I’d like to begin my remarks by thanking Ontario’s Minister of Education and, of course, the parliamentary assistant to the minister for all the work that they’ve put into improving public education for hard-working families across the province.

I’m really pleased to have the opportunity to speak in support of this proposed legislation. Some of my colleagues across from the government benches will know that for a period of time I was the education critic for the official opposition during Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government. I enjoyed that period of time because there was lots to criticize, lots to offer suggestions about, some of which have found their way into the bill that we’re debating today. That’s a good thing. That’s a very positive thing going forward.

After more than a decade and a half of the previous Liberal government, which closed over 600 schools—just stay with that figure; 600 schools—across our great province, and as part of closing those schools, one of the things they didn’t do is consult with the communities. Our deputy House leader is agreeing with that because she knows that. She was at Queen’s Park then. We know that there wasn’t a level of consultation—not one level—with hard-working families across the province on the closing of 600 schools and the effect of that on their local economies. Can you believe that? But that’s what happened.

There’s a difference with this government, isn’t there? There’s a difference with this government because we’re listening to parents and we’re investing $15 billion over 10 years to build new schools, some of which are in my riding; improve existing educational facilities; and, important for hard-working families, create new child care spaces.

I also commend the Minister of Education for taking action to ensure that Ontario schools like Willows Walk—and you’ll know where that is in Whitby; that’s just a little bit east of Anderson Street in Whitby—and Father Leo J. Austin in Whitby are safe and welcoming learning centres, as they should be for all students, and for updating the curriculum so it does a better job of matching to the needs of the modern economy and labour market.

But what does that mean, exactly? Well, it means more math, more science and a greater emphasis on lucrative and dignified careers in the skilled trades. I’m proud of this minister and this government for driving transformational change in public education. There’s no question, absolutely no question that this government is delivering for hard-working families in Whitby and across the province. Millions of dollars have been invested in Whitby to construct or refurbish new schools.

But there’s only so much you can accomplish without comprehensive and effective reforms. If passed, the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act, 2023, would legislate reforms under four statutes: the Education Act, the Ontario College of Teachers Act, the Early Childhood Educators Act and the Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2001. This bill includes a number of critically important reforms, and we’re debating them today because parents and taxpayers deserve greater transparency and accountability and young people deserve better academic outcomes.

Speaker, our legislation is increasing accountability by giving parents new tools to navigate and understand the education system while establishing basic qualifications for directors of education. Additionally, the minister will now be able to establish key priorities to ensure students have the skills and knowledge they need, especially in areas such as reading, writing and math.

Our government’s legislation will enact over 20 key recommendations across five themed categories, including accountability and transparency; governance and leadership; maximizing capital assets; teacher training and oversight; and consistent information and approaches to student learning. You’ll know, Speaker, from your own practical experience before coming to Queen’s Park, the importance of all of what I just stated, understanding the impacts of these changes.

While the parents in Whitby are understandably interested primarily in how this bill will improve their children’s education at the grassroots level, I’d like to take some time to discuss some of the improvements our bill will make to governance and leadership within school boards.

Excuse me, Speaker. I’m just going to take a little bit of water.

I think we can all agree, particularly on this side of the House, and my members over there as well—

Their own member said that money given to school boards is not divided appropriately. He knows that the Ministry of Education provides money to the school boards and they divide it based on priorities. He was also an educator so I imagine he would know this. He also claimed a few other things in his speech. Some of the things he claimed in his speech actually addressed section 7. I want to ask him, did he read section 7? Does he support at least section 7 of the bill, or had he not looked into the actual clauses of section 7 of the bill?

Further questions?

I was coming there.

I think we can all agree that disputes among school board trustees are costly and time-consuming. I think we’ve seen examples of that across the province, haven’t we? They erode public confidence and deflect attention away from their primary duties of promoting student achievement. Moreover, considering that approximately 700 trustees provide governance over a high-profile, high-impact $27-billion education system, it’s a little surprising to hear that trustees lack a consistent set of qualifications, training and, importantly, even a standard code of conduct.

Elected trustees perform an incredibly valuable service to parents and taxpayers by holding school boards accountable and ensuring that tax dollars are well spent. For that reason, we need to ensure that all trustees within the province of Ontario have the knowledge and skills required to perform their duties and that their conduct is held to provincial standards.

The vast majority of elected trustees are diligent, dedicated and altruistic public servants who care about education and the people they serve. But in recent years, the media has reported numerous incidents of trustees who treated parents less than respectfully and even said things that were completely unacceptable.

To quote from the 1994 Royal Commission on Learning that was established by Bob Rae’s NDP government and co-chaired by a former federal Liberal cabinet minister—I’m going to interrupt the quote, Speaker, by saying I move that the question now be put.

This side too.

I rise to speak to Bill 97, the government’s latest housing bill. And I want to begin by saying we are in a housing crisis. It’s getting worse, not better. It’s unacceptable that it now takes a young person 22 years to save to buy a home; that it takes the average minimum-wage worker in the city of Toronto to work 80 hours to afford a one-bedroom apartment; that there are no affordable apartments in many cities across the province, including the one I represent, that a minimum-wage worker can actually find to rent; and 185,000 families on a wait-list to access social housing.

So we have a housing crisis, but sprawl will not solve that crisis, because sprawl is too financially expensive to solve the crisis. This government started their sprawl agenda by opening the greenbelt for development, breaking an explicit promise not to do it. They made changes to the Planning Act, dismantling environmental protections to facilitate sprawl, but now, Bill 97 completely opens the floodgates to it by eliminating the provincial policy statement requirement that municipalities prioritize infill development before resorting to expansion of urban boundaries into farms and forests. Think about that, Speaker.

The bill makes it easier to expand boundaries at any time, instead of a more coordinated approach to land use planning, like places in Waterloo have done, with the support of farmers to make sure that we protect the local farmland that contributes so much to the economy. The bill gets rid of some of the key hard density targets previously included in planning documents. It consolidates the provincial policy statement and the growth plan, just assuming that a one-size-fits-all solution works for the whole province, which just isn’t the case—the challenges in the GTA are much different than in Windsor, Ottawa or Thunder Bay—and it further empowers the minister to override environmental protections in planning policy through the use of ministerial zoning orders on steroids.

So Speaker, people and municipalities simply cannot afford this bill. I don’t see how the government can consider themselves fiscally responsible in any way and support this sprawl agenda. Studies show that it costs two and a half times more to service a home for a municipality through sprawl development versus through building within existing urban boundaries. It’s $3,462 to service a home for sprawl; $1,416 within existing urban boundaries. A study in Ottawa showed that it’s costing the people of Ottawa an extra $465 per taxpayer to service sprawl development in the region versus non-sprawl development. As a matter of fact, homes built within just even gentle density actually save taxpayers money. Not only do they pay for themselves, they also generate an additional $606 per taxpayer to be used to serve city services, to fund them.

Municipalities can’t afford this bill. So it’s actually going to delay housing, because they’re not going to have the money and the resources to be able to build the sewer mains, the water mains, the roads, the hydro lines, all the things that it takes to actually make a home livable. People can’t afford it. Young families can’t afford to be forced to drive until they qualify for a mortgage. People want to live in affordable communities where they can afford to buy a home close to where they work, in places where they can live, work and play.

That’s why we need solutions that get past this expensive sprawl agenda that gets us beyond this false choice between tall and sprawl, solutions that allow us to build the housing supply we need while protecting the farmland that feeds us, that contributes $50 billion to the provincial economy and employs over 800,000 Ontarians; solutions that allow us to build homes without paving over the wetlands that clean our drinking water, protect us from flooding, and the forests and the green spaces where so many people love to spend time with their families but that also protect us from extreme weather events.

That’s exactly why I’ve put forward solutions like Bill 44 and Bill 45, which would allow us to build 1.5 million homes within existing urban boundaries in ways that are actually affordable for municipalities—the kinds of homes that are actually affordable for people. That’s why we’ve put forward solutions to get speculation out of the housing market so that homes can be for people and not speculators, and it’s why we’ve been calling on this government to actually start investing in non-profit and co-op housing.

At one time in Canada, we would build 20,000 co-op houses a year. Now, we hardly build any. Those are the deeply affordable homes within existing communities that provide the gentle density and missing middle that allow us to build affordable connected communities that people actually want to live in, not the sprawl that people cannot afford.

Mr. Coe has moved that the question now be put. There has been approximately nine hours of debate on this bill. I’m satisfied that there has been sufficient debate to allow this question to be put to the House.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I heard a no.

All those in favour of the motion that the question be now put, say “aye.”

All those opposed to the motion that the question be now put, say “nay.”

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

A recorded vote being required, it will be deferred to the next instance of deferred votes.

Vote deferred.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 18, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 97, An Act to amend various statutes with respect to housing and development / Projet de loi 97, Loi modifiant diverses lois en ce qui concerne le logement et l’aménagement.

I’m delighted to speak to the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, because there’s so much of this bill that I see reflected in my home community. I’d say that my journey starts in Walkerville. Walkerville is an incredibly vibrant and picturesque part of my riding. It was built as a company town by Hiram Walker and Sons Ltd. It’s the home of Canadian Club whisky.

Interjections.

But in so many ways, Walkerville—I call it a gold standard for urban planning. It’s a place where people really want to be, and so the vibrancy and the longevity of Walkerville is, in many ways, facilitated by not just Bill 97, but previously Bill 23.

I want to highlight my friend Sarah Cipkar. I first met Sarah when I worked for the city of Windsor. I led the environmental assessment process for a project called the Central Box. Sarah, to her credit, was thinking of how my presentation, the municipal presentation, was not serving our various immigrant communities very well. I didn’t have translators, I didn’t have facilitators, and she took it on herself to create her own at the YMCA, which I attended. I was surrounded by a number of translators as I described the technical merits of the environmental assessment. But what Sarah has done with her career is phenomenal. She created Cipkar Development, which creates additional dwelling units in places like Walkerville which have back alleys and which have additional space where there’s a density, but we have the capacity to improve.

Another feature that exists in Walkerville is an absence of driveways on many of the streets. The services are provided through the alleys, and so street parking is vitally important, in particular parallel parking. I know that’s how I failed my first driving test, but it’s certainly important in some neighbourhoods like Walkerville, where parallel parking is the norm.

This bill, Bill 97, provides some good clarity with respect to parking improvements or parking regulations that are required, because previously it was not quite clear whether you could insist on that parking spot on the very first unit. Now, with the changes here, it means you don’t have to add unnecessary parking. Walkerville has parking on the street, and that’s the character of it, and while certainly you need to provide services for the people of the neighbourhood and access for them, parking doesn’t have to dominate the yard under this change. So I think this is a great part of the bill.

I also want to call attention to recent developments in Walkerville near Ottawa Street. There was formerly a church located there. Ottawa Street is what’s branded by the local BIA as being “uptown.” I think it’s a good adage, because there are a lot of great stores, great restaurants on Ottawa Street. This church had reached the end of life. It no longer met building code requirements, and so it came down and was demolished. Initially, there was a proposal to build three homes on the property. Instead, what came back was a proposal to build a 23-unit apartment building. I won’t get into the merits of three single-family units versus a 23-unit apartment building, but needless to say, there were many in the community who were against the proposal.

To their credit, Windsor city council did support, as they have for a number of recent housing projects. We do need those units in our community as much as possible, and Windsor was ahead of the curve in many ways. They had a community-approved plan for intensification for the downtown especially so that we could use the infill lands.

But what Windsor has reported with some—in one of our previous bills, prior to my election, the More Homes for Everyone Act, there were some accountability measures brought in. Some relief was asked for, because truly, you need to get people on board. You need to hire people and train people in order to process the applications. Bill 97 responds to this challenge, delivers. It means that the refunds of—I call it a noncompliant timeline for processing. They would only apply after July 1.

It’s proposed further that the minister have the ability to be nimble in granting some exceptions on this point and exempt municipalities from having to follow through with the fee refund if there was some particular factor that warrants it.

Also, what’s part of this is an opportunity to reduce the complications when we are creating residential buildings of 10 units or less. Right now, in planning, you can go to site plan control in many municipalities which allows the municipality to regulate landscaping, architectural materials and ask for on-site improvements to reflect the character of the neighbourhood.

Just having been on the other side of that process, this is something that does slow down development. There are reasons for it. Obviously, the site plan control existed for a reason. But if our goal is building housing, buildings that are 10 units or less are really not imposing in the manner of a larger building, and it’s important to make sure that those can come online.

I say that’s the story of generally Bill 97 as a whole, because our goal is to build more housing and on a faster basis. We are finding there are roadblocks. When we strive for the moon and really have tough targets, it means that we lose the opportunity to get some low-hanging fruit. So I really appreciate some of the changes that are here, and that includes having the minister’s intervention.

Before the last election, in my riding we had the NextStar Energy battery plant. It truly required an MZO. When I heard the criticism from various party leaders about the use of the MZO to secure this major economic development opportunity for our community, what else could I do? I was grateful to be the candidate representing the government, because this development is vital. The news came out today about Volkswagen in St. Thomas. That’s going to be transformative for St. Thomas, but the NextStar project is transformative for Windsor. We need the minister to have that ability to make discretionary decisions when it fits, so I appreciate that part of it.

I also wanted to review a little bit about the employment area protections; I know it’s important, and I see my time is running very, very low. But we want to make sure that employment areas are protected because many municipalities are running into problems with the factories not finding an opportunity to locate. But housing is still quite important. We are, as part of this, introducing the provisions that limit appeals of municipal refusals and non-decisions.

All that being said, I also wanted to—maybe I’ll close out by mentioning my hometown of Tecumseh. It has some rural areas in it. I was on the committee of adjustment for eight years. We constantly got lot severance and variance applications in rural areas. There was this interesting dynamic that was created where you could sever off a matrimonial home or a family home, and you would rezone the rest so that you wouldn’t use up the farmland. But someone else could actually come in and then do that, so the family couldn’t do it but someone else could. So the changes that are here in Bill 97 provide more flexibility for rural areas and to allow for families that hope and that opportunity to continue to serve and work the lands that they grew up on.

I cannot support a bill that’s going to make the housing crisis worse. We already have enough land set aside for development, according to the government’s own hand-picked Housing Affordability Task Force, to build two million homes—not just the 1.5 million, but two million homes. And if we do it within our existing urban boundaries—instead of imposing sprawl on municipalities, which this bill does—it will be more affordable for municipalities.

I don’t understand; I thought Conservative members understood fiscal responsibility and understood why it is so important to efficiently build within existing urban boundaries.

Interjections.

Interjections.

Interjection.

Questions?

Further questions?

I’m really glad to hear that the member acknowledges that we have a massive housing supply crisis.

I chose Ontario as my home when I immigrated to Canada. I chose to be here.

I just have a very short question: Based on what we put forward in Bill 97, will the member be supporting Bill 97, helping tenants and helping people purchase their homes?

Speaker, we know that with new development there comes infrastructure costs: roads, transit, water, sewer infrastructure, community centres, fire and police services, as well, and facilities. The member talks about that the cost of infrastructure to build on sprawl is two and a half times more than building homes within urban boundaries. London is going to lose $100 million in development charges because of this bill that the government wants to push through. Can the member speak to how much development charges will be lost in his riding and how municipalities are supposed to make up that income loss?

I want to ask this question—and probably for the benefit for the member from Guelph—because I live just outside of Smiths Falls, have farmland outside of Smiths Falls. Do you know what? If you go past my farm a little piece, do you know what you see in a big field? “Welcome to Ottawa.” Well, you’re still about 60 kilometres from Ottawa. So that’s a problem for a farmer who has a son or daughter who wants to take over the farm and wants to reside in the community they grew up and in the community where they want to remain and perhaps take over the farm.

So my question for the member from Windsor–Tecumseh is, what is this bill doing for rural development?

Really, the changes do protect renters here. I look at the additional 40 adjudicators who are being hired for the landlord and tenant tribunal. I’m sure the member for Windsor West is getting the same calls that I am about landlord/tenant issues in that there is a significant backlog that was created—or largely amplified during the pandemic. So this is quite a more meaningful investment at this moment in time. It doubles the number of full-time adjudicators at the Landlord and Tenant Board. We need decisions. A lot of renters are losing out—and landlords, for that matter, for bad tenants. So this is a key investment that will help renters. I thank you for the question.

My riding directly abuts the member for Windsor–Tecumseh’s riding. In fact, the only thing that divides us, on the north side of Tecumseh Road, is half a street. Langlois is the divider. So I’m quite familiar with the area, Walkerville, that he’s talking about, and there are many historic homes that are in that—of heritage significance for our community.

But if you take a short walk—and I encourage the member for Windsor–Tecumseh to come for a walk with me—into my riding, it takes maybe 10 or 15 minutes, depending on where you are in Walkerville, to walk into where my riding begins in downtown Windsor. There you see right in front of you very clearly the problem with this government’s policies. This is where you see the largest homeless population in Windsor in my riding downtown, and we have issues in the west end too.

So I’m asking the member for Windsor–Tecumseh, do you support rent control for all residential rental units, and why does your government refuse to commit to bringing back vacancy decontrol to protect the affordable units in our shared community?

Questions?

The government should take the advice of the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force, which said, “A shortage of land isn’t the cause of the problem.” We don’t need to sacrifice farmland—of which we’re getting rid of 319 acres a day, prime farmland—or the greenbelt to build housing. We need to focus on building new homes within existing urban boundaries instead of paving over more farmlands, wetlands, natural heritage with unsustainable urban sprawl that makes land speculators rich, but drives up housing costs and taxes in municipalities.

My question is very easy: Do you agree with Premier Ford that we should be building million-dollar homes on the greenbelt?

I rise today to speak to Bill 97, Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act. This is the government’s fourth housing legislation in four years. That means four out of four times the government has failed to address the affordable housing crisis meaningfully and it’s taking, once again, the wrong approach to addressing housing supply issues. Now, this bill makes changes on two key fronts: on development policy and on tenant protections. I’ll talk about the development policy first and then get to tenant protections.

Speaker, this bill fails to eliminate exclusionary zoning and allow construction of more affordable housing options—such as duplexes, townhomes, walk-up apartments—everywhere that single detached homes are allowed. This was a key recommendation from the Housing Affordability Task Force report, and it is an idea that the official opposition, the NDP, supports. It was, in fact, part of our housing platform.

The government’s previous housing legislation, Bill 23—the infamous Bill 23—included allowing secondary and tertiary suites as-of-right within existing structures, which we support. But according to the government themselves, they expect that this change will deliver only 50,000 new homes over the next 10 years, which is barely 3% of the 1.5 million homes that are needed. Instead of eliminating exclusionary zoning, Bill 23 preserves restrictive zoning rules like two- or three-storey height limits, maximum floor space indexes or minimum setbacks that effectively prohibit what we call missing middle forms of housing. That bill fell far short of what the Housing Affordability Task Force recommended, and now with this bill, Bill 97, it still does not address the shortcomings.

Instead this bill, once again, relies almost entirely on deregulation and tax cuts to incentivize the for-profit private market to deliver 1.5 million homes over the next decade. Speaker, this narrow-minded approach is failing, and we know it’s failing because the government’s own budget revealed that the projected housing starts in Ontario are going down instead of going up.

Now we in the NDP, the official opposition, have called for a strong public sector role to deliver new affordable and non-market housing that the for-profit private sector can’t or won’t deliver. There is no provision in Bill 97 to facilitate new non-market housing. This bill, combined with some major changes that the government is making to the provincial Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe and the provincial policy statement—what the government is doing is further accelerating farmland loss and unsustainable sprawl.

Speaker, doubling down on sprawl is going to make it so much more expensive for municipalities to provide the basic services that these developments are going to need. From roads and transit to electricity and sewage, all of these services are going to cost more, because it costs more to service low-density single-family-home subdivisions than it costs to provide these services and infrastructure in areas that are already zoned for development.

And since it is much more expensive for municipalities to provide these services, Ontarians are not only going to see property tax hikes—in fact, Speaker, folks all around the province and many municipalities are already getting these higher property tax bills now, but they’re going to see the tax hikes year after year, coupled with service cuts, because it is so expensive to build this infrastructure and to maintain the infrastructure. Low-density suburban sprawl is a costly and backward approach to planning. It is not going to address the housing affordability crisis or the housing supply crisis.

Let me remind the members of the government once again that the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force said that the 1.5 million homes needed to be built in the next decade can be built within current urban boundaries. There is no need to pave over the greenbelt. There is no need for sprawl. That’s what I want to cover on the development policy changes.

In the remaining time I have, I want to get into tenant protections. Now, the tenant protections in this bill fall so short of what the NDP and tenants in this province are calling for. It’s like the government knows they have to do more to protect tenants and asked themselves what the least is that they can do that will not disrupt the status quo. That’s what the changes are in this bill: the slightest of slight improvements simply to be able to claim that the Conservatives are doing something for tenants.

Speaker, I want to talk about the AC use. That’s in this bill. Last summer, in the midst of the heat wave, tenants in my riding at 130 Jameson Avenue in Parkdale received eviction notices for using their ACs. Many leases forbid the use of ACs. Their corporate landlords at 130 Jameson said that AC use is prohibited under lease agreements, so either the AC goes or the tenants have to go.

The Residential Tenancies Act mandates a minimum temperature of 20 degrees during the winter, but there is no law on maximum temperatures. Municipalities in Ontario are asking the province to mandate maximum temperatures, including the city of Toronto. So given that there is no maximum-temperature legislation for protection of tenants, the tenants organize in order to be able to keep using their ACs because, in the hot summer months, this is a serious health and safety issue.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission was very clear. In fact, they issued a statement, and the opening line of their statement read, “Access to cooling during extreme heat waves is a human rights issue.” Their statement talked about the obligation of housing providers and specifically referenced the case of the tenants at 130 Jameson. They also stated that the current Residential Tenancies Act “leaves many Ontario tenants without protections against extreme heat” because air conditioning is not considered a vital service.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission called on this government to “include air conditioning as a vital service, like the provision of heat ... and to establish a provincial maximum temperature to make sure that ... tenants are protected against threats of eviction” simply for “using “safely installed air conditioning units.” That’s the background. This is what has led to what’s in Bill 97 today around AC use.

So what does the Ford government do? They prohibit the ban of AC in leases, which is helpful, but it still puts the onus on the tenants to install their own ACs to ensure that apartments don’t get dangerously hot in the summer, and they’re allowing rents to be increased for installing the AC. That’s why I say that the measures that the government has put in place for tenants fall so short. It does the absolute bare minimum.

It’s also a contradiction of an explicit ban that’s already in the Residential Tenancies Act on the use of seasonal fees. So I will flag with the government right now: When the bill is before committee, there has to be an amendment to ensure that seasonal fee ban continues on and that there are no extra charges for AC use. Just as the Ontario Human Rights Commission has called for, we need maximum-temperature legislation. This will also be consistent with the long-standing, already set-out principle that all tenants have the right to reasonable enjoyment of their unit. The temperature of the unit that they live in is an absolutely important factor.

Speaker, there are some other measures in it. I do not have time to go over all of them. All I want to say at the end of the day, when it comes to housing and tenants, is that housing is a human right, and so we need to be able to ensure that every Ontarian has decent, affordable housing that they can call their own, something that really meets the needs of the tenant.

My question to the member across the way is around protections for tenants. One of the issues that I hear about most frequently in my constituency office is from tenants who are pressured by their landlords. They feel that they have to move out. The landlords use unethical means to get them to move out, because the landlords know that once that tenant is gone, they can increase the rent to whatever they want.

I also hear from tenants who are living in buildings that were constructed after November 2018. There’s absolutely no rent control on those units. So why, if this government was genuinely interested in protecting tenants, did they not do something to scrap vacancy decontrol and to remove the exemption of the rent control for post-2018 builds?