Speaker, this government heard loud and clear during pre-budget consultations that homelessness is not only a huge problem in urban areas, but it’s also an issue in rural areas, like my riding of Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston.

Thanks to this Ontario government and the great Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, millions of new dollars were invested in this year’s budget—and for years to come—to assist our exceptional local organizations that lend a helping hand to the most vulnerable people, under the Homelessness Prevention Program.

I spoke with Emily Hollington, the director of social services for Lanark county, who said, “We are pleased to see the ministry’s increased financial commitment to the Homelessness Prevention Program.” Knowing the need, Emily is very thankful for this new funding. Lanark county will receive a total of almost $2.5 million in 2023-24, which includes an additional investment of nearly $1 million. The additional Homelessness Prevention Program funding will help the county address the complex needs of people experiencing homelessness and will enhance our initiatives in preventing homelessness.

Mr. Speaker, Ontario’s 2023 budget is supporting those who have fallen on hard times in Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston and across the province—people who are experiencing or are at risk of experiencing homelessness.

This government will continue to take action on homelessness prevention and provide more people with not only a place to call home, but hope for a better future.

My question is to the Premier.

Without any consultation, Premier Ford announced plans to tear down the current Ontario Science Centre building and build a smaller, new building at Ontario Place, where large parts of the site are also being privatized with no consultation or transparency.

The Ontario Science Centre is an important architectural landmark and a vital place for the communities of Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park. Tearing it down is a bad idea.

The Premier says that the plan is to build housing on the site.

Has the public land where the Ontario Science Centre sits—land that belongs to the city of Toronto—already been promised to a developer? If so, who?

I want to thank the great member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore for that great question.

Our government remains committed to delivering on our promise of 1.5 million homes. You saw Stats Canada a couple of weeks ago—445,000 people landed here in Ontario. That’s the fastest-growing region anywhere in North America. We’re going to make sure we have homes and rental homes.

As you saw, housing starts in the GTA rose by 7.7% last year—the highest level since 2012. Year over year, total housing starts in Ontario are up 4.5%. Rental starts are double what they were the same time last year because of Bill 23—the minister did an incredible job.

We’re cutting red tape. We’re making sure we get shovels in the ground. We’re going to make sure it doesn’t take five years for a municipality to issue a permit. We’re getting homes built for the newcomers and people who have been here for years. We’re going to make sure we have affordable, attainable homes for everyone.

Multi-unit construction in Ontario has increased by 7.6% since February. We’re seeing this continue to grow—the largest increase in the country, over any area in the country. We saw a 25% increase in condo permits, also the largest increase in the entire country. There’s a reason. Everyone heard the stat—and this goes back many years. We’ve created the conditions and the climate for companies to come here and build. We have more cranes than LA, New York, Chicago, Washington and Boston combined. They’re building because we’ve created the climate.

We’re cutting red tape. We’re getting shovels in the ground. We’re making sure that municipalities are held accountable for the first time ever—they’re being held accountable. We’re going to make sure we have condos and houses for people who may not be able to afford it.

It’s very simple—the Liberals and NDP have never understood it for decades—it’s called supply and demand, and we’re going to have to supply the demand.

My question this morning is for the Premier.

Over the coming decade, Ontario is expected to grow by more than two million people, and many of those people want to call the beautiful riding of Etobicoke–Lakeshore home. But as Ontario’s population continues to grow, housing construction has historically not kept pace.

Now, like much of Canada, Ontario is facing a housing crisis that is freezing individuals and families out of the dream of home ownership. With each year that passes, we know that thousands of newcomers to Canada will settle in Ontario, and many are skilled workers looking to potentially buy or rent a home. Simply put, Ontario needs to build a lot more homes to meet the rapidly growing population.

Can the Premier please explain how our government is taking action to increase the pace of new home construction?

But, Speaker, more can be done and should be done when it comes to addressing our province’s housing crisis and the affordability crisis that’s affecting all regions of Ontario. For too many Ontarians, including young people, newcomers and seniors, finding the right home is still too challenging. It is essential that our government implements measures so that local interests and demand for housing are considered when it comes to building housing to accommodate community and region-specific needs.

Can the Premier please explain how our government is promoting collaboration and partnerships in responding to diverse housing needs?

Again to the Premier: Abiola is a grade 4 student from my riding. She wrote to me with some important questions about this government’s plans to build housing on the greenbelt. She asked: Does the government know that they will ruin that piece of protected land? Why is the government harming the natural resources of the province? When there is plenty of available land outside the greenbelt, why do they choose to build houses on a more important piece of land?

Speaker, why does a grade 4 student understand the environmental harm of this government’s greenbelt carve-up but this Premier does not?

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on OW and $1,227 for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both Ontario Works (OW) and ... (ODSP);

“Whereas the recent small budget increase of 5% for ODSP still leaves these citizens well below the poverty line, both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to live in this time of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a ‘basic income’ of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.”

I couldn’t agree more with this petition, affix my signature and will send it to the table with page Leonard.

Mr. Speaker, I’m pleased to share, through you to the member opposite, that we have taken very thoughtful approaches to how we look to increase housing opportunities—not only in intensifying in urban areas, but also along our rural roadways.

Earlier, this winter, the Premier and I met with dairy farmers from Elgin county, and we talked specifically about the importance of minimum distance separation. We also very much appreciate and respect the ag impact.

That’s why I’m pleased that our ministry worked so incredibly well, not only with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, but with the Premier’s office, to make sure that when we look to increase housing opportunities—primarily to address farmers’ requests, in terms of having an extra lot for their son or daughter or an employee to live close to the farm—we’re taking that into consideration. We’re going to be okay, because again, we’re thoughtful, and we’re respecting the MDS as well as ag impact.

The Associate Minister of Housing.

The House recessed from 1143 to 1300.

Report deemed adopted.

I really want to thank the member for the question.

Speaker, Ontario is expected to grow by more than two million people by 2031, with approximately a million and a half living in the greater Golden Horseshoe region, including Hamilton.

The federal government has also announced that Canada will increase immigration to about a half a million newcomers by 2025. Ontario takes the brunt and most of the immigrants, because Ontario is a great place to live, to work, to raise a family, and to open a business.

Ontario’s population reached a historic 50 million last year, and it’s our expectation that construction will begin on all of our lands, because we desperately need housing, we desperately need people to come here to work.

We’re getting it done. We’re building the infrastructure. We’re building the hospitals. We’re getting health care in the communities that need it. We will build the housing for all Ontarians.

Do you know what’s great to hear right now? It’s that we are reaching all-time highs in history for purpose-built rentals, something that has never happened before. Why? Because the Liberals, when they were in government for 15 years, chose to ignore the sector. We did not have enough housing for people who needed to rent. We did not have enough housing for people who moved here. But do you know what, Speaker? This government will get it done, under this Premier and this municipal affairs and housing minister.

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.

Thank you for the presentation of the member. We believe that this issue is much bigger than only the province. We strongly believe that the federal government should be at the table to address the issue, and we continue to advocate for a fair share of the federal funding to build houses.

Currently, housing needs—44% of them are in Ontario, which is the highest in the country. Now, the federal government’s share should be 44%, but they are contributing 38%, which puts Ontario in around a $480-million shortfall. Will the member support us and call on the federal government to bring its own fair share of the contribution?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

During the election, the NDP had a very clear platform on housing and the details were there. However, the Conservatives did not have descriptions of how their housing plan would roll out. The Premier said he would not touch the greenbelt, and then here we are today. We are talking about homes being built on the greenbelt. But the government member says that they don’t work in silos and they talk to people. Which people did you talk to that gave you consent and consultation going forward on building on the greenbelt?

Thank you to the member from Mississauga–Malton, my good colleague and also a hard-working member for that area. Thank you for your advocacy and hard work.

Madam Speaker, this government made a commitment to the people of Ontario that we would introduce a housing supply action plan each year over four years to cut red tape and to speed up the approval process to build 1.5 million new homes over the next 10 years.

We have always said that transformational change will be desperately needed to build the housing supply action plan. Can my colleague please outline how this plan aligns with the commitment we made to the people of Ontario?