Malton.

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure—

I’ll tell you an example. In fact, I was talking to one of my colleagues, a member, and they were saying they had to delay their wedding because they took a decision. They wanted to buy the house and then they’re going to get married. Think about that situation. You don’t have to delay because you want to buy a house. What if the house is within the affordability?

Madam Speaker, I want to wish him to get married soon, have a family, have children, rather than waiting and hoping that by the time he collects—for some of the young people in this province, it takes 20 years to collect that down payment. By the time it is 20 years from now and he has his first child, it looks as if he’s going with the grandfather, not the father. We want to make sure that the young people who want to build a family, to start a family and want to buy a house, have support available. That is why it is important to continuously keep working on the housing bills, and that is what this government is doing.

Let’s look at the statistics. Ontario had a pre-existing shortage of 471,000 homes in 2021. In fact, if we look at the report from the University of Ottawa-based Smart Prosperity Institute, it actually talks about how we need 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. The experts are unanimous: We need to increase the housing supply. And in fact, I would say on the other side I’ve heard the same thing. We all want to make sure that the housing supply increase happens, and that is why this government started taking action.

As you know, actions speak louder than words. We began with the More Homes, More Choice action plan in 2019, followed by More Homes for Everyone in 2022 and More Homes Built Faster in the same year.

Why are we doing this? We are doing this to make sure there is a policy in place so that we can build those homes faster. You will see that we have already seen the result of these policies.

So what are we doing now? Our proposals in the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act are making sure we’re helping tenants, landlords and homebuyers. We’re streamlining land-use planning policies. We’re speeding up approvals to build homes faster. Speaker, it’s not going to happen by itself. To build more houses—we want to make sure—we need to have planning policies that are easier to follow.

Let’s take a look at it. At this time, Ontario has a provincial policy statement. At the same time, the greater Golden Horseshoe has a growth plan: A Place to Grow. Why do they have these two policy statements? Because the government of Ontario, Ontario as a whole and the Golden Horseshoe believe that we need to make sure the new immigrants or youth or new families have a place to live, a place to enjoy. The focus is the same, but since we have two policies, we have a different set of rules, making land-use approvals cost more time, more money, and sometimes there’s ambiguity.

What are we doing here? Simple: the problem has a solution. For the ease of building more homes, we are proposing a streamlined provincial planning statement that combines the best of both policies.

Speaker, we want a policy that supports growth in large and fast-growing municipalities and allows for more homes to be built in rural areas while balancing the need to protect the environment. Under the proposed policy, the largest and fastest-growing municipalities would be required to plan for growth in major transit station areas and other strategic growth areas so that we can build those homes faster and give the opportunity to our communities to enjoy life.

Furthermore, all municipalities could—and it’s not only the large municipalities. We’re not only talking about the 29 municipalities. If there is a municipality, we are giving them the option: a choice to decide that they can opt in. They could choose to follow the housing supply policies for more development in their own settlement areas. If a municipality wants to expand its settlement area boundaries, they could do it while balancing the need to minimize the impact on farmland and the environment.

Madam Speaker, as the name of this act suggests to not just build more homes, make more homes affordable and to protect our renters, we are proposing doubling the maximum fines for offences under the Residential Tenancies Act to $100,000 for individuals and $500,000 for the corporations. Why are we doing it? We want to make sure that there are no bad actors utilizing this as an option to impact the renters.

Ontario’s fines for the residential tenancy offences are going to be one of the highest in Canada, something which we heard from the other side as well. That’s something we can see: We worked together to collaborate to deliver the result that Ontarians need.

Madam Speaker, something which we heard multiple times in the past as well: Some of these landlords are taking advantage when they renovate a unit. Now, if this bill is passed, landlords would be required to provide tenants proof that the unit must be vacant for renovations to take place, update on the status of the renovation in writing and give a 60-day grace period to move back once the renovations are complete. We’re doing all this to make sure that the renters have the protection that they need.

Another thing we are doing through this bill is what we heard about the LTB. Our government recognizes the critical independent role that the Landlord and Tenant Board plays in resolving housing-related disputes in Ontario. There was a time when our constituency offices—in fact, all the constituency offices—were receiving the concerns and the complaints about the backlog with the LTB.

What are we doing? For every problem, there is a solution: Our government is making an investment of $6.5 million, hiring additional staff, hiring additional adjudicators to help both tenants and landlords resolve their grievances. By doing it, we’re making sure that the government has its ear to the ground and is listening to the people of Ontario.

We’re encouraged to keep pushing forward this direction because the results are showing. Take, for example, Ontario’s housing starts. You can see in 2022, even with higher interest rates, even with the uncertainty, we have seen the starting housing rate surpass 96,000, the second-highest number since 1988, and it is because of the policies put forward by this government along with all the caucus members for their support. So I just want to say thank you for all you’re doing here. As the minister encouragingly pointed out, the purpose-built rental housing starts are currently more than double compared to the same period last year. We have a long-term goal, and we have a long-term plan, and it is working in the face of stiff challenges like unfavourable interest rates, high inflation and other factors that are beyond our control.

This government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, like one cohesive unit to deal with the problem—and I heard it from many stakeholders. This is the government who does not work in silos but works together in collaborative leadership and gives results. That is why, with our latest plan, we continue to lay the groundwork for increased housing supply.

I’m going to support this bill, and I hope each and every member who believes in growth in Ontario is going to support this bill.

For a moment, I thought the member was going to take the full 10 minutes and I’ll be able to answer it next time. But again, thank you to the member opposite for that question. He’s actually the member for the honeymoon capital of Canada. Every time we talk about it, he always raises that.

So I’ll tell you what is happening in this country, in the province of Ontario: Housing affordability is drifting away from our youth, from our young Canadians, from our newcomers. What is this bill doing? We’re going to continue to work hard to make sure that everybody who has a dream to have ownership of a home has the ability to have a home. That’s why we will encourage everyone to look at the policies we are making sure—and the actions we’re taking to build 1.5 million homes by 2031, and we’ll continue to work to do it.

Madam Speaker, it’s not a hidden secret that COVID-19 had a lot of impact on our society and our community. One of the things we have seen due to COVID-19, when offices were closed, the number of cases had gone up, and I always talk about when there is a problem, we need to tackle it with a solution, and that is what our government is doing. We’re making sure that we are investing an additional $6.5 million, hiring an additional 40 adjudicators and hiring additional staff to improve the service standards and continue to reduce the active application and decision time frame. That’s what we’re doing to solve the problem.

But what we’re doing along with this is, we are actually building and making policies and the impact of the policies is that we are seeing the highest number of new purpose-built rental starts on record in 2022 with nearly—

I usually say that when we meet, we talk. When we talk, we discuss. When we discuss, we find out the problems and the solutions together and, right now, the biggest problem we have in this province of Ontario is that we have about 300,000 immigrants coming.

Somebody like me, for example: I came on January 15, 2000, as a first-generation immigrant, and I had the opportunity to buy a house at that time. But somebody new who’s coming, a young man or a woman looking to buy a house, they don’t have the affordability. They have to wait 20 years.

But as I said earlier, every problem has a solution. What we need to do is we need to build homes faster. That is exactly what this government is doing with all the caucus members, with a single vision and goal to build 1.5 million homes by 2031. We’ll continue to work together to have a bigger, better, strong Ontario.

But when the member opposite was talking about who did you consult with—look, you don’t even need to go beyond this room. We have members with diverse backgrounds with a lot of experience in these fields. But along with that, when we speak to residents on an everyday basis, that’s what they tell us, and we believe the housing supply action plan is the largest in a series of steps our government is taking to increase housing supply. Our plan will streamline and simplify Ontario’s land use policies under a single document. Through the new planning document, the legislation would help accelerate the implementation of the changes and will make sure that we are actually planning to freeze 74 provincial fees at current levels. The impact is going to be lower cost and building homes faster.

Madam Speaker, if you really look at this bill, it’s not just talking about building homes faster, building more homes, but it’s also helping the tenants. We’re doing this by making sure that—one of the things that we heard is that it’s taking much longer for the Landlord and Tenant Board—delays—so we’re making sure we’re investing into that.

We’re also making sure that we are putting policies in place so that there is an adequate supply of rental units. And something which I already spoke about: Under this government, we have seen, in 2022, 15,000 new units, which is the highest ever.

This government believes in making sure to help and support all Ontarians, including the tenants.