Thank you, Francesco, for welcoming us here. Happy to be here with you and MP Tony Van Bynen for this important housing announcement for the people of Vaughan. Mayor Del Duca. Steven, it’s so good to be back here with you, so great to be working alongside you. Deputy Mayor Linda Jackson, city councilors and staff, it's great to be here with you all.

We're here today because there is an urgency in our communities, there's an urgency to build more homes and to bring the prices of housing down. Steven knows this, Steven knows this because his city, Vaughan, is one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada. He wants people to be able to live here and succeed, including middle-class families and young people. And we all know that if we want people to succeed, we need more homes in Vaughan, we need more homes across the GTA, we need more homes right across the country. And that's exactly why we launched the Housing Accelerator Fund to build more homes, faster, in partnership with municipal leaders.

Three weeks ago, we announced a first agreement with the city of London under the Housing Accelerator Fund. Today, we are announcing a second agreement, this time with the city of Vaughan, and we’ll be making a lot of other announcements in the weeks and months to come.

The Housing Accelerator Fund works as an incentive for municipalities to cut red tape and remove barriers. When we launched the fund, we were clear that there are too many barriers that make it too hard to build the homes we need in our communities, and we were clear that local rules had to change and local governments, with our support, had to think bigger and even more ambitious.

Well, today's agreement with the City of Vaughan will help us fast track the building of thousands of homes in the coming years. The agreement will allow for high-density development near public transit, including GO Train and subway stations, it’ll prioritize apartment buildings and affordable housing, and it will amend a zoning bylaw to allow for the construction of up to four residential units on a single lot.