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—

Thank you to the member from Waterloo for the question. Well, definitely air conditioning is almost a necessity anymore given the heat, so what I would say there is: What are we doing to help renters? Number one, we have to ensure that we’re building a suite of rental buildings so that they have places to rent. That’s part of our bill, is that we are striving to ensure that there’s more rentals available.

As I noted in my speech, in fact, we have record numbers of rental buildings in these past 30-plus years. The more rentals that we have available, back to the point from one of my colleagues, the more supply that we have with rentals, the lower the price for the renters. Unfortunately, we have been in a situation where we haven’t been building rentals. We are now, and we’re getting it done.

I would like to thank the member from Thunder Bay–Superior North for her presentation.

Has the member seen the number of emails from people who have been subject to above-normal rent increases because of this government’s deliberate removal of rent control?