My question is to the member for Mississauga East–Cooksville. We have been contacted by many prospective homeowners—people in Durham region, in the Ottawa West–Nepean area, in the area of Stayner—who bought homes at pre-construction, put up hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases in deposit money, and years later, they’re waiting for their home to be built. The developer isn’t building it unless they turn around and pay a whole lot more. They have contacted the Home Construction Regulatory Authority again and again and again, and they’re not getting the answers that they want. They’re stressed. They’re worried they’re going to lose their life savings. They want this government to take action. What is this government going to do to ensure these people get the homes they purchased at the price they agreed to?

In committee, ACTO, the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, summarized how broken our illegal-eviction protection laws are. They did a review of how many tenants get back into their home after a bad-faith eviction: essentially none. And then they did a review of what the average fine is that a bad landlord gets if they illegally evict a tenant: It’s between $500 and $3,000. How do you expect Bill 97 to be effective if the Landlord and Tenant Board is not issuing significant fines to landlords that illegally evict?

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—