Next question.

Thank you to the member from London–Fanshawe for her portion of debate today and for sharing her constituent’s story, which should touch the ears of, hopefully, many in this Legislature today, to hear about what tenants go through at no fault of their own, playing by the rules, thinking they’re doing a good thing, paying all of the bills. There has to be a repercussion now for this landlord, but that will be a very extensive process through the Landlord and Tenant Board.

Could the member possibly go a little bit further into what that will mean for those constituents trying to get their money back or get into the unit that they’ve been promised?

One of the hurdles is that legal proceedings are very expensive, and they said they make a good wage, so who knows if they’ll actually meet the very low bar of legal aid. That could be out of their realm, out of their accessibility. When you can’t access that legal aid, first of all because it’s costly—but then you also want the advice. So if you can’t get either one of those things, they probably will not be equipped to go to the Landlord and Tenant Board and win that case, which means the landlord will get away with this renoviction and there will be no enforcement. It will teach the landlord that there is incentive to taking advantage of good tenants when they don’t know their rights.

But then when they do, how are these fines going to be enforceable? I’d like to know, because oftentimes tenants, as I described, don’t have the means to actually take to task the landlords at the Landlord and Tenant Board. So to the member: Yes, it’s good that you have the fines, but there have to be ways to get there to punish those bad landlords.

So I agree with the member, education is a key piece. And maybe the Landlord and Tenant Board should have that as part of their mandate: to educate tenants and landlords of the right things to do and the wrong things and what’s punishable. Maybe that’s part of their 40 adjudicators. Rather than creating more, why don’t you ask the Landlord and Tenant Board to start educating tenants? Have sessions so that people can connect. If that’s where you go to fight a landlord, that’s also where you go to get education on your rights before you have a problem with your landlord, or landlords should go there before they have a problem with their tenant.

We do have a plan. We had an opposition day back in November 2022. We outlined our plan very clearly to your government of how to build affordable homes, how to build not-for-profit homes, how to make sure rent is affordable. If you were here on the opposition day—sometimes it’s very scant attendance during oppo days, but if members were here, they would have been very clear on what the NDP’s position is on housing. I can even send over the opposition day notes if the member wishes. Our plan is here. We’ve talked about it several times, and we’ll keep talking about it.

We have heard the Leader of the Opposition say that she shares our goal and objective of building 1.5 million new homes by 2031. While we have that commitment in common, it is only our government that has taken action and demonstrated our commitment to actually getting this done. The opposition has not presented anything credible or concrete beyond telling us what they oppose.

My question to the opposition is, what is their plan? How would they build 1.5 million new homes without a plan?

Thank you to the member from London–Fanshawe for her comments on Bill 97 and for sharing her constituent’s letter with the House.

My question, Speaker, through you to the member opposite, is: Our government has already increased, as they’re aware, the fines for violations under the RTA. Now we’re increasing them more, to the highest level, actually, in all of Canada. So my question is, will they not support us in punishing the bad landlords that she is concerned about and ensuring that we are protecting tenants and continuing to do that? Would the member opposite be willing to, hopefully, support this bill?

The theme of my talk today will be about being brave and being bold and going further to address our housing crisis. We all know we are in one, and the government has been pushing many different bills regarding that. I would argue that I don’t think they go far enough, and I want to encourage them to go further.

We were talking about, earlier, four units per lot, making that as of right; upsizing main streets, arterial roads, upzoning them—why not six storeys right across? Why not eight storeys? We’re looking at Europe, Paris, amazing cities over there that have beautiful walkability, livability factors, and they are built up like that, especially along subway corridors. This government seems to let sprawl take over.

The provincial government should ensure that the elected municipal councils in Ontario and regions and cities be respected and allowed to plan for livable, walkable and affordable communities. That’s the other thing we want to emphasize: We need affordable homes. We need affordable rentals. We need affordable communities. We are driving people so far out of urban centres because of that and farther and farther away. They’re being forced to destroy farms and forests to create low-density, car-dependent, expensive and polluting sprawl.

I’m just wondering: We have these growth plans. We invested the time, energy and money. We have respected, supposedly, the experts and asked them to create these growth plans. Why not double down on the growth plan, instead? Put sharper teeth into it, enforcing smart growth principles. We know it is much cheaper to have these compact urban environments than building, or proposing to build, homes in areas that lack the infrastructure. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense, especially for a government that prides themselves on being fiscally responsible.

There’s many, many housing advocacy groups—amazing groups—all over Ontario and beyond. We have one, More Neighbours Toronto, and they have said that “the government’s new plan won’t put the kind of housing people want to buy in the places they want to be.” And that is so true. People want to be where the services are, where the amenities are, where the infrastructure is. They want walkable, livable communities and, of course, sustainable. That is what’s sustainable, especially when we’re in this climate emergency. So we need to be focusing on that and I don’t see that in Bill 97 whatsoever. I don’t see the emphasis on densification, on infill, on encouraging—what is it? You’re eliminating the requirement for municipalities to prioritize infill development before expanding urban boundaries to overrun natural lands. Why not prioritize infill developments? We have the land. Your own studies have proven that we have the land without going outside to the greenbelt.

You received a letter eons ago for other bills from a whole slew of amazing, reputable, responsible, credible planners in Ontario; some in British Columbia, as well, because obviously the things we’re doing in Ontario are alerting other people across Canada to what’s going on here and many of them are alarmed, so even they’re writing in from other provinces. And they’re saying, “Toronto has received an unprecedented flood of housing proposals, totalling 456 development projects that together contain over 237,000 residential units. The potential housing in Toronto alone now totals over 700,000 units. This represents almost half of the entire 1.5 million housing units your government wants to see built over the next 10 years.”

Here it is. In Toronto alone, you can achieve your goals. I’m with you for building these homes; albeit I think we may have a different opinion of what a home is, because I’m all for anything and everything—co-ops and garden suites and laneway suites and four units on one lot and building up the avenues—and I’m not sure you’re there yet. I think you’re still focused on the monstrosities with the white picket fence and three-car garages or whatever you’re proposing. So we need to get together on that type of home, but we actually can build the homes. It’s a lofty goal; it’s a great goal. But let’s build them in the right area, and that’s not what I see in this bill. We are in an affordability crisis, of course. We all know that, unfortunately, and I don’t see that in the bill. I don’t see anything addressing affordable housing. It’s very vague.

The rental protections, the rent control: We need more of that. Now, you are addressing a little bit with regard to renters: the tribunal—yes, that’s good stuff; the air conditioning, for sure. You remember my private member’s bill, which you all voted against for some bizarre reason—I guess you feel your communities won’t flood, but that’s another topic—Bill 56, but extreme heat is another concern with a climate emergency. We know the Intact Centre at the University of Waterloo has reported on extreme heat—flooding is number one; extreme heat, number two: “Warming and more intense extreme heat will be present for decades to come. If an extreme-heat event coincided with an extended electricity outage—with no fans or air conditioning running—loss of life could easily jump to the thousands.”

That’s great. You’re working on proposing air conditioning for tenants. It’s long overdue. But maybe requiring a maximum temperature that landlords need to adhere to, like the minimum temperature we have in the winter—but that’s good. I’m throwing you a bone. That’s good. Believe it or not, I’m throwing you a bone.

There are other things, for sure. You’re making it easier to build houses on industrial and employment lands. Our employment lands are so vital. You yourselves want jobs, job creation, manufacturing and whatnot in Ontario, so I’m not sure why we’re getting loosey-goosey with that. It’s all about building up; it really is. We need to intensify our neighbourhoods. We want to do that, and we want, as I said, the right kind of housing in the right space, where people want to live.

This morning, there was a comment by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing that people want to live—you know, kind of the sprawl argument and people want to live where they grew up. That’s true. I’m from a small town; there are also people who are from small towns who move to the city, to urban centres, so we need to think about that too. Sure people want to live where they grew up, and other people want to get the heck out of those towns, move to a different place, reconfigure and start the next phase of their lives.

We have 700,000 units in the pipeline for Toronto. We could be building them right here, right now, if you doubled down on the growth plan and gave it sharper teeth. It costs more; sprawl costs more. We’ve talked about that. I agree that we need to declutter the planning system a little bit—not to the extent that you’re doing. As far as what you’re telling urban planning as a vocation, you’re basically saying, “Forget it, kids. Don’t go into urban planning because we’re just removing all that good information and good regulations, and we’re just handing it over to the minister for him to make the final decision.”

I guess our students, our kids interested in urban planning are going to have to go to a different province to study and get a job. I don’t know what’s going on there. I don’t know if you have more respect or less respect for planning departments than you do conservation authorities. I’m not sure what’s going on there.

I would just encourage you to be bolder, less timid. Be brave. I’m happy to give you a backbone injection to do that, to build up your avenues, build up your main streets, upzone them as of right, get that in in residential areas. Look at the yellowbelt in Toronto, figure that out and remove that if you have to. Let’s do it.

Picking up on the comments from my friend from London–Fanshawe, one of the things that bothers me about this government’s approach is the lack of balance between public and private. Are there opportunities for public investment to solve the affordable housing crisis in her riding that she’d like to talk about?

Thank you. We’re going to move to questions.

Thank you to the member of the opposition offering backbone injections to get us to speed on this. My question is, where was that courage when 12 years of Liberal government did not see that crisis coming?

Today, what we live in is a result of bad planning, not seeing the crisis, not seeing it coming, not planning for it, not trying to mitigate the shortage which we are in now, which should be taken care of via the planning you were talking about, the urban planning you’re talking about, the city planning you’re talking about, which we didn’t see happening for 12 years.

Now my question is, are you going to join us to try to solve that issue before it’s too late?

My question is to the member from Beaches–East York. As a city councillor in your past life, you’ve directly participated in debates around housing and homelessness. How has this experience helped to influence your opinions on Bill 97?

Next question?

The member for Hamilton Centre for the next question.

I’m very happy and very delighted to stand to support Bill 97, Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act. Today, as we see the dream of owning your own home become so far—all my constituents in Erin Mills, when they come to speak to me, they speak about the house prices. They talk about, “How can we imagine that our kids will have houses in our neighbourhood? We want our kids to be in Mississauga, close to their family.” Now, the smallest house in Mississauga maybe became higher than $1 million, which is not achievable for even a middle-class family with two members of the family working and having income.

When we look into this current situation in the market, it is due to lack of availability, lack of variation and different housing options. When I came to Canada 28 years ago and I decided to—at some point, when I get back to my profession—buy a house, and we were a one-family income at the time because my wife was still studying to do her credentials as a doctor, we managed to buy a house.

I used to take a tour—when I was working for Tim Hortons night shifts in the morning, I would tour in the neighbourhood, and I liked some street. I said, “This street with a park and everything looks nice. I like that street and I would love to maybe someday buy a house in this neighbourhood.”

When we decided to start looking, I tried to always look into that street. The real estate agent kept coming back and saying, “No, we can’t. There’s no availability on that street.” Of course, the first question any real estate agent asks you when you ask to buy a house, they ask you, “What’s your budget? What’s the range of the price?” We put a range which can be affordable to us. One day, I was crossing the street and found an on-sale sign on one of the houses in the street I liked, and I called the real estate agent. I said, “This is the house I want. I want this house.”

The guy checked and came back to me. He said, “Your taste is much higher than your budget.” He said, “This is beyond the budget you talked about.” I said, “Let’s just let me see it.” I wanted to walk in. Anyway, he got me a visitation, and we managed to work out to put an offer on the house. At the time, we managed to get the house because of the 5% new homebuyer, which allowed us to put 5% only to buy the house. We put the offer and we got the house. It’s actually the house I still live in until today.

The moral of the story is, with one family income, with a newcomer—at the time I was three years, four years in the country. But the dream to own a house and grow roots, and start looking to settle and feel at home or “this is my future and this is my family home,” is the dream of every Ontarian. When I talk to even my kids now, who are—one of them is doing his internship and the other guy is in second year of dentistry. They have a concern. They have a concern about if they will be able to afford buying a house in Mississauga, or do they have to go further out to be able to afford housing.

This is what we are having today, a crisis situation. Availability of housing is not there. That’s causing pricing to go up.

A couple of months back—three months, I believe—there was a house on sale on my street. Out of curiosity, as soon as the for-sale sign came, I checked the asking price, just to know what’s the average of my house, because it’s very similar—two houses from my house. When it got sold, I called and I said, “Can you check, please, and tell me how much it was sold for?” And it was sold above the asking price: $480,000 above asking price—some $400,000-plus above the asking price. Why? He said there were 12 bets, that 12 people betted on the house to get the house.

Why is there no availability? Everybody sees, “That’s a house, looks like the house I want, the size I want, the price I want. I will continue bidding until I get it.” That will drive the house price up.

This government has been trying very hard to come up with solutions for a crisis we are tackling in hand now. It’s not the first bill. Actually, this government put four housing bills before this one.

We put the More Homes for Everyone Act, which is to protect homebuyers from unethical development practices and accelerating development timelines to get more homes built faster.

We put the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, empowering municipal leaders at first-tier cities to work more effectively with the province to reduce timelines for development and standardize processes and address local barriers to increasing the supply of housing.

The third one was the More Homes Built Faster Act. To help with the crisis, towns and rural communities grow with a mix of ownership and rental housing types that meet the needs of all Ontarians, from single-family homes to townhouses and mid-rise apartments.

Then we came up with the fourth, which was the Better Municipal Governance Act, which allowed a province-appointed facility in some of our fastest-growing regions—Durham, Halton, Niagara, Peel, Waterloo and York—to help determine the best way to extend these powers into two-tier municipalities.

And that’s the fifth piece we are having in hand. Madam Speaker, we have a crisis in hand now, and we are expecting to receive 500,000 new immigrants for the next three years. That’s almost like 1.5 million new people coming to Canada. How many of those will be coming to Ontario? The estimate and the statistics are showing that between 40% and 60% of those go into the three biggest or four biggest cities, because it’s very normal.

Any newcomer, any new immigrant is looking for more services, easier transportation, easy access to malls and groceries and any aspect of life he needs. He most probably will be taking English classes and going to school, doing his credentials, studying, so he needs full access to many, many ranges of service. That’s why they will come to the big cities. They will come to Mississauga. They will come to Toronto. Mississauga especially has been receiving a lot of new immigrants; Mississauga and Oakville are receiving lots of new immigrants, especially Arabic speakers, Middle Eastern, which made housing prices go up because there’s a huge demand. Everybody wants to come to the area where they think they will be settling in in the new country. So we are expecting more and more. We are expecting to see more immigrants coming to Mississauga. There is no more land in Mississauga to build on. We have to intensify, add more density to be able to accommodate more residents in Mississauga.

Also, we are building a lot of infrastructure transportation projects. LRT, GO train extensions and adding more tracks for GO trains will allow more people to be able to live in Mississauga and work in Toronto or work somewhere else. These are the facts we have in hand today. We need to tackle that.

This piece of legislation is actually adding to all the different pieces we added before to be able to accommodate this growth. It’s not going to happen in a day and night; it’s going to take time. But when we look at the other four pieces of legislation we’ve brought, when we look at the trends and see what happened based on those four pieces, starting in 2019, the first one, till the last one, which was very late last year, there is an increase in the rental housing market in 2022. Last year, Ontario surpassed 96,000 housing starts, the second-highest number since 1988; 15,000 new purpose-built rentals.

Doesn’t that tell us that this is the right direction? We are walking in the right direction. We are going in the direction where we are accelerating, encouraging, creating a good environment for investors and developers to start putting together projects, getting shovels in the ground and getting those units available for utilization very soon. I think adding more in this direction is needed. We tried to address the crisis with the last pieces. This piece is another building block in this suite of legislation which is allowing more housing to be built.

We are looking into new changes to help Ontarians to be able to buy a new home, to have their own house. When we look into the exact pieces that this legislation will add, we are proposing some changes to the Planning Act so we can facilitate priority projects. It gives the minister some authority to exempt individual projects from certain provincial policies, and specifies zoning as part of the MZOs. This is to, again, accelerate some of the projects which we feel go with the plan we are putting out. It requires homebuilders to work with the provincial land and development facilitator to come to an agreement. So we are adding some facilities so that they can negotiate and get things done faster.

Integrate some of the government policies into the single provincial planning statement: Developers were complaining that every city, every region has its own policies. After they satisfied the provincial requirements, then they face some different requirements in their region or their city. That’s kind of duplicating some of the work they are doing. So we are integrating this provincial policy statement and A Place to Grow plan for the greater Golden Horseshoe. We’re providing a variety of housing options, adding employment zones, density near transit stations—so where there is a transit station, we’ll allow more density to be built around that.

Also, to help accelerate the projects we have in hand, we are freezing some of the provincial fees to reduce costs to start the projects. There are 74 different provincial fees that will be frozen if this bill passes, including the Ontario Land Tribunal and the building code.

Now, we are having another issue at hand, which is because of COVID. Because of stopping the evictions because of the economic situation during those two or three years of COVID, we have a huge backlog in the Landlord and Tenant Board, the landlord-tenant tribunal. We needed to accelerate that because we have been receiving emails from tenants, saying, “I have been waiting for six months, seven months, eight months.” And those issues always have some financial burdens, either on the tenant or the landlord.

So we appointed about $6.5 million to hire an additional 40 adjudicators, which is double the number we have, and five administration staff. The process and scheduling and resolving applications will be faster. We will be able to clear the backlog which accumulated through the three years. We’re also improving the service standards and the client experience with the landlord and tenant tribunal.

Also, we have an issue at hand which we are tackling in this piece of legislation. Some of the older buildings don’t have air conditioning, and the majority of time, the landlord or the management company or the owner of the unit do not allow the tenants to install their air conditioning—in multiple different ways. Either we don’t know if the circuit can accommodate it or the price of the unit includes the utilities, so that any equipment added will cause electricity bills to go up and we don’t want to install that.

It was a negotiation between the tenants and the landlords, especially when the case is older people. Like all the people, they actually suffer in the summer, during the summer months. My mom used to—it’s still in the rental unit to date. We had to install her air conditioning unit, a mobile one, so that she can afford the weather in the summer, especially that her apartment is facing the sun. At least six hours of the day, the sun is coming through the front windows. So we had to go through some arrangements.

If the landlord is understanding, it goes well. If they don’t or they are not co-operative, it becomes an issue. If this bill passes, it actually gives the tenant the right to install an air conditioning unit on the window, of course, with all the precautions needed for protecting the electric circuits and the fire hazards and everything else. That’s not negotiable. But the fact that he has the right to install an air conditioner will give them that right. And, even if the rent is including the electricity costs, they might have to pay some costs—again, to be negotiated. During that period of time, the two or three months, they might have to pay some costs for the electricity. That basically will allow a good portion of renters to be able to install air conditioning during summer months.

Also, if this bill passes, we are proposing some changes on the deposit insurance for first-home savings accounts at Ontario credit unions. There are 1.7 million Ontarians who are members of credit unions. They are putting in savings. So we are opening that, allowing Ontarians to save up to $40,000 towards buying new homes.

In summary, Madam Speaker, I think this bill will add another building block towards solving or tackling the crisis of housing. Maybe it’s not the only piece, maybe it’s not a bulletproof solution, but it’s at least a building block towards solving some of the issues. Also, it will work with other pieces, and maybe other pieces will be coming to tackle other parts of the problem. When we look into what we did, I think no government did as much as we did to tackle the housing crisis. After 12 years of Liberal government that did not do anything towards it, even planning—I don’t think they even saw that crisis coming at the time. Now, we are in the crisis. We have to move fast.

According to the University of Toronto, the Smart Prosperity Institute predicted Ontario will need a total of 1,506,400 net new homes by 2031, which is much nearer than the 1.5 million our government committed to in the next 10 years. So in summary, I think this is a good move. We need more steps towards solving this crisis, tackling the crisis. The status quo is not an option. We have to come up with solutions. It’s maybe not the final solution, but it’s a step towards finding a suitable solution for the crisis. I really hope that the opposition comes to the table and tries to work with us hand in hand. As Premier Doug Ford said, we need all hands on deck to be able to solve this issue.

I respectfully listened to the member opposite and appreciate small towns as well. Thornhill, my own riding, borders on some areas that we can get to pretty quickly, but we’re always aware of the farms and the areas that are just outside of our reach, so hopefully she will appreciate that the newly proposed provincial planning documents will allow the residential lot creation on farms. I’m just wondering if she has an opinion on this, because we will not have—it means that a farmer will be able to sever his lot to a son or daughter to build on a house, and it also means there can be more housing to accommodate farm workers. I’m wondering what the opposition’s opinion is on this.

I would encourage you to check out my track record as Toronto city councillor for beautiful Beaches–East York and what I did for development, then you’ll see what kind of backbone I had and how I have some to spare for you guys. We have a 12-storey at Woodbine and Danforth right on the subway line where the average is two storeys—two storeys, and we have a 12. We have a couple of 10-storeys down the street that I put in on the Danforth. We have another one, Options for Homes affordable home ownership, further down, which is about 12 or 14 storeys. So I’m single-handedly trying to build up the avenue myself, because you guys could be bold and put that in and then we wouldn’t have to do it individually.

In response to your question, absolutely, living above storefronts—it’s a smart thing to do, building up the main streets. I think I’ve told you this story: When I was first elected, there was a proposal on Queen Street for a Lick’s hamburger joint. If anyone ever enjoyed one of those burgers—yummy, yummy Lick’s. Unfortunately, it went bankrupt, so developers bought the building and proposed a six-storey building. Some of my residents got quite upset about six storeys on a main street in the city of Toronto. I had to tell them, “I’m from a small town.” They were saying, “Well, we’re from a small town.” I had to tell them, “Well, I’m from a small town.” And Collingwood, at the time, was proposing a six-storey, because they were being bold—

Yes, I think definitely, especially when next generations—some of them aren’t thinking of going into that vocation. We need to allow them, if the farmers want their family to live on the farm. But it’s a fine balance too, because we still need the farmland, so we want to be careful about paving over and building in our wetlands, our farmlands, our sensitive areas like that. It is a balance.

Thank you to my colleague from Beaches–East York. I will put it on the record: my favourite Liberal in the House—no offence to the Speaker. Back row, we’ve got to stick together.

My question, though, to the member from Beaches–East York: She was talking about development on main streets. Obviously, coming from rural Ontario—and I won’t ask what happened in your hometown and why you didn’t want to go back. But in the provincial policy statement proposal, it includes “all types of residential intensification, including the conversion of existing commercial and institutional buildings for residential use.” So this is like commercial use and having apartments above stores on our main streets in rural Ontario. This is important densification, as the member alluded to. So will the member support our initiatives to have this gentle densification in rural Ontario and across Ontario?

It’s interesting; I’ve already received emails about this bill, and I’d like to read a piece:

“As my MPP, I urge you to demand that these proposals to gut the sustainable policies of the growth plan and provincial policy statement be dropped. Instead, the provincial government should ensure that the elected municipal councils in Ontario’s regions and cities be respected and allowed to plan for livable, walkable and affordable communities instead of being forced to destroy farms and forests to create low-density, car-dependent, expensive and polluting sprawl.”

Now, you’ve already spoken to a number of those issues, but I wonder if you could speak to concerns about the loss of authority of municipal councils.

We can now go to questions and answers.

Thank you very much to the member from the opposition. I disagree with you that adding more adjudicators will not solve the problem, because what we have is a backlog. We used to have a specific number of cases per month, but during the COVID time, we had been receiving this number, but it’s waiting. There’s nothing that can be done about it. Because of COVID, we stopped everything, all the evictions. Now we have a backlog. This backlog, as soon it’s clear, we will go back to the normal levels of cases.

In regard to disputes between landlords and tenants, I don’t think there’s anything that will solve that issue. It’s going to continue, but we need to be more clear in the guidelines of the legislation so that it lowers the chances of having a dispute.

We know that renters continue to be left behind by this government and live under the constant threat of eviction due to a lack of renter protections. The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario has said recently that Bill 97 does not go far enough to protect renters and fix the dysfunction at the Landlord and Tenant Board. Adding adjudicators to the LTB is not enough. Will this government finally prioritize at-risk renters and commit to fixing the dysfunction at the Landlord and Tenant Board?