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?

I thank the member for his question. I’d return to my hometown, where the future of our municipality is actually set for what is presently farmland, but it’s been zoned as residential for many years—or at least it has been in the official plan. Municipalities actually have a 20-year horizon for planning for the future, so we already know where a lot of these developments are being mapped out.

Families need a place to live. What I experienced in my municipality is school closures because of the empty-nesting. We have families where the parents are staying in their home but the kids are moving out and they can’t find something close by, so the services are being depleted, especially in rural and suburban communities. We need to ensure that we have homes built where they are serving families together.

Bill 23 brought forward a number of protections, including the strictest and most comprehensive fines for bad actors across Ontario and, really, across Canada. Bill 97 has a cooling-off period on purchases of new freehold homes and a mandatory legal review of purchase agreements for all new home purchases.

Ontarians, and especially young Ontarians and those just starting out, deserve to have peace of mind. It is the largest investment that they’re destined to make, and now it’s even more difficult than ever before. That’s why our government is continuing to work hard to protect the investment of Ontarians against bad actors.

As part of the changes here, there is support for both renters and landlords. I mentioned the adjudicators at the Landlord and Tenant Board. Really, we have very strict laws; as landlords, there’s a singular lease which everyone has to follow. So there is already a standardized process, but really getting through the disputes is taking a long, long time, so that’s—

Further questions?

I want to thank the member for a very compelling speech. I appreciate it very much. I always learn a lot when I’m able to hear from you.

I know, given your neighbourhood, you undoubtedly run into more rental circumstances than I would—I’ve got lots of apartment buildings. I know that we as a government have introduced more penalties for bad landlords and taken action to prevent evictions. This bill has measures that will help to provide better protections to tenants in the province, and I’m wondering if you intend to support the measures that are provided in the bill to strengthen the consequences against bad landlords.

I thank the member from Windsor–Tecumseh for his question. One of the measures I didn’t get time to discuss was the increase in fines for bad landlords when they execute what we call unfair renovictions. The thing is this: So far, increasing fines alone has not proven to be effective. We know that because there have been fines that have been issued, and the behaviour has not changed.

There is a very good example that happened, a case that happened right here in Toronto, where tenants were renovicted in bad faith. In an unprecedented manner, a decision was made. The landlords—I forget the name of the corporation right now—received a huge penalty, and then they came into my riding and did the same thing. That did not deter them. We need other measures in place, such as vacancy control, which I hope I will get an opportunity to talk about some more.

We have seen a huge increase in renovictions, a huge increase in own-use evictions, and now the government is weakening rental replacement bylaws that the city has. What it’s going to lead to is more tenants being evicted unfairly. It’s going to lead to skyrocketing rents. And it’s going to lead to more and more people—particularly young people, young families, students—not being able to call Toronto home anymore. They’re going to all be driven out of Toronto. That’s what is going to end up happening.

Questions?

Thank you to the member from Parkdale–High Park for her excellent presentation. The city of Toronto has a very robust and, I would say, probably the best rental replacement bylaw in the province, if not the country. It actually goes much further than what the government is proposing in this bill. What do you think is the ramification of weakening rental replacement across the province rather than raising the bar so that everybody meets the city standard in the city of Toronto and exceeds it—but rather, we race to the bottom, as the government is proposing?

Question?

Further debate? The member from Mississauga—

Hear, hear.

I thank the member opposite for his question. I apologize; I don’t remember your riding name right now. I don’t have my cheat sheet.

But here’s the thing: If, truly, in good faith, the government wants to bring in legislation that addresses this question, then yes, we can talk about it. We can look at it and examine it more closely at committee. However, this bill, combined with the major changes that the government is making to the provincial policy statement, is expanding sprawl, is paving over farmland. I would imagine—and we are hearing from farmers too that they are worried about farmland loss. This bill is accelerating farmland loss.

So I would say to the member that there are tidbits in this bill which are helpful. As I mentioned, there was another one where AC bans are not in leases anymore. There are tidbits that are helpful, but overall this bill fails to address the issues that we are facing around housing affordability and around housing supply.

The solution, the proposal, is one that actually has been before the House. Last session, the government actually voted it down. It’s a bill that I tabled, called the Rent Stabilization Act. The member from London North Centre was a co-sponsor of this bill. That bill, the Rent Stabilization Act, which has been reintroduced and is before this House this session, will close the biggest loophole in the Residential Tenancies Act, and that’s the vacancy decontrol loophole. It will ensure that rent control is tied to the unit and not to the person, meaning new tenants will pay what the previous tenants paid, rents are not allowed to be increased to whatever amount it is, and it will ensure that housing remains affordable.

Speaker, just a couple of days ago, I shared with members of this House how in the High Park neighbourhood, rent for a one-bedroom increased by 46%—46%. Do you think that that is manageable? No one can live with such unpredictable increases to cost of living. It’s very important we close the vacancy decontrol loophole.

Speaker, I don’t have much time, but I will say this: The government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force has released a report. Start there—

I’d like to thank the member from Parkdale–High Park for her presentation on Bill 97, Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act.

We look at the title of this, and it talks about protecting tenants, but I do believe that there are quite a number of pieces missing which actually protect tenants. My question to the member is: If this government truly wanted to support tenants, what would they do?

Madam Speaker, the government has committed itself to building attainable and affordable housing, and has in fact introduced four separate pieces of legislation consecutively towards this goal. I guess we would imagine introducing even more. But rather than introducing their own program, the NDP has only made passing remarks at what they imagine to be, in their plan, a government-run corporation to build homes. But we’ve never actually heard or even seen the NDP plan to build any homes. So I invite the member to take this opportunity: What does your proposed government-run company look like, and how would your government-run company operate?

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.

Thank you to the member for her presentation. I know that most of your discussion, because you had limited time—sorry, through the Speaker; she had limited time to make her presentation—was about things that are relevant to the Toronto area. I hope that you will recognize that the vast majority of the geography in this province is not actually in Toronto; it is in the rural area.

I spent 20 years as a municipal representative in the rural area, and I can’t count the number of times that rural landowners—a.k.a. farmers—came to me with a challenge: that the provincial policy statement would specifically exclude them from being able to sever a lot to allow for a son or daughter to take it on, possibly leading to succession. This act starts to solve that. Will you admit that getting this ability is actually a good part of 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—