of my colleague from Simcoe–Grey.

I listened with interest to the speeches from all of our colleagues and, Speaker, if I may, without trying to take anything away from it, this bill seems somewhat mundane, but that’s also what I think is the genius about it is: It’s just taking care of things. It simply makes sense to get houses in the ground faster.

I was wondering, especially with this background in municipal politics—and I know he touched on some of that—what are some of the really good things with your background that the member from Simcoe–Grey would like to highlight again for the House this morning?

Mr. Brian Saunderson: I want to thank my colleague and bench mate for the question. What I’m seeing with the eight years that I was in the municipal world, what I saw first-hand, the biggest hurdle, and I continue to see it today, is the necessary infrastructure to support housing development, and this bill is tackling that head-on. As I said, a number of municipalities in my riding have got HEWS funding, but it is a massive undertaking for them to go through the procurement, go through the implementation and make sure it happens on time.

A municipal service corporation does so much to alleviate the burden on the individual municipality in terms of their financing restrictions, their debt restrictions, asset management planning and DCs and lifts it to a corporation that can do these things in a different way, that makes sense in the long term, will plan it on a regional perspective and is publicly owned and can never be anything other than publicly owned.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further questions?

MPP Wayne Gates: This bill has a great title, but there’s a lot missing from it to help families in my riding of Fort Erie, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Falls and across the province. Here’s what’s missing that will actually make a difference: Bring back real rent control on new builds from 2019; stop renovictions, particularly for seniors; building public and non-profit housing: That would help us.

This government has had years to build housing and meet its own goals. Every year, we should be building about 150,000 homes according to their plan, but last year, we built 65,000. Housing starts have fallen every year since 2022. The solutions proposed in this bill give the minister more power over how municipalities plan.

How can this government tell us that the minister needs more control over planning when home building is going in the wrong direction with 65,000—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Response?

Hon. Graydon Smith: I’m sure the member across the way would agree that what we want to do to get homes built in Ontario is reduce the complications, reduce the barriers, reduce the amount of time it takes to get new homes built and ultimately reduce the cost on new homes for families and seniors and those looking to either upsize or downsize in Ontario.

It’s clear, Speaker, that what we have been doing is working. Bill 98 will be a part of that, should it be passed, and we’re excited about the changes it will bring, because simplicity equals less time, equals more approvals, equals an opportunity to build the homes that he wants in his riding and that we all want in our ridings throughout Ontario. So we’ll continue to work with municipalities to streamline the processes that remove costs from the systems and get more people into new homes. That’s what it’s all about.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): I recognize the member from Essex.

Mr. Anthony Leardi: I have a question for the minister on communal water systems. I think communal water systems already exist in Ontario; they have existed for a very long time. They have been very practical and implemented in various areas of the province which don’t have access to large, sophisticated systems that we have most typically in urban areas. Of course, over time, technology has changed and technology has improved. We now have technology today that we didn’t even have 10 years ago to treat water and to provide for healthy and clean water for communities across Ontario. This technology is fantastic.

I’m wondering if the minister might comment on communal water systems. What does this bill do about communal water systems, and how can this bill help communities in Ontario with communal water systems?

Hon. Graydon Smith: I appreciate the question from my seatmate next door here. Speaker, I think we’re at an opportunity point where we see that technology has really increased. That has been brought to bear for communal systems, and we want to make sure that we can implement that all throughout Ontario.

When we talk about communal systems, I think in the past we would think about systems that get implemented in very rural areas, maybe using some shared components around wells or septics. Those days are gone, and what we’re talking about now are very high-tech systems that can be implemented at scale to meet whatever the size of the development being contemplated is, whether that’s 25 homes or 50 homes.

We know that we have opportunities in communities all throughout Ontario; they just need to be serviced. Being able to use this new, evolving and improved technology to solve that problem is critical and it’s an exciting opportunity.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Further questions?

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: The member just mentioned about voluntary action. If voluntary actions are so successful, why don’t we make seat belts voluntary? Why don’t we make speed limits voluntary?

Toronto has exceeded its housing starts by 51% with having a Toronto Green Standard in effect. It’s a proven fact in the largest city in North America that the green development standards did not slow down housing. In fact, EllisDon, Minto and Tribute—all big, reputable developers—have approved it and—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Response?

Hon. Graydon Smith: Speaker, with the greatest of respect to the member across the aisle, it’s that attitude that is exactly the problem: that there is no serious interest in solving the housing stalemate that exists in some municipalities in Ontario; rather, it’s fostered and encouraged.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): It is now time for members’ statements.

Third reading debate deemed adjourned.

Members’ Statements

Ask for Angela

MPP Monica Ciriello: This week is Victims and Survivors of Crime Week, and I rise today to recognize a program that embodies exactly what that recognition means in action.

Three quiet words: “Is Angela here?” Ask for Angela is a community safety initiative that gives someone experiencing gender-based violence, coercive control or human trafficking a discrete way to signal for help at participating locations that they already feel safe going to, whether it be a grocery store, a pharmacy or a nail salon.

I was recently at the Victim Services Toronto announcement to launch this initiative. What struck me was how simple and how powerful this program is. At participating locations across Ontario, trained staff recognized the phrase and they are brought to a safe place. They connect them without judgment to a 24/7 crisis line in over 35 languages, free of charge.

This program is delivered on behalf of Ontario’s Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, because we believe that protecting victims is not optional. This initiative is already saving lives and is in place at over 225 locations, with more than 8,000 staff across this province trained to provide this service.

Human trafficking doesn’t always look the way we imagine, and neither does domestic violence. This government is clear that we stand with victims and we fund programs that protect them.

UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Mr. Sol Mamakwa: ᒥᓄᑭᔐᐸᔭ

Today, I want to recognize four young people from the north who represented Treaty 9 homelands at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. While many leaders have stopped talking about Ontario’s Bill 5 and Canada’s Bill C-5, Ryan Fleming, Jeronimo Kataquapit, Ramon Kataquapit and Kohen Mattinas have not backed down. They continue to be among the loudest voices speaking out against the government’s violation of First Nations treaty and inherent rights.

Jeronimo launched a Here We Stand movement, bringing attention to the Attawapiskat River and pushing back against the Ring of Fire developments.

Ramon and Kohen are founders of the youth-led Okiniwak movement, opposing fast-tracked mining in northern Ontario.

Ryan is a doctoral researcher who has given powerful talks on Bills 5 and C-5.

On the last day of the forum, Jeronimo raised a question of how government can respect environmental protection and Indigenous rights while operating in the opening of the Ring of Fire. For Jeronimo, it is not possible to do both.

Again, meegwetch to these leaders for reminding us who we are accountable—

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ric Bresee): Members’ statements?

Ottawa Charge hockey team

Mrs. Karen McCrimmon: Speaker, I would like to start by requesting unanimous consent for me to wear the sports jersey of the professional women’s hockey team of Ottawa, the Ottawa Charge. Is that all right?

Interjections: Agreed.

Mrs. Karen McCrimmon: Great. Thank you. There we go.

Interjections.

Mrs. Karen McCrimmon: Thank you, everybody.

There is excitement in my riding of Kanata–Carleton, and all of Ottawa. At a packed Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata, we’ve recently hosted an extraordinary hockey game.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League is taking North America by storm, and Ottawa’s own Ottawa Charge has punched their tickets to the playoff finals. The women will play either Minnesota or Montreal in the finals, which should start on Monday, May 18.

I want to wish interim head coach Haley Irwin, captain Brianne Jenner and all of the members of Ottawa Charge all the very best in these finals.

For coach Carla MacLeod, who is battling cancer, please know that we are all thinking of you. You’ve got this.

We are so proud and inspired by all of you, and for the ladies of the Ottawa Charge, we are so proud of everything you have achieved. You’ve got this. Go, Ottawa Charge, go!

Primary care

Ms. Effie J. Triantafilopoulos: Access to primary care is one of the most important issues facing families today.

Last week, I was pleased to announce an investment of $4.1 million as part of Ontario’s Primary Care Action Plan to expand interprofessional primary care teams across Halton. Teams included Dorval Medical and OakMed Family Health teams and Support House in my own community, led by Connected Care Halton.

Thanks to this funding, more people will have access to collaborative, team-based care that brings together family doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers and other health professionals. More than 10,000 residents across Oakville, Halton Hills and Milton who currently do not have access to a family doctor will be connected to the care they need, closer to home.

This is part of our government’s plan to connect 500,000 more people to primary care and ensure everyone is connected to a family doctor or primary care team by 2029.

I want to thank all of our health care partners for their leadership and collaboration as we continue to build more patient-centred care for families across Oakville North–Burlington, Halton region and Ontario.

Online gambling

Mr. Tom Rakocevic: This government made Ontario the only province in Canada to open the door to private, for-profit online gambling sites. Since then, these relentless companies have flooded our phones, computer screens and sporting events with non-stop ads telling young Ontarians that gambling is cooler than smoking.

By allowing this constant pressure, the Ontario government has helped normalize online gambling, targeting young fans and pushing many towards addiction and financial ruin.

Speaker, can you believe that in 2025, $98.3 billion were gambled on licensed online platforms in Ontario. That’s a 26% increase from the year before, and it just keeps growing. It’s no wonder that studies show problem gambling affects one in five young adults here, with many of them reaching out desperately to addictions hotlines for help.

Speaker, young adults are the target here, and this government is doing nothing to help. In fact, with youth unemployment hitting a country-high 17%, and with this government’s recent cuts to OSAP, young people have never felt so financially desperate, which is a known link to gambling.

It’s time for the government to step up and show leadership. Ban these relentless predatory online gambling ads and properly fund addiction services to give those who need help the chance they need to break the cycle and get their lives back.

Kingsville Highland Games

Mr. Anthony Leardi: I have more great news from Essex county. The Highland Games are a celebration of culture and heritage for people who have Scottish and Celtic background, and this time, the Highland Games are going to be held in Kingsville, Ontario.

The Kingsville Highland Games feature sporting events and cultural events such as bagpiping and drumming; strength contests like the hammer throw, the sheaf toss, the stone throw, the caber toss, a tug of war; highland dancing; a clan village where people can explore their heritage and their background; sheep shearing; sheep herding; and, of course, the famous haggis hurl.

This great event is co-sponsored by several great organizations, including LIUNA 625 and the Rotary Club of Kingsville. And this government supports the 2026 Kingsville Highland Games with a grant in the amount of $20,000.

I want to thank the minister and the Premier for supporting the power, the culture and the tradition which is the 2026 Kingsville Highland Games.

Mental health and addiction services

MPP Lise Vaugeois: I want to thank two grassroots organizations whose members believe that people who use or have used drugs deserve safe and equitable access to care without stigma. Thunder Bay’s DEK Foundation was founded by Carolyn Karle after the tragic loss of her daughter to an unintentional overdose.

Moms Stop the Harm is a Canada-wide network of families impacted by substance use harms and deaths.

The province’s Homelessness Prevention Program offers transitional shelter to people made vulnerable by being homeless, and this is important. But when a person has successfully completed addiction treatment, there is nowhere safe to go and there are no long-term recovery supports. Because of this, the risk of relapse is high.

DEK and Moms Stop the Harm fundraise and advocate for housing and wraparound supports for those who have just finished substance use treatment, but they need a willing government partner.

Deaths in Thunder Bay from unintentional overdoses are six times the provincial average. After-treatment housing and wraparound supports are urgently needed to stop this tragic loss of life.

I implore the government to work with DEK and Moms Stop the Harm. The right supports will save lives and ease those in recovery towards healthy relationships with themselves and others.

Thank you. Merci. Meegwetch.

The Blessing Centre

Mr. Will Bouma: I’m pleased to rise today in the House to talk about an incredible organization and initiative in my community. The Brantford Blessing Centre, in many partnerships including the Brantford General Hospital and the Ontario health team, serves hot meals at dinner time to clientele numbering roughly 200 people a day—no judgment, no questions asked.

The Blessing Centre is run by volunteers comprised of community members and churches that take turns cooking and maximizing donated and collected food to be given to people in need.

A large part of the Blessing Centre’s operation is rescuing food that would otherwise go to waste from places like the Brantford Food Bank, Zehrs, Cobs Bread, Sweet Bakery and Costco. That allows them to keep their cost per meal to 85 cents.

In order to transport all this rescued food, the Brantford Blessing Centre was in dire need of a new refrigerated van. A commercial food van is a large expense, and it seemed out of reach for the Blessing Centre. But, Speaker, I’m happy to report that S.C. Johnson, whose Canadian headquarters is in our Brantford community, graciously donated a van to the Blessing Centre in order for them to continue their incredible work.

Stories like this make me incredibly proud to represent Brantford–Brant. What happens when our community comes together for the benefit of others shows that Brantford–Brant is the best place to live, work, play and raise a family in this great province.

Canadian Italian Business and Professional Association

Mrs. Michelle Cooper: Today I rise to recognize the Canadian Italian Business and Professional Association, better known as CIBPA, and the incredible contributions of the Italian community in our province. For generations, Italian Canadians have built businesses, created jobs, supported local charities and strengthened communities across Ontario. Through organizations like CIBPA, that spirit of giving back continues in remarkable ways.

Since 2011, the CIBPA Education Foundation has distributed or pledged more than $2 million in bursaries to over 1,100 students. They’ve also supported institutions like COSTI, Villa Colombo and the Italian Immigrant Aid Society. In Eglinton–Lawrence, we see the legacy every day, especially along Dufferin Street, where Italian-owned businesses, restaurants, cafes, bakeries and family-run shops continue to bring culture, opportunity and vibrancy to our neighbourhood.

I would also like to warmly welcome John Mandarino, director, and Dario Dibennardo, membership coordinator, who are here with us today in the Legislature, along with the broader community in leadership and membership. Thank you for the important work you do supporting professionals, entrepreneurs, and young leaders through your charitable initiatives and Ontario’s business community.

University of Guelph

Mr. Mike Schreiner: I rise today to thank everyone who attended the University of Guelph’s reception last night. I was inspired by the agri-food innovation on display and by the all-party support for the University of Guelph’s efforts to improve life.

Guelph’s excellent, teaching, research and service record is motivating people to support the university, including, most recently, the largest donation in Canadian history to a business school.

I offer my heartfelt thanks to Stu and Kim Lang for their $51-million investment in the Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics. The Lang School has a strong focus on responsible leadership. They are training the leaders of tomorrow to solve complex problems and to act with integrity. Their investment will launch Lang GoodWorks, a learning program that centres the business school’s “business as a force for good” mission.

Through GoodWorks, students will participate in paid internships in the charitable and non-profit sectors, finding placements that align with their values and develop their social impact potential. I could not agree more with Stu: “We believe in the power of education to not just shape careers, but character.”

I want to thank Stu and Kim for their generous investment in young people and their education. I’m so grateful for their commitment to supporting a new generation of ethical business leaders here in Canada.

Introduction of Visitors

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I want to draw attention to the Speaker’s gallery and introduce a member from the riding of Flamborough–Glanbrook and one of our very proud greenhouse growers, Jan VanderHout. Thank you, and welcome to Queen’s Park.

Hon. Graydon Smith: Just a moment: 19 years ago today was a pretty good day for me. I married the love of my wife, my beautiful wife Melissa, and I just want to wish her a happy anniversary. I love you. Sorry I couldn’t give you a card.

Mr. Billy Pang: Today please join me in welcoming the parents of legislative page Jason Wu from Markham–Unionville, Mr. and Mrs. Wu, on Jason’s page captain day. Congratulations, Jason, on this well-deserved honour.

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: I want to welcome the scholarship recipients from the Vector Institute to Queen’s Park this morning. As a critical part of our AI ecosystem, these grads represent some of the best AI talent the province has to offer. Welcome to Adrienna Tan, Cynthia Wang, Daniel Niu, David Carciente, Fu Yao Qiu, Jack Emo, Maxwell Levy, Mithunan Ravindran, Sarah Rabie, Sohan Sanjeev and Teodor Cirstoiu. Welcome to your House.

Ms. Marit Stiles: It is my great pleasure today to introduce to everyone the very first cohort of the Ontario NDP summer youth internship program. They were selected from all over Ontario from over 850 applications. I’m going to go just by first names because it will take too long if I do everybody. Congratulations and welcome Marlo, Sophie, Ahmed, Jayden, Wyatt, Alex, Emily, Avery, Emmanuella, Minh, Olivia, Remiel, Ashley, Zeynab, Erin and Farhana. Welcome to your House. We are so excited to have you here.

Ms. Mary-Margaret McMahon: Good morning, everyone. I would like to give a special welcome to my incredible nephew jazzy Jack Emo, who’s here with all the smart cookies getting the award from Vector Institute. Thank you. Welcome to your House.

MPP George Darouze: I’m pleased to welcome founder Travis Blackmore, Ben Kennedy and Matthew Koopman from Lionhearts to Queen’s Park today.

Travis founded Lionhearts in 2014. Last year, I had the pleasure of touring their incredible facilities in Stittsville, Kingston and London. They support an amazing community, those in need.

Thank you for the work that you do. Welcome to your House.

Hon. Jill Dunlop: I’d like to welcome three members from my constituency of Simcoe North: Krista Prankard, Marty Prankard and Robyn Seidenberg.

I’d also like to welcome, from my ministry, John Bayes Jr. and his father, John Bayes Sr., who was also MPP Brian Saunderson’s childhood hockey coach.

I would also like to welcome back Adam Cotter and Alyssa Alibaksh. Thank you for being here today.

Hon. Greg Rickford: Investing in young people is one of the most important things we can do here in this place, and I want to welcome Madelaine Lamarche, who joined my team as stakeholder and partner relations adviser, and Zara Kohan, who is starting as an intern. Welcome to our team and to this magnificent place.

MPP Wayne Gates: I’d like to welcome AJ in the front row there. He got here at 8 o’clock this morning to be here from Project SHARE; he’s executive director. You do great work, my friend. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

MPP Lisa Gretzky: I would like to welcome the team from UHC-Hub of Opportunities in Windsor. Welcome to Ali Bazzi and Mena Rimac.

Hon. Nina Tangri: I’m happy to welcome Zubair Choudhry, Taslima Nasreen, Michael Saniga, Jose Morgado, James Green and William Xiaojun Wei of the Society of Professional Accountants of Canada, RPA. Welcome to Queen’s Park. Please join us at a reception at lunchtime in 228 and 230 immediately following question period.

Mr. Brian Saunderson: It’s my pleasure to welcome Walter Vaz from Heritage Winery and Cidery, who is chair of the Ontario Craft Cider Association, and Janice Ruddock, the executive director. They invite everyone to the cider reception tonight between 5:00 and 7:00 in rooms 228 and 230.

M me Dawn Gallagher Murphy: I’d like to wish my wonderful colleague from the great riding of Mississauga–Malton a very happy birthday.

Hon. Sam Oosterhoff: I’d like to welcome a great resident of Beamsville, Derek Cartlidge, the president of Thornbury Craft cider, who is here today. Welcome to Queen’s Park. It’s great to see so many folks from the cider industry in the House.

Ms. Aislinn Clancy: I want to recognize and wish my colleague to my left—although kind of to my right—a very happy birthday yesterday: Bobby Ann Brady, MPP for Haldimand–Norfolk.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Parkdale–High Park? No. Anybody else? All right. I can’t believe that.

It is now time for question period.

Question Period

Hospital funding

Ms. Marit Stiles: This government has been in total denial about its record on health care. Five years ago, 90% of patients in emergency rooms were waiting an average of 2.7 hours before getting their initial assessment. But based on a study that was released just yesterday, we know now that that number has gone up 67%. Last year, patients waited four and a half hours in an emergency room before they even had an initial assessment.

Why has this Premier allowed wait times to get so out of control?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Minister of Health.

Hon. Sylvia Jones: I think it’s really important for us to look at the entire data component. When we look at CIHI data, in fact, we see that Ontario continues to lead Canada in terms of initial assessment in an emergency department. When we expand by 3,500 beds already—net new beds in the province of Ontario—that allows our hospital partners to make sure that people who need to be in our emergency departments and ultimately get admitted have that opportunity. That, of course, is separate and apart from the 3,000 beds that we are also building with net new capital.

We’re making the investments in people, in capital to ensure that Ontario continues to lead Canada and continues to provide world-class health care.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Leader of the Opposition.

Ms. Marit Stiles: Speaker, that’s a very creative response. We’ll get to some of that in a minute.

But I do want to talk about admission rates, because they are even worse: 90% of patients are waiting 44 hours before being admitted. This is a 52% increase. It is totally unacceptable, Speaker, and the government is failing to retain health care workers or open beds that would unblock our emergency rooms. Yet the Premier and this Minister of Health stands up every single day, day in and day out, claiming that they are making life better.

Why has this government completely abandoned patients in emergency rooms?

Hon. Sylvia Jones: As I’ve said many times in this House, you can have your own story, but you can’t have your own facts. And the facts are that Ontario leads Canada in terms of initial assessment in our emergency department.

Did we have to rebuild our health care system? Absolutely we did. Did we make that commitment through capital builds, through people, through ensuring that we have more opportunities for people to train in medical fields? Absolutely we did. We’ve seen that, in fact, there is a 15% increase in the number of nurses who are working in our publicly funded hospital system.

We make the investments. We ensure that the capital is there. And we also fund appropriately; as I’ve said many times, a 50% increase in hospital capital operating since our government took place in 2018.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the Leader of the Opposition.

Ms. Marit Stiles: The lowest beds by population in Canada; the lowest number of nurses by population in Canada.

In Canada, emergency wait times are the canary in the coal mine, Speaker. These are not just statistics. These are people, these are patients—patients who need care, who are waiting two full days before they are even admitted, 44 hours. It is utterly disgraceful. They are firing staff, they are letting our hospitals crumble, and they refuse to do what is necessary.

When will this government show us a real plan to fix hospitals in Ontario?

Hon. Sylvia Jones: Speaker, $60 billion in hospital capital infrastructure: Those are new hospitals in Ottawa, in Windsor. Those are expanded hospitals in Mississauga, in Niagara. Those are investments in our hospital system—when we expand with a brand new medical school in Brampton, where we already have individuals who are training to be physicians, and we’re in the works and planning for Scarborough, of course, and also in Vaughan.

Those are the investments our government makes, because when we came into government, when Premier Ford led this government, he was very clear that we needed to make the investments to ensure that people continued to provide and get world-class health care in the province of Ontario. When we make those investments, we not only have the world coming to Ontario, but we also have individuals who want to practice, want to train, want to work in the province of Ontario.

Cost of living

Ms. Marit Stiles: I don’t think the government has ever been so out of touch, really, with where people are at in the province of Ontario as this government.

Speaker, let’s go back to the Premier again, because this Premier continues to let the cost of living get completely out of control, and more and more Ontarians are looking for relief in any way they can.

Last year, over one million people relied on food banks to feed themselves and their families; one in three were children. Food bank use has gone up every single year since this government was elected and there is no relief in sight, Speaker.

So I want to ask the Premier when this government will take meaningful action and address the cost-of-living crisis in this province.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Minister of the Environment.

Hon. Todd J. McCarthy: Well, I rise both as Minister of the Environment and acting Minister of Infrastructure in answering this question, Madam Speaker.

Under the leadership of Premier Ford, we are making record investments in building the Ontario of tomorrow and that has huge economic impacts across the province: $236-billion investment over the next 10 years in infrastructure—the largest capital investment in Ontario and Canadian history. The jobs that are created—hundreds of thousands of jobs in the construction sector as a result—and the spin-off of that is strong resilience for Ontarians, protecting Ontario, building the Ontario of tomorrow and making sure that there are opportunities for all, prosperity for all. That is the way to protect Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the Leader of the Opposition.

Ms. Marit Stiles: It’s beyond me why the acting Minister of Infrastructure was responding to that question, unless their plan is to just build more food banks. But I would say that is not a solution to the crisis we are facing.

Last year saw a record-breaking 8.7 million food bank visits in the province of Ontario. Many of those were students—the same students that this government has cut OSAP for. Students are using food banks and this Premier accused them of buying luxury perfume. Remember that?

Well, guess what? We have learned very clearly today, as we all suspected, those were completely made-up accusations. Students are having their funding cut, they are using food banks, and this Premier is buying himself luxury private jets—totally out of touch.

Why is this government letting life get so unaffordable for the people of Ontario?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Member for Whitby.

Mr. Lorne Coe: The changes we’re making to OSAP are restoring sustainability to this program so that the program stays viable for generations. If our government had not acted, the pressure would have decimated OSAP.

Under the Liberal McGuinty-Wynne government, the grant-to-loan ratio was actually 15%, and 85% until 2017—less grants than what we’ve introduced. When the grants were flipped in 2017 to 85% grants and 15% loans, the Auditor General found that to be unsustainable, ballooning costs of the program on the backs of taxpayers by the billions.

When the Liberal federal government decided to eliminate grants for career college students, creating a $2.3-billion pressure on OSAP, it was the last straw. We had to act to protect OSAP and protect taxpayers.

This change is part of our suite of actions, including our $6.4-billion investment that will ensure students can continue to access world-class education for decades to come.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member for Windsor West.

MPP Lisa Gretzky: Back to the Premier: You chose to spend $30 million on a private luxury jet for the Premier and billions on a private luxury spa in downtown Toronto, so don’t tell us that you can’t afford to fund OSAP.

After eight years under this Premier, food bank use in Ontario has skyrocketed 165%, with 8.7 million visits last year alone. In Windsor and across the province, rents are out of control and jobs are disappearing. People working full-time can’t even afford groceries. The number of seniors using food banks has doubled under this government’s watch and one in three users is a person with a disability.

When working people, children, people with disabilities and seniors go to bed hungry, that isn’t leadership; that is a failure of your government policies.

So to the Premier: When will he admit that his government is so out of touch—and frankly, entitled—that they prioritized buying a $30-million luxury jet for the Premier over ensuring that families have enough food to eat in this province?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Minister of Children, Community and Social Services.

Hon. Michael Parsa: Madam Speaker, our government has been focused—day one—on making life more affordable for Ontarians. In fact, we’ve been the only party in this Legislature that has been focused on this. We’ve taken action to make life more affordable.

The member referenced those on disability. It was this government that introduced the largest increase to the Ontario Disability Support Program. As of July this year, we’ll see an increase of 22% in less than four years.

It was this government that stood by students in school, that increased the Student Nutrition Program to $37.5 million. That wasn’t it; we didn’t stop. We partnered with organizations to say, “Come on. The spirit of the Student Nutrition Program is collaboration.” As a result, our partners increased that funding by an additional $5 million so that no student in this province goes to school hungry.

We will not stop fighting for—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the leader of the third party.

Government jet

Mr. John Fraser: My question is for the President of the Treasury Board. I’ve lost count on how many exact times I’ve asked this question, but let’s take another kick at the can. To the President of the Treasury Board: Who owns the Premier’s luxury jet?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Minister of Energy and Mines.

Hon. Stephen Lecce: Another day, another day of dysfunctional headlines in the Liberal Party. It’s fascinating. You can’t run a nomination, but you want to run the province of Ontario.

The people of Ontario gave Premier Ford a mandate to make our lives more affordable. We brought forth a budget to cut the gas tax by 10 cents.

I ask the Liberal leader today if he would tell the people of Ottawa, the people of Ontario, why he believes every commuter should pay more for gasoline; why he believes a young person trying to own a home should pay 100 grand more for the achievement of home ownership; why he believes a small business owner should pay 30% more to run a business in an economic war.

Get your priorities straight and focus on the issues that matter to the people of Ontario: affordability, taxation, jobs. That’s what we’re seized with.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I will remind members that you address your questions and responses through the Speaker.

Back to the leader of the third party.

Mr. John Fraser: If the minister could spare Ontarians his leadership audition, we would like to get an answer about the Premier’s luxury private jet. Nobody over there can answer it. The government has lost its way and, apparently, lost a jet too.

The President of the Treasury Board signed off on this, and then cabinet were all happy to go along for a ride: “Buckle up, guys.”

Is the President of the Treasury Board going to stand up and tell us anything about the Premier’s luxury private jet? Maybe the simplest question is, who actually owns it right now? I do not understand why that is such a difficult question to answer. Can the President of the Treasury Board please provide that information?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the President of the Treasury Board.

Hon. Caroline Mulroney: The member opposite, the leader of the third party—again, for the third time, because they can’t get themselves elected after 15 years of mismanaging this province—cannot seem to take an answer. That question has been asked many times and answered over and over again.

What the people of Ontario are focused on is our government delivering on the mandate that we were elected for for the third time, with an even greater majority in this House. Because the people of Ontario know that our party is the one that is here to protect Ontario, that we are going to deliver on the priorities of affordability, of building, of getting people back to work.

After 15 years of Liberal government, jobs left this province. Our government, under the leadership of our Premier, is delivering jobs—manufacturing jobs that were chased away by the Liberals—and prosperity for Ontarians, which is something—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Leader of the third party.

Mr. John Fraser: I’m not sure why the President of the Treasury Board doesn’t want to talk about jets. But I have asked this question 20 times—20 times—and not once has the President of the Treasury Board stood up and said, “We own the private luxury jet” or “Somebody else owns it, but this is where it is.” Obviously, you guys don’t want to answer the question, and that’s fishy; it smells fishy. Why is that?

Speaker, there are 700,000 Ontarians out of work. People can’t afford groceries, gas, rent—they can’t afford to live, except cabinet is happy to buy the Premier a luxury private jet. And now they can’t even tell us one single detail about it, and they’ve got to obfuscate who owns the jet right now—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I will ask you to withdraw.

Mr. John Fraser: I withdraw.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Question?

Mr. John Fraser: The question is simple: Who owns the Premier’s private luxury jet?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the Associate Minister of Small Business.

Hon. Nina Tangri: I want to thank the member for that question because it allows us to remind everyone in this province the very first thing that they did when they took office was to increase taxes by $2 billion. Speaker, supported by the NDP, they drove jobs and investment out of this province. They let hydro rates skyrocket. They left people and businesses in despair. That’s why, after eight years, Liberals still have only 14 seats. The NDP haven’t won an election in almost 40 years.

But with three majority governments, the people of Ontario support our plan to grow our economy while putting money back into the pockets of hard-working people and businesses. We’ve done that through our 2026 budget by reducing the small business corporate income tax rate all the way down to 2.2%, supporting 375,000 small businesses up to $5,000 a year.

Government accountability

Mr. John Fraser: I guess we shouldn’t be surprised—and the question is to the President of the Treasury Board—because the President of the Treasury Board also has allowed the Premier’s office staff to go from $2 million in 2018 to $8 million now—four times.

So enough about luxury private jets; obviously, no one wants to tell me who owns it.

This is the third day I’ve been asking this question. We know that a company owned by Carmine Nigro, very close personal friend of the Premier, is suing the government for $500 million for compensation for air rights that he never actually owned. And it’s been reported that he was offered $78 million for air rights that he didn’t own, and he said no.

Now the government has settled for an undisclosed sum—an undisclosed sum—a year ago. So let’s try this: Can anyone over there tell us how much Mr. Nigro’s company was given?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Minister of Transportation.

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: As that member knows, the process of expropriation is dealt with through Metrolinx. We don’t get involved. No political member gets involved in that.

But what I can tell you is that we’re delivering the largest public transportation mandate in the history, not only of this province, but the country. For 15 years, the Liberals neglected to build in Ontario. What have we been doing? We’ve been getting shovels in the ground on transformational projects—projects that support thousands of jobs, Madam Speaker. In Scarborough, the Scarborough subway extension is supporting 3,000 jobs for people across this province. We’re introducing measures like One Fare that are going to save the people of Scarborough and others $1,600 every single year, Madam Speaker.

That’s what we’re focused on, that’s what we’re building and that’s what we’re going to continue to do.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the leader of the third party.

Mr. John Fraser: Any reasonable person, Speaker, would say that Mr. Nigro’s companies have done well and Mr. Nigro has done well by this government. He was appointed by the Premier as the chair of the LCBO, on Invest Ontario, appointed to Ontario Place, and his companies were at the centre of the greenbelt. He’s also got his seat at the family table for family events.

Now, given that his company was offered $78 million to settle, which is crazy enough as it is, you’ve got to think if they settled after that, that amount is north of $78 million, and that’s why I’m asking this question.

Will somebody over there tell us how much the government settled for with Mr. Nigro’s company for air that he actually didn’t own?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): The Minister of Transportation.

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: We are focused on building in this province. After 15 years of the Liberals building upside-down bridges, not investing in infrastructure, not getting transit built, we have been singularly focused on making sure that we deliver on the mandate that we were elected on three times consecutively by the people of this province. Not only that, but we’re supporting thousands of jobs, whether it’s the Ontario Line that supports 4,700 jobs, whether it’s the Scarborough subway extension that supports another 3,000 jobs, Madam Speaker.

These are transformational projects that will change the way people move across this province and across this city. That’s what we’re going to continue to focus on. Last year, we hit a record of over 76 million people using our GO trains and UP Express system. For the first time, there’s an over 10% increase that we’ve seen.

We’re going to continue to build upon that because that is what we were elected to do. That is what we will focus on, and that is what we’ll continue to do for public transportation in this province.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Final supplementary.

Mr. John Fraser: The government’s lawyers were arguing that actually the air had no value because Mr. Nigro didn’t own the land on either side, so it’s pretty hard to build on air if you don’t have something to put a foundation in. It sounds like a good argument, right?

Despite that, the government settled, probably for more than $78 million, a year ago, and they don’t want to tell us because it’s protected. It’s the people’s money.

How is it that an order-in-council appointment of this government can sue the people of Ontario for $500 million and still have an appointment? That’s a question.

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: Let’s continue to talk about our plan to build in this province, when we look at, for example, the Northlander, a project that was cancelled by that previous Liberal government and supported by the members of the NDP. I’ve spoken to countless members on this side that remember the day that the NDP members abstained from voting and abstained from supporting the Northlander project.

But guess what? Our government was elected on a mandate to restore the Northlander, and that is exactly what we are doing, while delivering public transportation for those in the north was neglected by the previous Liberal government who classified the north as a wasteland, Madam Speaker. We’re building the road to the Ring of Fire. We’re bringing back the Northlander. We’re supporting historic investments into northern Ontario, and we are going to continue to do that because we were elected on a mandate to build this province of Ontario, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.

Government accountability

Ms. Peggy Sattler: My question is to the Premier. For years, this government has ignored major red flags and warnings from Conestoga College faculty, staff and community members about management problems, lack of oversight and zero accountability, only too happy to watch Conestoga’s wildly unchecked growth in international student tuition used to fund college operations. In 2023, Conestoga brought in more than 30,000 international students, generating a quarter-of-a-billion-dollars surplus for the 2024 provincial balance sheet.

Speaker, did the government look the other way and choose not to audit Conestoga earlier because they wanted Conestoga’s surplus to pad provincial books?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member from Whitby.

Mr. Lorne Coe: A robust audit found financial mismanagement and poor board governance practices at Conestoga College. In order to protect Ontario students and taxpayers, we took immediate action to restore financial sustainability to the college by appointing an administrator.

We’ve been clear with all of our institutions: Our government’s record-setting funding for colleges and universities must be used to drive student success. Any misuse of public funding is completely unacceptable, and we will not hesitate to intervene if our institutions fail to put students first.

We have complete confidence that under the leadership of the administrator the college will return to good fiscal management where all decisions are centred on their core mandate: preparing students to launch good-paying jobs and careers.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member for Waterloo.

Ms. Catherine Fife: You know, Madam Speaker, this government would know a few things about misuse of financial taxpayer dollars.

This government can’t wash their hands of this crisis, because you helped create the crisis at Conestoga College. For years, this Premier starved the post-secondary sector and allowed colleges to become financially dependent on international student tuition just to survive. That was never sustainable, and the college sector has been saying this for years. Now the government wants to talk about financial mismanagement after standing by while this crisis grew at Conestoga.

To the Premier: While communities, workers and students are dealing with the fallout, will you at least take some responsibility for the crisis that you helped create?

Mr. Lorne Coe: The findings of this audit showed poor financial decision-making. I’ll just provide a few examples: a 55% salary increase for a president in one year, amounting to a salary of over $636,000; a $23,000 luxury trip to Italy taken by three senior leaders; and a termination payment for a former president that totalled 83 times their monthly salary.

This was an unacceptable use of our historic funding, and we took swift action to protect hard-working students and taxpayers. We’ve relieved the board of their duties and have appointed an experienced administrator who will get the school back on track with no disruption to the students and their learning. Because when it comes to our students, we will not hesitate to take whatever action necessary to protect their future.

Government accountability

Ms. Stephanie Bowman: A close friend of the Premier, Carmine Nigro, offered to buy air rights above a CN rail line that Metrolinx also wanted to own. Then, after not paying CN, he sued Metrolinx for half a billion dollars.

Speaker, Metrolinx is controlled by this Premier and his cabinet. It takes its direction from the government. Mr. Nigro talked to the Premier on his phone, for which the records are now hidden by this government’s dark changes to FOI laws.

It all stinks, and it begs the question: Is it a coincidence that Mr. Nigro tried to buy the same air rights that Metrolinx wanted?

Through you to the Premier: Did the Premier and Mr. Nigro have a plan to profit from this air rights deal by suing Metrolinx and getting a settlement from the taxpayers’ purse?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Minister of Transportation.

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: Let’s talk about this government’s record on public transit. In fact, let’s talk about how the Liberals, for 15 years, abandoned the people of Scarborough. For 15 years, they didn’t build a single thing in Scarborough.

We’re delivering one of the largest rapid transit investments in Scarborough’s history—three new stations; that’s what we’re putting forward. We’re delivering that at a historic pace. We’re delivering the One Fare program that supports the residents of Scarborough in accessing public transit.

Madam Speaker, we are going to continue to ensure that we make the investments for communities across this province as we develop one of the most integrated public transit plans across North America, and doing so by also supporting thousands of jobs. The Scarborough subway—3,000 jobs are supported by that project, which the Liberals voted against, and a community that they abandoned for 15 years. We’re—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member for Don Valley West.

Ms. Stephanie Bowman: This shady Ford Conservative government is making their rich friends richer with schemes like the greenbelt, Skills Development Fund and now air rights.

This air rights saga has the making of the next Ford family Netflix series. Mr. Nigro buys air rights that Metrolinx also wants. Mr. Nigro sues Metrolinx for half a billion dollars. The Premier recommits to the friendship with Mr. Nigro by reappointing him to the board of the LCBO. Mr. Nigro gets even richer from an out-of-court settlement with Metrolinx. The Premier smiles, won’t talk about it, and no one will tell taxpayers how much of their money the Premier’s friends get from his government.

My question to the Premier: Did the Premier benefit from this deal, and will he remove Carmine Nigro from his government board positions now?

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: Madam Speaker, you want to talk about shady? Take a look at what happened this weekend in Scarborough. You have your own members, elected members of the Liberal Party, calling into question election processes. A week before, you had the Leader of the Opposition calling for a political opponent to be jailed. This is what the opposition has sunk to in this province. This is not acceptable.

We’re delivering for the people of Scarborough, and that is why we have received three consecutive majority mandates in this province. We’re focused on the things that matter to the people in this province: delivering on transit, creating jobs, making life more affordable by introducing tax cuts, as well as the One Fare program. That is what we’re going to continue to do because that is what the people want us to focus on.

We’re focused on delivering large infrastructure projects that are going to transform the way Ontarians move across this province, and we’re going to do so by creating thousands of jobs in those projects.

Housing

Ms. Natalie Pierre: My question is for the Associate Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Whether it’s someone trying to buy their first home, rent closer to work or find a place to raise a family, the message is clear: We need more homes.

At the same time, it has become increasingly more expensive to build housing. Taxes, fees, development charges, interest costs, delays and red tape all drive up the cost of construction.

When the cost of building rises, these costs are ultimately passed on to homebuyers. That’s why our government has taken major action, including removing the HST on new homes and working with the federal government to reduce development charges.

Can the associate minister explain how these measures will help lower the cost of building, support more housing supply and get more homes built for the people of Ontario?

Hon. Graydon Smith: Thanks very much to the member for Burlington for that great question. I would say it’s exciting times for homebuyers in Ontario.

As she referenced in her question, we know that the HST removal on new home builds in this province is having a major difference for people who want to buy new homes in Ontario. The phones are ringing off the hook in sales offices. That means that communities grow. That means people have an opportunity to get into that home. That means that municipalities have an opportunity to continue to grow. So the measures this government are taking are working.

When we look at that, coupled with development charge reform and the $8.8 billion that we’ll be putting into development charge relief for municipalities over the next 10 years, it’s nothing but good news for homebuyers in Ontario. We continue to be on their side to make sure that the dream of home ownership is alive and well, and people are realizing it today.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member from Burlington.

Ms. Natalie Pierre: Thank you to the associate minister for that response. It’s encouraging to hear that our government is not only focused on the pressures families are facing today, but also the next generation.

We know that the cost of building is only one side of the challenge. Even when builders are ready to move forward, projects can still get stuck in long approval processes, duplicative requirements and red tape that slow down construction even before a shovel gets in the ground.

That’s why Bill 98 is so important. It builds on our government’s broader housing plan by cutting red tape, reducing delays and helping move projects from planning to construction faster.

Can the associate minister please explain how Bill 98 works together with our other measures to help get more homes built faster and make housing more affordable for families in Ontario?

Hon. Graydon Smith: Thank you very much again to the member from Burlington for the question.

I love the light moans and groans coming from the other side of the House, because they can’t stand the fact that we’re doing the things that need to be done to get more people into homes in Ontario. It galls them. It galls them. It galls them that we’ve reduced the HST on new home builds. It galls them that we’ve reduced development charge stressors for people. It galls them that Bill 98 will reduce the red tape that is present in every municipality that stops homes getting built quickly.

Our government has taken real, tangible action and is delivering real, tangible results for homebuyers in Ontario. We’ll never stop doing it. We’ll always make sure that dream of home ownership remains alive and well for everyone that wants a home in this great province.

Trucking safety

MPP Lise Vaugeois: To the Premier: According to the Ontario Trucking Association and the just-released Auditor General’s report, many new drivers are pushed out onto our highways without having been taught the skills they need to drive big rigs safely. We also know from government records that there are as few as eight people responsible for inspecting over 270 commercial driving schools.

What is your plan to hire and train enough commercial driving school inspectors so that no driver is put on the road without being fully trained and legitimately licensed?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Minister of Transportation.

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: We take safety and training with the highest regard at the ministry and that is why we have been supporting the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and assisting with auditing of those schools.

Just since November of this year, we have conducted over 50 audits of schools and we have also increased the amount of transportation enforcement officers on our roads to over 198. Just this year alone, 92 additional officers were hired. And guess what? That member over there voted against those measures and the additional dollars that were put in to support those individuals, to ensure that are roads keep safe.

We will continue to ensure that we have the highest standards across this province and that is what we’re going to continue to move forward on.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member from Timiskaming-Cochrane.

Mr. John Vanthof: We vote against their measures on highway safety because—you know what, Speaker? They’re not working. And the Auditor General’s report adds to that.

We sincerely hope that they listen to the Auditor General because, for years, they haven’t been listening to the people who drive the highways. When we did our tour, tow truck operators told us that there were licensed operators in Ontario who did not know how to use air brakes. A contractor who keeps our roads clean told us that he refused to help a transport driver who did not know how to back up a truck—licensed in Ontario.

The Auditor General identified it, but they know it—we all know it—and they have refused to act. Why?

Hon. Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria: Speaker, we continue to act and we continue to improve and increase the amount of investment into road safety and into those who are auditing our safety, our schools. That is why we have worked with the ministry of colleges to enhance that enforcement and to support their role as the administrator of that program—50 audits just since this December, and we’ll continue to improve upon that.

But any time any measure is put forward in this House, whether it be road safety, whether it be enforcement officers, whether it be investments into those roads to make them more safe, those members get up and vote against those measures every single time. They had an option, a week ago, to support the budget, which continues to invest in Highway 11, continues to invest in Highway 17, which continues to invest in road safety with the additional officers on our roads, but once again, they refused to support those measures.

We’re going to continue to ensure that we build a strong and more robust system, and that we will do by working with those in the industry and the stakeholders in keeping Ontario some of the safest roads—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member for Kanata–Carleton.

Government accountability

Mrs. Karen McCrimmon: I rise today to ask why this government is so focused on attacking democracy here in Ontario.

The government used the “notwithstanding” clause when courts ruled that their third-party political advertising law was unconstitutional, thus ignoring the ruling of a superior court. This government is under RCMP criminal investigation for backroom greenbelt deals, which rewarded insiders and friends of the Premier. This government eliminated fixed election dates and raised contribution limits to get money from their rich insider friends.

And in the latest budget—in the budget, a bill which should be about outlining spending and economic issues—the government tried to hide removal of access to freedom of information. Why? Because the courts ruled that the Premier had to disclose his records.

This government is so focused on hiding things. I want to ask: Why can’t you focus on helping Ontarians instead?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery.

Hon. Stephen Crawford: I’m not sure if the member opposite read the budget, because the budget that we passed a few weeks ago was focused on supporting Ontarians, making life more affordable, supporting small businesses. A 30% tax cut for small businesses, that’s what small business owners asked for. We delivered; you voted against it. The opposition voted against it, Speaker.

We also brought in a ticket sales recap at face value to help consumers, to help make concerts and sporting events more affordable for the people of Ontario. They voted against that as well.

Speaker, we are focused on building an economy, building infrastructure, building roads, bridges and highways. We’re focused on delivering results for the people of Ontario, making life more affordable and creating jobs and economic growth so Ontarians can prosper for years to come.

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): Back to the member for Kanata–Carleton.

Mrs. Karen McCrimmon: Another disrespectful response—it’s more deflection, more distraction, more distortion of the truth. But while this government is focused on luxury jets and luxury spas—

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I will ask the member to withdraw.

Mrs. Karen McCrimmon: Withdraw.

While this government is focused on luxury jets and luxury spas and the Toronto waterfront, Ontario’s unemployment rate is now 7.5%. Ontario’s unemployment rate in 2018 was 5.6%, so unemployment in Ontario is up two percentage points than where it was eight years ago. However, our neighbouring province of Quebec, their unemployment rate is currently 5.4%—2% better than Ontario and better than its historical average.

Whatever you’re doing, it isn’t working for Ontario. When are you going to focus on Ontarians?

The Speaker (Hon. Donna Skelly): I recognize the member from Bay of Quinte.

Mr. Tyler Allsopp: It’s a pleasure to answer this question today. But we are not going to take any lessons from the Liberal Party that shipped 300,000 jobs out of our province. Our government has been focused on investment attraction and job creation, and we have the results to show it. Just last month, Ontario led the nation in job creation: 42,400 jobs created, 39,000 of them in the private sector and 8,700 in manufacturing alone.

Take a look at some of the new investments we’ve brought in. Microsoft: investing $19 billion, including in sites in Markham, Etobicoke and Vaughan, creating 1,250 new jobs; Toyota is investing $1.1 billion in Cambridge and Woodstock for new RAV4 construction; General Motors: $691 million in St. Catharines to build new V8 engines; and IMT Precision: investing $305 million in Ingersoll, creating over 400 new jobs.

It is this government that’s focused on investment attraction, job creation and making sure the people of Ontario can put food on the table and can have a great place to work, and that party did not do it for 15 years.

Energy policies

Ms. Aislinn Clancy: My question is for the Premier. Ontarians are feeling pinched every time they go to get gas. In my riding, people are telling me they can barely afford to get to work, drop their kids off at school or go to health care appointments. Ontarians are being forced to choose between filling up their tank or buying groceries because this government ha