My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. We are working with tenants across the city of Toronto whose purpose-built rentals are slated to be demolished. They’re terrified because they’re worried they’re never going to be able to get back into their homes once the construction of the new, bigger building is complete.

This government is looking at creating new rental replacement laws, and this is my question: When I look at the Residential Tenancies Act, there’s no guaranteed right of return for a tenant who’s evicted because of demolition. There’s no guaranteed right of return. In this government’s new rental replacement bylaw, are you going to allow cities to guarantee a tenant’s right to return to their home?

Thank you to the member for Newmarket–Aurora.

In committee, we did vote in support of measures to require a landlord to get a report in order to justify an eviction of a tenant in the case of a renoviction. We also voted in support of the increase in fines for people or corporations that violate the Residential Tenancies Act; in fact, we proposed higher fines.

The challenge is that the moves that this government is making to address the renoviction crisis and the illegal eviction crisis—evidence is clearly showing us that they are too weak to work.

I urge this government to look at the evidence, do evidence-based decision-making, and move forward with measures that are actually going to stop the illegal eviction crisis that we have, because what we have right now is not working.

We did introduce amendments into Bill 97 in order to strengthen renter protections. Every affordable private-market home that we have, we should be keeping. There is nothing more important and there’s nothing more wise that we can do right now to make housing affordable than bring in vacancy control and real rent control. When we’re talking about being proactive, those kinds of rent control measures, those kinds of rent protection measures are really going to make Ontario a desirable place to live. It means we’re going to stop the net migration out of this province to other more affordable provinces, which is a real concern. Those people take all their talents with them. It means we become a more affordable and desirable place. It’s a pity the government chose not to accept those amendments.

We very much support and agree with the target of building 1.5 million homes to meet the needs of Ontarians today and to meet our immigration targets in the future. Many more people want to call Ontario home. It’s why we introduced an amendment—