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.

Madam Speaker, we all know that the purchase of a home is probably one of the largest purchases that people will make in their lifetime. When you’re embarking on that purchase, especially as a young person, you embark on that purchase with excitement, but also trepidation, because it involves a lot of money and it’s probably the first major purchase you’ve made in your entire lifetime.

I know that this government is taking steps to protect homebuyers and to make sure that that trepidation and that excitement can be controlled, protecting homebuyers to make sure that the home-purchasing experience is safe. And so, I would like to ask the member from Windsor–Tecumseh: What measures are being taken by this government to protect homebuyers in the biggest purchase they’ll probably ever make in their entire lifetime?

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.