So many. If you open up an act, I’m going to try to introduce an amendment to change it. That’s how it works. That’s my job. There are a lot of things I would like to change with how this government approaches housing and the real estate sector to ensure that our housing sector provides homes to people first. That’s the goal. And they should be affordable homes that meet their needs.

Another measure we introduced was around “use it or lose it.

This is how it works: If a developer gets all the approvals that they need to build and they don’t build within a fair and reasonable period of time, and they don’t have a good reason for not building, then there should be penalties imposed, because that will stimulate the construction of homes so we have enough homes for current residents to move out of their parents’ basements and for newcomers who are moving in who want to call Ontario home. Maybe they’re studying at the University of Toronto or the University of Waterloo and they need a home. It makes a lot of sense to me, and it’s something that municipalities are recommending. Unfortunately, the government chose to reject that amendment, which is interesting, because you’re A-okay with targeting municipalities, fining them, but you’re not okay with looking at developers who are choosing to sit on properties and sit on building permits for no good reason. I can imagine that if a municipality was going to move forward with this kind of amendment, there would be some reasonable conditions that we’d set up. Maybe it’s an affordable housing project; maybe it’s a project that’s in the public interest; maybe the developer had a really good reason and they’ve come into financial difficulty and they can’t get the financing that they originally thought they could. That’s a reason not to impose a penalty. But then there are some who sit on permits and they don’t build. This could be a very effective way, and a very cheap way, to increase supply. That was rejected.

This was an interesting amendment—I would say of all the schedules in Bill 97, schedule 4 is a complete and total mystery to me. It seems to be a mystery for the Conservative members, as well, because I’ve asked numerous questions in committee to the Minister for Municipal Affairs and Housing, to the committee members present, even to people who came in and spoke. I asked, “What does this actually mean?” People couldn’t really give a straight answer. I’ll explain it for the people listening. Essentially, schedule 4 of Bill 97 allows the minister to appoint a facilitator to give advice and recommendations “to the minister in respect of growth, land use and other matters,” and to “perform ... other functions”—not specified—“as the minister may specify.” So we don’t even know what they are. They can sign agreements with landowners. We don’t know what they are. Are they transparent? There’s no requirement here. Where’s the accountability? I have no idea. Could a facilitator, through the ministry, sign an agreement and bypass elected officials? Maybe. I don’t know. Does this apply to the divorce that’s happening between Brampton and Caledon and Mississauga? I don’t know. No one knows. So we thought, “Let’s introduce an amendment. Let’s keep it real simple. We’ll say that if the facilitator is making an agreement with a landowner or giving advice to the minister about growth and planning, then that needs to be transparent. Put it on a website, all the decisions and recommendations, so we all know what’s going on.” That makes a lot of sense, but you rejected that. I thought Conservatives were for transparency and accountability, but I guess not.

So that was a pity. The thing that disappointed me most about that is that no one really could answer questions about what that actually means. That’s really what surprises me about that one.

These are amendments all about helping renters who are in buildings that are facing demolition. We introduced a bunch of amendments—because we had the City of Toronto Act we needed to introduce amendments to, and then also the Municipal Act. So we got busy there.

Then, we introduced an amendment that really looks at the issue of renovictions. This amendment is focused on making sure that if a landlord is going to evict, they have a good reason to evict; that the renovation that is needed actually requires a tenant to leave. Right now, with Bill 97, you can get any kind of report, and you can say, “Oh, the tenant needs to leave. These renovations are significant.” And that’s it.

I looked at what other municipalities have done that have really effectively clamped down on illegal evictions. The example I’d like to use is New Westminster, BC. They brought in this interesting new law that says that if a landlord is going to renovict a tenant, they need to show that they have got the building permits necessary to prove that they’re actually going to do the renovation. It makes a lot of sense, because if a landlord is going to do the renovation, they have to get the building permits anyway. So why not make sure they do their due diligence so that we stop illegal renovictions, where some landlords say they’re going to renovate, but really, they have no intention of doing so; they just want to move in another tenant who’s going to pay the higher rent. This is simple. Landlords are doing it already. Get a permit, show us that you got a permit, put it in your application to the Landlord and Tenant Board in your application to evict. Conservatives didn’t like that, so that was a no, which is a real pity. But hopefully we’ll see that in future bills.

Then we had 4.2—we’re in schedule 6 now; this is the Planning Act. With the Planning Act, with Bill 23 and also with Bill 97, the Conservatives have brought in a whole lot of measures to really transform how we plan and build. One issue that’s particularly concerning to me is that Bill 23 changed the definition of what affordable housing is, which is really concerning. Bill 23 changed the definition of affordable housing so that it’s based on the market: A house is affordable if you can rent it for about 80% of average market rent, and a home is considered affordable if it sells for 80% of the sale price. That’s the new definition of affordable housing for the Ontario government. It’s different than what it used to be. It’s different than what the federal government has. It’s different from what the city of Toronto is looking at doing. The Conservatives decided to create their own. And why that’s so messed up is because they’re looking at giving upwards of $100,000 in development fee discounts to any developer that meets this new, completely unaffordable definition of affordable housing. So you could build a home in Brampton, sell it for $800,000, and you still get that affordable housing development fee exemption, and it’s taxpayers who are going to have to make up the difference. I don’t know how on earth that is fair for anyone, because $800,000 for a home in Brampton is not affordable for a middle-income person, for a moderate-income person, for a low-income person.

As a result of those development fee discounts, municipalities all across the GTHA have imposed a Ford tax, a property tax increase, to pay for the infrastructure that we need to build—because if we’re going to give developers a discount, someone else has to pay for it, and it’s Ontarians. I’m just going to review this again: Durham region, 5% tax hike; Pickering, 6% to 8%; Clarington, 4%; Waterloo region, 8.55%; Burlington, 7.5%; Niagara region, 7.58%—I had a wonderful co-op student help me gather this information, and I’m very grateful for them—York region, 3.9%; Newmarket, 7.67%. It goes on and on and on. And what’s hard to stomach with these property tax increases is that residents are not going to see improvements in their services. Most regions are going to see cuts in their services, and they’re going to see a delay in the rollout of infrastructure and the improvement of infrastructure because of these tax hikes. It’s a shame.

So we proposed to bring in an affordable housing amendment that goes back to the original definition that Ontario has for affordable housing. And the definition of affordable housing that we are proposing is that it’s based on what the resident can pay—not what the ever-increasing market is, but what the resident can pay, and that is 30% of gross annual household income for low- and moderate-income households; they shouldn’t pay any more than that on rent or the carrying costs of a mortgage for it to be affordable. And for a home to be bought, it’s essentially the same thing: They shouldn’t be spending more than 30% of their income. It’s standard. It’s what all levels of government are aiming towards. It’s what we had, and the government rejected it. I think that’s a shame.

I am waiting for this government to release what the actual affordable housing definitions are going to be—I know you’ve put 80%, but we’re actually waiting for the release of how much the rent will be and how much the home prices will be in each region, because the Conservatives said they’d release that every year. I am eagerly waiting for that to come out, because that’s really going to show how unaffordable this government’s definition is. I can’t wait for that template to come out.

So then we move to 5.1; this was a government amendment. There’s nothing I look forward to like seeing the amendments that the government makes to bills, because that’s when we realize what you’re going to change and what you’re not. I found this really interesting.

With Bill 97, the government is moving forward with making changes to converting lands that are zoned for employment into housing, and it’s being done very quickly. We had some stakeholders come in to express their enthusiasm and their concern for opening up employment lands to housing—their enthusiasm and some concern. I want to read out a few, because this is a big deal.

We had the Toronto Board of Trade express some concern. They asked the Conservatives to press “pause.” They liked the idea in principle, as do I, but they asked the government to press “pause” and think carefully before proceeding, because right now we have a housing supply crisis, but in 10 years’ time we could have an employment lands crisis.

How we’ve designed all our employment lands is that that’s where all the transit nodes are. If we’re going to turn downtown Toronto and much of that area into housing instead of commercial, then how is that going to affect employment trends and commuting patterns? Does that mean we’re going to have to change our transit systems? What’s it going to look like, exactly? People have some genuine concerns.

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture also had some concerns. They said to reconsider this amendment: “The resulting impacts of reduced protections for employment lands could result in increased pressure to utilize ... prime agricultural lands and specialty crop areas for employment uses in the future.”

You’ve introduced some amendments—I’m interested to see what this is going to look like. My request to you, and what I heard from stakeholders, is to just tread carefully. If we’re going to convert employment lands, do it carefully.

That was a government amendment, so you passed that one.

Oh, this is one of my favourites—we’re also in the Planning Act now, and we introduced an amendment to really improve the Conservatives’ position on allowing missing-middle housing. We introduced an amendment that would allow townhomes, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in areas zoned for development, in neighbourhoods people want to live in, in order to increase housing supply and also to increase a more affordable housing supply.

When you look at how much homes cost, a semi-detached home is usually half a million dollars cheaper than a single detached home, and a townhome is cheaper than a semi-detached home. If you’ve got a duplex and you sever it, those two homes are cheaper. So when you’re a family who wants to start out or you’re a couple who wants to start out—and you want to increase the supply of more affordable homes, there’s a real benefit in gently increasing density in municipal areas. It makes a lot of sense to me. It’s about the missing middle.

So we introduced this motion and, surprisingly, the government chose to vote that down, which is a pity. It’s a pity, because Bill 23 makes some modest improvements to missing-middle housing but not enough. We gave the Conservatives the opportunity to do the right thing, to walk and talk, and instead the Conservatives just chose to focus on talking. That’s a pity. You voted it down.

The next amendment we introduced was really about moving forward with density and intensification, and the reason we introduced this amendment is because in the new provincial planning statement, the Conservatives are looking at getting rid of all mandatory density requirements for municipalities, and the Conservatives are looking at getting rid of all mandatory density requirements for new subdivisions. What that means is that if a developer wants to come along—maybe they bought some greenbelt land or some farm-belt land—they’re not required to build for density so that we can efficiently provide services, provide transit and schools and daycares and roads in an efficient way. They can build single-family homes on quarter-acre lots and then have the municipality pay for that servicing. It is incredibly unsustainable, it is incredibly expensive, and it really jeopardizes our precious farmland.

You heard from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture that we only have so much farmland in Canada, and Ontario is so unique. We have some of the most productive and precious farmland in the world. We should be doing everything we can to protect it, but we’re not. Once it’s paved, it is gone. Eliminating density requirements and intensification requirements makes it even easier for land to be paved over, and it will make it harder for us to meet our housing supply targets, because we’re building less homes per acre than we could and we should.

We called for an amendment to go back to the 2018 density targets and intensification targets—pretty standard, part of the growth plan. The government chose to vote that down, which says a lot about this government’s interest in building expensive sprawl and this government’s disinterest in protecting farmland and building homes for Ontarians to meet supply. It’s a real concern.

We introduced an amendment that would allow inclusionary zoning in municipalities that want it. This is a really important amendment. The reason why this is important is because other cities have brought in inclusionary zoning. In the case of Montreal, for example, they have built thousands of affordable housing units at minimal cost to government since 2005. Municipalities in Ontario also want that right to move forward on inclusionary zoning. Inclusionary zoning is this: If there’s a new development that’s going to be built, then there’s a requirement that a percentage of those homes are affordable.

The city of Toronto spent years and years studying, listening to people, developing bylaws. They came up with a compromise: a fair inclusionary zoning law. The inclusionary zoning law said we’re going to exempt purpose-built rentals for a while. We’re going to focus on condos. For any new condo that is 100 homes or more—so these are the big buildings—we are going to require developers to have a percentage of them be affordable. It would be phased in over time. They looked at how much profit developers make. They looked at it very closely. They concluded that developers could continue to make the profit that they need to make it viable and build these affordable housing units. The law is on the books. It’s ready to go. However, the Ontario government, the Conservative government, is refusing to allow the city of Toronto to move forward with this new law. You’re refusing to allow them—they’ve made dozens and dozens and dozens of requests to the government, and you refuse to allow them—

Thank you very much for that question.

We have been very clear that we are very much in support of increasing housing supply and meeting our 1.5 million housing target by 2031. But what we are also very clear about is that it is not just about increasing supply; it’s also about addressing affordability. They’re related, but one doesn’t automatically solve the other, which is why we are proposing a comprehensive approach where we build homes for Ontarians first and not investors; we clamp down on investor-led speculation; we make renting safe and affordable so people can save up enough for a down payment to buy a home—I don’t know anyone who can save up a down payment, paying $3,000 a month in rent—and we get serious about building affordable housing.

There’s very little in this bill that looks at creating housing and meeting the housing needs for people who are in a really tough spot. Maybe they are on a fixed income. Maybe they are fleeing an abusive relationship. Maybe they’ve just moved to Canada and they don’t know the laws and they moved into a housing situation that’s really not good. There’s very little in this bill for that.

The Conservatives have done a few things that concern me, around making housing affordable for people who are struggling. The government has decided to cut funding to municipalities and housing, which means there’s less funding available for shelters. The government also decided to cut funding to the rent top-up program. So if someone wants to find a rental home and get a top-up from the government so that they can afford the rent, rebuild their lives, have a home, move into the private market, get that little bit of help—that’s also being cut. It’s those kinds of programs that we need to really help people who are struggling.