I’m glad that the government is recognizing that we need more adjudicators. They need to be experienced and knowledgeable and trained, absolutely, and they need to have support services when tenants come to the Landlord and Tenant Board—and for small landlords too, because a lot of small landlords don’t know what’s going on either. Between the tenants and landlords—the corporate landlords, they kind of know; they’ve got their legal representation. But I hear more from people who are living in smaller units, single-family homes, and they’re struggling. So having more adjudicators is a good start, but we need to make sure that they’re qualified, trained and look at the portfolio in there and try to figure out who we can help that doesn’t have those resources.

I listened intently to the member opposite for her statement, and I too have heard from many constituents. In a previous life, I actually dealt directly with the Landlord and Tenant Board, and I had to deal with many situations, including landlords who were unable to pay their mortgages because they weren’t getting the rental from the renters. This was actually a consistent issue.

One thing in common with all of us is that we hear the frustration with the backlog and the delays in the Landlord and Tenant Board. I know other members opposite have talked about this. We actually have a quote from the member for Toronto Centre: “We are seeing many people struggling as they’re waiting for a hearing date, and of course, while they’re waiting, that means everything is in limbo.... It benefits no one when the tribunal system doesn’t work.” That came directly from the member for Toronto Centre.

We’re going to be increasing the adjudicators, and we’re wondering and we’re hopeful that you will be receptive to this move and talk to your constituents about—

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.

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?

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.

I want to congratulate my friend, who was able to acquire his dream home. We also talked about being a landlord and tenant, and some of us have also discussed what modifications are required for the system to continue, the challenges that have been faced, the long delays and the unethical actors who take advantage of the LTB system. I’m pleased to see that we’re finally getting this fixed to address these issues.

But can the member elaborate on what steps the new housing supply action plan takes to protect both the landlords and the tenants and the critical issues reported by the Landlord and Tenant Board?

Thank you very much to my colleague for the question. Again, I would like to go back and say that tenant protection is part of that legislation. We are doubling the fines for the bad players, for the landlords who are trying to do fake evictions to get people out of their units. We are trying to add, if this legislation passes, some measures so that tenants can go back to their units after renovations.

This is not actually the first piece we did. Before, in More Homes for Everyone, we protected homebuyers from unethical development practices, like if a developer, for example, put a unit for sale and then they went up in price, they’d try to return the down payments and resell the unit. This is going to be—

To be honest with you, even in our city of Mississauga, the majority of the time, the city, the municipality itself does this reduction for those specific cases, not-for-profit or rental. They do this reduction in—

Starting with the More Homes Built Faster Act, we did actually include the strictest and most comprehensive fines for bad actors across Canada. These are the highest fines in any province for the bad players in the landlords or the building developers, to make sure that we are protecting the homebuyers.

When we come to the tenants, again, if this piece of legislation passes, we are adding more protections for rental tenants suffering from the evictions, and they can go back after the renovations.

It’s not fair. I don’t think it’s an easy task to navigate through the municipalities to get approval to build anything—