I want to introduce to you, and through you to members of the Legislative Assembly, members of the township of Augusta council who are here for Good Roads. I’d like to introduce Mayor Jeff Shaver, Deputy Mayor Adrian Wynands and Councillors Tanya Henry, Michele Bowman and Hendrik Pape. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

This allows us to talk about how we have a plan and how our plan is working for Ontarians. The latest data shows that Ontario has seen an 11% increase in 2023 on new housing starts, up nearly 1,200 from last year. Rental starts so far are double what they were at the same time last year. Ontario is the number one jurisdiction for business, jobs and newcomers. There are more active cranes right now in the city of Toronto than there are in New York; Chicago; LA; Washington, DC; Seattle; and San Francisco combined.

We’re going to continue to move forward with our aggressive plan to build 1.5 million homes by 2031. Let’s face it, Speaker, it already sounds like the opposition is looking for a reason to, for the fifth time, vote against more housing in our province.

But again, now we’re hearing from the opposition; here it is, after our announcement for Bill 97. Now, we’re starting to hear some of the real NDP coming forward. They’re standing up against farmers having the opportunity to sever a lot for their son or daughter. That’s where the NDP is moving. They’re going to stand against hard-working farmers and giving those sons and daughters the opportunity to create lots, or the opportunity to create housing for workers, something that our government believes is something that we need to move forward on. This is where the NDP are standing. They’re standing against farmers. They’re standing in favour of NIMBYism. That’s—

Under the leadership of Premier Ford, our government has a plan to build 1.5 million homes by 2031. We’re pleased to work with councils on their official plans, as those in this chamber who served at the municipal level, and just like our guests that are here for Good Roads, know that official plans are the most important playbooks for development in their community. We want to ensure that all of the official plans that are before us reflect our government’s policies.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s hear from Waterloo regional chair Karen Redman:

“The regional official plan is not a one-and-done.... We always acknowledged that when you’re looking at the kind of rapid growth that we’re experiencing, we would have to revisit the regional official plan over time....

“We know that we’re going to grow, so what we need to do is ensure that it’s well thought out planning, that there’s a variety of housing, that we have townhomes, that we have stacked townhomes, that we have rental accommodation for people who are going to come to the community.”

We agree with Chair Redman, and that’s exactly how we moved forward, Speaker.

“I think the main parts of the regional official plan have been adopted and that includes things like protecting the Countryside Line, things like protecting things like the major transit areas in the city of Kitchener.”

“It also recognizes that there were some areas that we felt, for example in southwest Kitchener, that those lands should be, in fact, included....

“I think the decision of the minister recognizes there were lots of strong arguments about why those lands needed to be included.”

We’re going to continue to stand with Mayor Vrbanovic and Chair Redman as we move forward to build 1.5 million homes by 2031.

Well, it’s pretty rich coming from the Liberals, who basically did nothing on housing for 15 years, to now try to be the champion for farmers. For almost every budget that I sat in opposition on, the word “agriculture” never appeared in a Liberal budget—never.

So now we have a policy that actually recognizes that a farm can now have the opportunity to sever a lot for a son or a daughter—a farm that, if they decided that they wanted to provide quality housing for workers on the site, they could sever a lot.

Now we know again where the Liberals are at, just like where they were at for 15 years when they were in government: They stand against agriculture, they stand against farmers and they stand against housing in rural areas. That’s the Liberal Party.

I’m not sure where that question is coming from. We made a historic investment, under the leadership of Premier Ford and Minister Bethlenfalvy: $202 million, additional, for the Homelessness Prevention Program. Members were in their ridings last week for a break week, and some of the announcements that have come out of our municipal partners have been amazing. With this extra $202 million, our Homelessness Prevention Program now provides funding of almost $700 million to provide service managers—like the one that the member opposite just talked about—additional funds to keep shelters open, to build capacity.

Definitely, we’ll be reaching out on what the city of London will be doing with the extra dollars that the government just gave them and that the member opposite voted against.

Today it’s both a pleasure and a privilege to rise for second reading of our government’s proposed Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act. At the very start, I’ll indicate that I’ll be sharing the government’s leadoff time today with the Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery, the newly minted Associate Minister of Housing, and my new parliamentary assistant for municipal affairs and housing, who’s being engaged with the Speaker right now in a wonderful conversation—it’s always great to have two Speakers in the House to try to keep me in line. Those other speakers will be touching on some of the finer points of some of the items in our proposed legislation and our corresponding housing supply action plan. Both support our government’s goal of building 1.5 million homes by 2031.

The proposed changes that the government has put forward for debate here today are a reaction to market conditions that have been in place for far too long. In fact, a recent Statistics Canada study reveals that, over a 10-year period, beginning in 2011, Ontario has had the fourth-largest decline in home ownership rates amongst provinces and territories in Canada. This is something that is unprecedented. This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard this sort of thing, but it’s something that the government continually pledges—that we value home ownership, and we want to continue to have a climate where we can build quality, affordable housing that meets people’s needs and their budgets.

Our government is fighting back. Decades of inaction, burdensome red tape and NIMBYism have created Ontario’s housing supply crisis, and we’re seeing its effects, but we are, as I said, fighting back because too many Ontarians have been priced out of the market through no fault of their own; parce que trop d’Ontariennes et d’Ontariens qui n’ont rien à se reprocher ont été exclus du marché du logement à cause des prix. And those who rent their homes want some relief, as well.

That’s why what we’ve proposed today for debate will support our government’s fourth housing supply action plan—the plan, as I’ve said many times, to build 1.5 million homes, which is our goal, because we need to make life easier and more affordable for people across this province.

If passed, the proposed changes and our plan would further support renters. They would strengthen homebuyer protections. They’d reduce the cost of building a new home—something that I know our government feels very strongly about—and they’d streamline the rules around land use planning and encourage the development of more housing.

As I said, this is our fourth housing supply action plan. It builds upon the bold actions that the government has already put in place.

Our government released its first housing supply action plan, More Homes, More Choice, in 2019. That plan cut red tape and made it easier to build the right type of housing in the right places. Its aim was to make housing more affordable and to enable taxpayers to keep more of their hard-earned money.

In the spring of 2022, we released our second housing supply action plan, More Homes for Everyone. Our work leading up to that action plan included extensive consultations across the province, including Ontario’s first Ontario-municipal housing summit. We received further feedback from the rural housing round table, something we had at the 2022 ROMA conference—the Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference—and at meetings that we had with every municipal association in our province. In addition, the Housing Affordability Task Force that we appointed consulted with municipalities, they consulted with experts, they consulted with the industry. As a result of the work with those stakeholders, More Homes for Everyone introduced targeted policies in the immediate term to make housing fairer for hard-working Ontarians and to make it faster to build homes that Ontarians need and, we believe, they deserve. That plan sped up approvals even further, and it took steps to gradually refund fees if municipal decisions weren’t made under legislative time frames. Again, we recognized that more needed to be done, and again the government acted.

Later in the year, we came out with our third housing supply action plan, More Homes Built Faster. It built on the concrete actions that we took from our previous action plans, and it took even more direct action to ensure that Ontarians across the province could access a home that truly met their needs.

This, of course, is all while the government passed legislation to give the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa more powers to work effectively with the province to cut red tape, to reduce timelines for developments, and to address local barriers that prevent more homes being built.

These are all the steps that we’re taking to ensure that we can continue to move in the right direction as we build more homes across our province.

That’s why we created the Housing Supply Action Plan Implementation Team—a very important decision by the government to appoint this team to work on our housing supply action plans and to make sure that things get done. It has municipal leaders, and it has industry experts. The mayor of Windsor, Drew Dilkens, is acting as chair; Cheryl Fort, the mayor of the town of Hornepayne, is vice-chair. The team that they’re chairing is made up of experts across the housing and non-profit sectors. There is a wide range of experience and perspective that really reflects the diversity of housing needs across Ontario. I think that was very important for us to hit the right note. The team will evaluate progress, and they’ll provide advice to our government on implementing the housing supply action plans so that we can continue to tackle Ontario’s housing supply crisis.

The range of measures that the government has taken to increase housing supply—and I’m going to be the first to admit it: They’re bold and they’re transformative, and even though we know that their impact will take time to be fully felt throughout the housing sector, we continue to see the growing and positive impact across Ontario that those measures have had today.

In the last two years, housing starts in Ontario have reached levels that we have not seen in our province in over 30 years—

Interjections.

Thank you. That’s very important. That member knows, in Barrie–Innisfil, the impact that our housing supply action plan is making.

Last year, rental housing, something that many members have spoken about—rental housing starts in the province reached and all-time high, something we should all be very proud of—

Interjections.

These trends have continued in 2023. I talked about it this morning in question period. I’ll repeat some of the statistics that I quoted in my answer this morning. Compared to last year, Ontario has already seen an increase of nearly 1,200 housing starts, which is an 11% rise—very positive numbers, so far, in 2023. Purpose-built rental starts are currently more than double compared to the same period last year—again, very positive steps. Whether you look at the housing starts or the rental—again, very good numbers, so far, this year.

Let’s take a look the city of Toronto, where Ontario’s housing supply has been felt pretty acutely. There have been more than 4,600 housing starts in the first two months of this year alone. What’s that number? It’s 50% higher than compared to the same numbers just a year ago—very good numbers. Even better is that more than 1,500 of these units were rental starts, which is five times the amount from last year—again, wonderful numbers.

These positive trends are a really good sign for the government that our policies that we’ve championed—that is why we’re continuing to move forward with new proposals to increase housing supply. It’s very, very good news.

Let’s talk about the bill that I’ve entitled Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act. The government’s proposed changes are really the basis of a number of strong measures that I speak about when I use the term “helping homebuyers and protecting tenants.” The proposed changes would obviously make life easier for renters in the province.

It would clarify and enhance a tenant’s right to install air conditioning in their own unit. These changes would really stress the importance of ensuring that an air conditioner is installed safely and securely. And if the landlord supplies the electricity, they would be allowed to charge tenants a fee for any additional electricity costs.

The proposed changes would, if passed, also further strengthen tenant protections against evictions due to renovations, as well as those for the landlord’s own use.

The other measure that I think is very important, even though the opposition voted against similar measures when we put it in Bill 124—we’re proposing to double the maximum fines for offences under the Residential Tenancies Act to $100,000 for individuals and $500,000 for corporations. Folks, these would be the highest maximum fines in Canada for these types of events. We’re serious about putting these measures forward. We were serious in our previous bill, in the middle of the pandemic.

We have looked at other ways to increase housing supply. We’ve made a number of changes in More Homes Built Faster. The plan that we’ve identified changes the opportunity for home builders to replace older, mid-size rental apartments with more modern rental buildings, something that we’ve heard, as part of our consultations, that people wanted us to consider—

Interjections.

We’re also proposing to create a new regulation-making authority to enable a balanced regulatory framework governing municipal rental replacement bylaws. It really will do a couple of things: It will create consistency across and between municipalities—something we felt needed to take place in this space when they establish these types of bylaws—and it really could help streamline the construction and revitalization of rental housing, while at the same point protecting tenants, which is something that we heard as part of our More Homes Built Faster consultation.

An example: Where municipalities are requiring landowners to build replacement units, we’re considering regulations that could require that these units retain the same core features. I’ll get to that in a moment. We’re also looking at measures to give existing tenants the right to move back into the unit at a similar rent. This would help keep rental housing affordable in those communities, while at the same point encouraging revitalization of older, deteriorating buildings and, at the end of the day, increasing rental housing supply. In other words, we’d be taking steps to help Ontarians who rent units that are no longer in satisfactory condition so that they can access more modern and appropriate housing, but at the same time, if they leave a two-bedroom apartment, they can return to a two-bedroom apartment, at the same level of rent as before.

We’re also—and the Attorney General talked about this this morning—making a huge investment in the Landlord and Tenant Board. As I said when we made the announcement a week and a half ago in London, this is the largest investment in the Landlord and Tenant Board since its inception—a very, very good decision. It’s $6.5 million to appoint 40 new adjudicators and hire five more additional staff in hopes of tackling the backlog. It’s very, very important right now. Minister Downey was asked a question at that announcement. You’re essentially doubling the amount of adjudicators—you’re at 39 right now; you’re going to add another 40. You’re going to add another five administrative staff—something that we were responsive to. That $6.5-million investment is a game-changer in the management of that tribunal. I think everyone in this House can agree, no matter what political stripe, that we need to have an adjudicative tribunal—the Landlord and Tenant Board—that works in a fair system both for landlords and tenants. I want to thank Minister Downey for accompanying this bill with this very, very strong policy that has been celebrated from both landlords and tenants across the province.

Our plan will also better protect homebuyers and their financial investments. I was pleased to join Minister Rasheed in Toronto three weeks ago, along with Associate Minister Tangri, to announce that our government is expanding deposit insurance for credit union members saving for the purchase of their first home. The first-home savings account which was introduced by the federal government—credit union members can now use them to save for the purchase of their first home. In the event that the credit union fails, the credit union member’s money in a first-home savings account would be protected.

We’re also exploring, through Minister Rasheed’s ministry, a cooling-off period on purchases of newly built freehold homes.

We’re also exploring the requirement that purchasers of all new homes receive legal advice on their purchase agreements—something I think that, again, is responsive to many of the things that we’ve heard as part of our consultation.

These changes that are in this bill would continue to support a number of very important measures—things like intensification—while making sure that there is sufficient land to accommodate new homes and jobs that our province needs.

So to increase housing supply and speed up planning approvals, this bill and our consultations—we’re proposing to update the provincial policy statement and integrate it with A Place to Grow: Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. This would create a single province-wide, housing-focused land use planning document for Ontario. This proposed merged document would simplify existing policies. It would also refocus them on achieving housing outcomes while giving large and fast-growing municipalities the tools that they need to deliver more housing. As I’ve said many, many times, all of Ontario, not just the greater Golden Horseshoe, is a place to grow. And that’s what our policies in this bill are reflecting.

More Homes for Everyone required municipalities to gradually refund zoning bylaw and site plan application fees if they fail to make a decision in a specified time period. We’ve listened to municipal feedback: We’re proposing to postpone the start date from January 1 to July 1 of this year to give them time to adjust. I want to thank municipalities for their engagement on this.

Municipalities also told us, as part of More Homes for Everyone, that some of the smaller projects need to be able to address concerns stemming from a site plan review. So we’re proposing, based on feedback, to allow municipalities to use site plan control for residential projects with 10 or fewer units in very certain circumstances—very specific recommendations that, again, responded to the feedback we received from our municipal partners.

This bill also—it was part of the announcement: We’re reducing the cost of building housing. We’re planning to freeze 74 provincial fees at current levels. This includes several fees related to Tribunals Ontario, the Ontario Land Tribunal, the building code. One of the things we heard when we had the consultation with municipalities and we talked about fees and charges—municipalities said, “What about the provincial fees?” So this decision by the government to freeze 74 provincial fees is a direct result of municipal feedback that we heard as part of consultation. We’re consulting on implementation of the fee freezes via Ontario’s Regulatory Registry, so there’s more to come on that.

In conclusion, our proposed Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, as I said at the outset of the speech, really builds on our previous actions that I detailed in the House. These are actions that support homeowners, renters and landlords, not-for-profit and private sector builders, and our municipal partners, so that, together, we can realize our goal of helping to build those 1.5 million homes by 2031.

This is a very bold and transformative plan, but under the leadership of Premier Ford, we said to the people last summer that we would put a plan in place to do this so that we can realize that goal of building 1.5 million new homes by 2031; pour que nous puissions réaliser ensemble notre but de contribuer à la construction de 1,5 million d’habitations d’ici 2031.

Thank you, Speaker, for giving me the chance to kick off debate. I’m now going to turn it over to my fantastic Associate Minister of Housing, the Honourable Nina Tangri.

Well, unlike the member opposite and the New Democratic Party, our government believes that it doesn’t matter where you live in Ontario; it should be a place to grow. We have two pieces of policy, our provincial policy statement and A Place to Grow: Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, and we’re consulting on a single provincial policy statement. The new policy would provide municipalities with a variety of things—flexibility, the opportunity to create more homes in both urban and rural communities. It will support local economies and create jobs. It will continue to protect the environment, including existing greenbelt protections.

Again, Speaker, we believe that it doesn’t matter whether you live in or outside the greater Golden Horseshoe; there should be a policy to create growth. That’s a fundamental—

We’ve put some fairly aggressive, transformative goal policies forward. But we’re going to need to do more. We’re going to need to build upon the success of our housing supply action plans. I talked about the statistics that we have in the province. But we need to ensure that no matter whether you live—in northern Ontario, the east, the west or the south—you’ve got a place to grow and opportunities to build homes. And that’s exactly what this plan, Bill 97, builds upon.

This guy amazes me with some of his questions and some of his statements. Here is a party—the New Democratic Party—that always stands up for high taxes.

For the average home in the GTA, the fees and charges add $119,500 to the cost of a home. There are studies that are being done that show rental costs are going up because of these fees. There are statistics that show that these costs add, on a 20-year mortgage for a young couple, over $800 a month.

This is a guy, and his party, that stands up all the time for high costs, high taxes, high fees. Ontarians are done with that type of mentality.

We want to build upon the success of our plan to continue to reduce the baseline costs and to build more housing.