The member from Waterloo.

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.

I just want to thank everyone who spoke today.

Housing and our housing plan are so important.

Being from a riding in Etobicoke, you see cranes everywhere, building, building, building. They’re doing high-rises everywhere, as an example. But the problem is, not everyone can live in Etobicoke. Not everyone can live in Toronto. It’s also very expensive to live in Toronto, and it’s very expensive to live in Etobicoke.

Minister, I do appreciate the work you have done to date.

Can you tell the people of my riding what you are doing so some of these people can find homes in other places around the province, outside of Toronto?

I want to thank the members from Mississauga–Streetsville and Mississauga East–Cooksville for your comments today. I’ll address my question to either one of you, whoever wants to answer it.

This government has had all kinds of housing bills. You’ve overridden the democratic right of the people of Toronto, Niagara, York and Peel to majority-vote democracy in our municipalities. You’re paving over the greenbelt. You’re giving a $5-billion taxpayer-funded donation to developers. And yet, the price of housing keeps going up.

When you were elected in 2018, the cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Mississauga was $1,800; today, it’s $2,299. That’s a 24% increase over last year.

When will you start reducing the cost of housing in Mississauga? And what will the cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Mississauga be in 2026, at the end of eight years of Conservative rule?

My question is to the Associate Minister of Housing.

In 2022, the landlord and tenant tribunal received more than 5,500 eviction applications in which the landlords sought units for themselves, family members or new buyers. That was an increase of 41% from 2019. At the same time, the number of Ontario tenants filing T5 applications—which allow renters to seek compensation from landlords who are not honest about the reason for requiring the unit—shot up by 58%.

My question to the Associate Minister of Housing is, what is in this bill that will help protect both landlords and tenants in front of the landlord and tenant tribunal?

I listened to the minister and the government members talking about this bill, and I wanted to share with them a report last week from rentals.ca that showed London was second only to Brampton in terms of the rate of year-over-year increases in rents. There was a whopping 27% jump in one-bedroom rents compared to the last year. London is also the fastest-growing city in Ontario. This has nothing to do with permit fees. This has to do with the number of people in our city who need housing. Any new housing that is being constructed doesn’t have any rent control whatsoever.

So what exactly is this government doing to protect the tenants in London who are facing these huge rent increases and who are looking at getting into units with no rent control at all?

Question?

I thank the member for the question. It’s really important.

He is absolutely right; the changes under the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, 2023, if passed, will introduce new actions to make life easier for renters by strengthening their rights and their protections. Some of these changes would double the maximum fines for offences under the Residential Tenancies Act—that would be now $100,000 for individuals and $500,000 for corporations. We doubled it in the past. We already have the strongest, and we’re making them even stronger, just to make sure that renters do have those protections.

When evicting a tenant to use the unit themselves or for one of their family members, a landlord would have to move into the unit by a specific deadline.

Having these measures in place is protecting tenants, which is what this government wants to do.

It’s good to be standing here today to speak about Bill 97, the government’s Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act. This bill was introduced last Thursday, the Thursday before, and it came as part of a flurry of announcements and proposals and decisions that the government introduced. Not only did we get this bill, which proposes eight regulatory changes to Ontario’s renting and planning laws, but it happened at the same time as this government’s decision to begin the process of merging the growth plan with the provincial policy statement to create a new provincial planning statement, and also to rewrite and redraw six new municipal official plans. So it was really a big week for the government’s insistence that doubling down on sprawl is the way out of our housing crisis, and I’m here to tell you loud and clear that it is not.

How I’m going to take up my hour today is that I’m going to give you my initial thoughts about what this bill means, what these proposed regulatory changes mean. Then I’m going to go into the proposed changes into some more detail, especially around Bill 97, and a little bit around the growth plan and the provincial policy statement, because they really are twinned with this bill and they’re very much related to the “helping homebuyers” statement in the title. And then I’m going to talk a little bit about some of the solutions that we are advocating for, which really focus on helping Ontarians get that home they can afford and a lot less on the Conservatives’ plan, which is really to help their developer donor friends make a whole lot of money—from renters, in particular.

The Conservatives have introduced and passed many housing bills and the take-home message for me is that what this government is doing right now is not working because buying and renting a home in Ontario has never been more expensive. It’s never been more expensive. And for a period of time, when your government got into power, it would have been very easy for you to turn to the Liberals and say, “Oh, look, that’s on you.” I get that. But now this government has been in power for five years and so those claims of blaming another party are ringing hollow, because this government has had five years to fix the housing affordability crisis and you haven’t. It’s never been more expensive to rent and it has never been more expensive to buy a home.

In this bill, the title is “protecting tenants,” and when I read through the details of the proposed changes that are being made, my initial thought was that this is certainly better than the status quo—and the status quo is pretty hard, is pretty bad for renters right now. But I would summarize it as saying that these changes certainly don’t go far enough. And when I really look into the details, the proposals that this government is making to protect tenants from illegal eviction are so flimsy to the point that they would not be effective at all. It’s not just me saying this; it’s leading housing stakeholders—ACTO, FMTA, housing advocacy groups—because you really don’t deal with the issue of enforcement, and I’m going to get to that when I go into the details.

The other thing I noticed here was around this government’s decision to look at what the Human Rights Tribunal ruled, to allow tenants to have an air conditioning unit so that they’re not miserably hot or at risk of heat stroke in our increasingly hot summers. And only this government could concoct a move where they could turn a Human Rights Tribunal ruling into a rent hike for renters. Only this government could think of a clever way of doing that, so well done for you.

My other key messages before I get into the details, the other key thoughts I had are that the decision to double down on sprawl and upend our planning, how we plan and how we build in this province, is just going to make it so much more expensive for municipalities to provide the services that these new developments are going to need, from daycares to roads to electricity to transit. All these services are going to cost more, because it costs so much more to service a low-density, single-family-home subdivision than it does to service and to provide the necessary infrastructure when you build in areas that are already zoned for development.

What this means on a practical level is that the tax hikes that Ontarians are seeing in their property tax bills—they’re getting these property tax bills now. They’re going to see another tax hike and another tax hike and another tax hike, coupled with service cuts, because it is so expensive to build this infrastructure and maintain this infrastructure for this low-density suburban sprawl, this very backwards approach to planning that you’re moving forward on in this misguided hope—it’s becoming very clear now—in a way that it’s not going to address the housing affordability crisis and not even the housing supply crisis.

The final note before I get into the details is that I was troubled to hear the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing refuse to admit that he will not commit any further encroachment to the greenbelt. He did that in question period, he did that in the press conference that took place immediately after the introduction of Bill 97, and that is a real shame, because Ontarians have been very, very clear—thousands and thousands of emails and calls and rallies have been organized on this—that they want this government to keep their promise and keep the greenbelt whole and to protect farmland. The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing cannot even commit to not encroaching on the greenbelt further, and I think that’s a shame.

We need real solutions to address our housing crisis, and that means not just talking about housing supply, which is absolutely essential, but also talking about housing affordability. I’m not seeing this government take housing affordability seriously or look at the relationship between housing supply and housing affordability. Sometimes I think the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has difficulty saying the words “housing affordability.”

What I want to see this government move forward on is a commitment to build more homes by ending exclusionary zoning in a serious way—you’ve taken some half-hearted steps there, but need to go further—investing in the construction of affordable homes, clamping down on investor-led speculations so first-time homebuyers can buy the home, and making rent affordable again, making it so that people who rent can afford to live in this province, because right now they can’t, and they’re leaving. The trends for interprovincial migration right now are through the roof. It’s masked because immigration trends to Ontario are going up very fast, but young people, skilled people, people who work in these high-need sectors like construction and health care—they’re looking at our province, they’re looking at the cost of buying a home, they’re looking at how much it costs to rent, they’re realizing they’re not even able to save, and they’re saying, “I’m moving to Saskatchewan, I’m moving to Alberta. I’m getting out of here.” That’s a shame because they’re taking their talents with them.

That’s my overall assessment of the bill, and now I’m going to go into the details, and there are a lot of details. The first thing I’m going to talk about is municipal rent-protection laws. When I read this bill—it was very interesting—I noticed that schedule 2 and schedule 5 of Bill 97 allow the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to eliminate, weaken and alter municipal rental replacement bylaws. I must say, this is a slight improvement from Bill 23, which just gave the Conservatives the power to weaken or eliminate rental replacement bylaws, and now the Conservatives, the government of the day, is giving themselves the power to improve rental replacement bylaws as well. I would call that a step in the right direction.

I want to take a step back for those who are listening just to explain what rental replacement bylaws are. Essentially, these are the laws that govern what developers must do if they demolish a rental building and replace it with a condo. I heard the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing talk on and on about how developers are going to come in and they’re going to look at these mid-size rental buildings, they’re going to demolish them and then they’re going to replace them with big purpose-built rentals. That is not what is happening in Ontario today. What is happening is that developers are looking at these purpose-built rentals—some of them are mid-sized; some of them are really big—and they don’t want to turn it into purpose-built rentals. Some of them might be, but the vast majority of them are going to be condos. That’s what they are, so I’ll make sure to communicate with the minister about that fact.

There are a few municipalities that have these rental replacement bylaws—Mississauga, Hamilton and Toronto—and other cities were looking into it as well, such as Ottawa, although the minister has gutted Ottawa’s rental replacement bylaw in the rewriting of Ottawa’s municipal plan, which is a shame. Toronto’s is one of the best. Toronto’s bylaw requires developers to return that tenant to an equivalent rent-controlled apartment at about the same rent, after construction of the new, bigger condo is complete, and also compensate the tenant for the period of time they are out of their unit while the construction is taking place. That can take two, sometimes three, years—sometimes more.

The amount of money a tenant receives varies depending on what the city negotiates with each developer, and it is our position that a tenant shouldn’t be losing any money. That top-up should match what the tenant paid in the building that’s being demolished and what they have to pay for an equivalent unit in the nearby area while they’re waiting for construction to be complete.

We didn’t pull this out of the sky. This is what’s happening in Burnaby, BC, right now, and Burnaby, BC, has one of the highest rates of construction in the country—just to make that point.

So this is a very important bylaw, and when people, renters, are discovering that the Ontario government is wanting to gut this rental replacement bylaw, they are terrified. They are scared. They are losing sleep because they are fearful that this government is going to gut these rental replacement bylaws and make it very difficult for them to get back into their unit that they’ve held on to for many years.

I participated in a recent protest organized by tenants in some of the buildings that are slated for demolition in the city of Toronto, about two weeks ago. Those buildings include 25 St. Mary, 145 St. George and 55 Brownlow. These are big rental buildings. Over a hundred people came out, and they spoke one after the other about how scared they were, how long they’ve lived in the area, how they don’t know if they’ll be able to find another affordable rental apartment if they have to move out.

One person we’ve been working with for a while: Her name is Pat. She’s in her eighties. She’s on a fixed income. She has worked her entire life. She is terrified that if she is forced to move, she will never find an affordable unit in the Annex community that she calls home. I don’t want her to have to move out and never get back into a unit, and I don’t want her to say goodbye to her friends and family who live in the area, as well.

And it’s not just them. We asked the city of Toronto to give us an understanding of how many units are at risk right now, and there are 3,441 properties in the city of Toronto right now that are at risk of being demolished, and if this government doesn’t come up with strong rental protection laws, at risk of never being replaced. That’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders, because these renters want to keep their homes.

What I also find concerning is that the number of deals that developers are making with the city to demolish these units under the city’s current strong rental protection laws have been stalled, because many of these developers are sitting back and saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We shouldn’t make a deal now, under the city of Toronto’s really strong rental protection laws. We’re going to wait and see what happens with this provincial law, because maybe we’re going to get a good deal. So we’re going to wait and see, because maybe we won’t even have to move these tenants back, or we will, but the enforcement laws will be so weak that for all intents and purposes—ehh—they’ll have permanently lost their homes.”

That is exactly what’s happening. Since the passage of Bill 23, just one demolishing approval has been approved by the city of Toronto—just one. So you can imagine these tenants are pretty worried.

And it’s not just these 3,441 units that are at stake. If the Conservative government chooses to gut these municipal rental replacement bylaws, it will mean that this government is choosing to declare open season on these tenants who live in purpose-built-rental areas that are already zoned for height, because it means that it’ll be cheaper for developers to come in, knock these purpose-built rentals down and build very expensive condos that renters will not be able to afford. Someone like Pat is not going to be able to afford a $700,000 condo. They’re just not, not on a fixed income. These people will be priced out of their neighbourhoods.

That means so much is at stake. The future of private market affordable housing in the city is at stake. The affordability of our province is at stake. And there are so many private market affordable homes that are at risk because of this government’s enthusiasm to just listen to developers and not listen to what it’s like to be a renter in this city, in this province, and how they need to have affordable housing as well. I urge you to look hard at that and really come up with a provincial rental replacement law which is strong.

When I go and look at the regulation that the government has set up to get in feedback for what this provincial rental replacement bylaw will look like—which is where I think you’re going—I see some concerns. The one concern I see is that the government wants to give developers some flexibility on what kind of home a renter can return to, likely one that still has the same number of bedrooms but is likely smaller in size than the original. I think that’s concerning, that there is a move by this government to listen to developers but not to listen to renters.

It is a concern, because developers can get very creative when they’re looking at meeting the requirement of a two-bedroom unit. There are units that are being built in my riding of University–Rosedale right now that are three bedrooms plus a den, but they’re only 1,000 square feet. You need to be very careful about giving developers flexibility, because a renter might find out—if they get to move back into these units—that the unit is far smaller in size than the kind of unit they lived in in the purpose-built rental before it was demolished. I’m a little worried about that.

I want to be very clear, before I move into the next piece, about what we are advocating for. We look to what Burnaby, BC, is doing as a model. Like I said, housing construction in that area is extremely high. What we want to see is a strong commitment that renters can return to their rent-controlled unit after construction is complete; that there is a rent top-up equal to the difference in rent they paid at the home that they had—a home that they’ll have to find in the same area, during construction; and that there is a very firm commitment to guarantee that a tenant can come back into their rent-controlled unit. Renters didn’t cause this housing crisis, so renters shouldn’t be the victims of this housing crisis.

Interjection.

Never.

Their rent contract is—

You should speak to the OFA; I hope you do.

Interjection: Once you pave it over, you can’t go back.

What is also changing—and I’ll just go into this before I go into the consequences of sprawl—is the new changes to the PPS. It will require municipalities to have enough designated land available for 25 years of growth or more, instead of up to 25 years, which was the previous standard. Essentially, this government is saying, “You need to plan for growth for a really long time out so we can open as much land as possible to our developer friends.”

And there’s no longer any requirement for a municipal comprehensive review. It’s just no longer required anymore, which is, wow, radical. Municipal comprehensive reviews involve municipalities reviewing and updating their official plans so that they’re in line with the growth plan. It’s all about planning right and using the land that we have and the resources that we have in a cost-effective and useful manner. That’s what it’s about. And you’re saying, “No, let’s just do urban sprawl. It’s fine.”

I want to talk a bit about the cost of sprawl. There are a few things. One, I’m going to talk about how it’s expensive to service. When I was preparing for this speech, I looked at a recent study done by Hemson. They were paid by the city of Ottawa to look at the cost of building and maintaining services and infrastructure for low-density homes built on undeveloped land, and to compare that to the cost of maintaining and building services and infrastructure in infill development, such as apartment buildings or duplexes and triplexes—so building in areas already zoned for development. This is what they found. I hope you’re listening, because I know that you like to talk about cost-effectiveness. It costs $465 per person each year to serve new low-density homes built on undeveloped land. It’s a net loss to municipalities. Compare that to servicing homes in areas already zoned for development. It’s actually a net gain. When you factor in the property tax revenue and all that, municipalities actually gain $606. They gain when you build in areas already zoned for development, and they lose money when you service areas that are about single-family homes and suburban sprawl. When we’re talking about providing services in a cost-effective manner, sprawl is bad—just to make it really simple—and providing services to infill housing is better. This is particularly relevant right now because across the GTHA and across Ontario homeowners are opening up their property tax bills, either by email or in the mail, and they’re seeing big tax hikes. We actually did a little bit of a survey to look at what kind of tax hikes are coming. And it’s because of Bill 23 and your tax cut giveaway to developers that these hikes are coming. Durham region, 5% property tax hike; Clarington, 4%; Waterloo region, 8.55%—

Burlington, 7.5%; Niagara Falls, 7.4%; Niagara region, 7.58%; Newmarket, 7.67%—these are big tax hikes—and Toronto, 7%. There’s a whole range. I read out the higher ones, but almost all of them are seeing a property tax hike. At the same time, they’re also seeing service cuts. So you get a property tax hike, and you get service cuts, and you’re seeing delays in necessary infrastructure maintenance. When you all get in your cars or walk down the sidewalk or take the TTC, you’re going to see more potholes, because cities no longer have the money available to maintain our services to a standard that we expect.

Interjection.

This is happening in Waterloo. The member for Waterloo has raised this. There is a development at Beaver Creek Road and Conservation Drive. It’s a large subdivision, and they are delaying approval because the municipality in the region cannot afford to service it.

Interjection.

What you’re doing is actually hurting your own goals of improving housing supply. You don’t care about affordability. But on your own goals of supply, you’re failing.

I’m not going to spend tons of time on this because sometimes environmental messaging doesn’t work so well with the Conservatives, but I’m going to bring up one thing: It is so environmentally destructive to create the kind of housing development system that we’re going to create, because it locks people into soul-destroying commutes to get to where they want to go. When you’re building single-family homes, the density is not there to provide a bus or a streetcar or a train to provide transit to these areas. What that means is that when Ontarians buy these homes, they’re going to have to have one car or two cars to get wherever they want to go. It’s so expensive, and it’s going to blow our greenhouse gas targets out of the water, because transportation and building are the leading contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. This kind of approach to planning and building will lock us into unbelievably unsustainable development patterns. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that, because I think it’s going to be not necessarily the message that’s going to convince you—but the cost thing, at least think about that. I know your constituents—

Interjection.

The 319 acres a day.

You’re bananas.

And tax—thank you, member for Waterloo. I know that your constituents care about that.

A few other changes: This government is looking at changing development fees. It seems like, once again, you have realized the error in your ways. You’ve just been rushing this legislation through so quickly. You’re not doing the necessary due diligence. So you are choosing to respond to municipal concerns, and you are allowing municipalities to gradually refund zoning bylaw and site plan application fees if a municipality fails to make a decision within specified time periods. You were originally going to require municipalities to refund fees starting on January 1, 2023, but you’re extending that to July 1, 2023. So you’re giving municipalities the six months’ reprieve. It’s a small change, but the reason why I want to bring it up is because it really does speak to the need for this government to be more diligent, for this government to do proper stakeholder feedback, especially with AMO. It speaks to the need for this government to be more organized in how it introduces bills and just the lack of coordination. You represent 14 million people, so it’s extremely important that you do the necessary research and the public consultation so that you get it right, so we don’t see this process where you’re heading here one way, here another way, here another way. It has led some commentators in the news to muse that this government actually doesn’t know what it’s doing when it comes to housing—that’s a TVO reporter who just said that. Let me tell you, that’s not praise.

There are a few other changes here. One, there are some changes to farm properties. Additional residences will be permitted on farm properties, up to two additional on one parcel and up to three additional residential parcels. We’re still reaching out to residents and groups to see what people’s take is on this. We can see some pros; we can see some cons. So I’m curious about that. What does it mean? What do people think about it?

There are some proposed changes to employment lands as well. It looks like the government is looking at making it easier to convert employment lands, like retail or commercial, into housing.

And the definition of employment areas: It looks like you’re looking at changing it, in both the Planning Act and the new provincial policy statement as well as with Bill 97. It does look like new employment focus will be on uses that cannot be put in mixed-use areas such as heavy industry, manufacturing or large-scale warehousing. So essentially, my take is that this government wants to make it easier to convert retail and commercial office space into housing. That’s my take on that.

We’re also securing stakeholder feedback on this. I can see some pros and cons to this. I’m very open-minded about it, because the need for housing is great. Housing supply is a real issue, and employment patterns have certainly changed. Vacancy rates in offices, including in downtown Toronto, are still very high. There is a lot of vacant space there. My caution is that it is important that we think about what employment land is needed, not just now but 20 years from now, 40 years from now, because the pandemic certainly is an unpleasant chapter, and as we move away from it, it will be in the history books. That’s the goal, and it’s very important that we don’t make any rash decisions now to get rid of large chunks of employment land if, as our population grows, we need to return, we need some more employment land in the future. So I urge caution there and a need to ensure there’s balance there.

In conclusion, I do want to say a few things. One is that it is good to see that the government is acknowledging that we have a housing affordability crisis and that it’s not just a housing supply crisis. We certainly have a housing supply crisis; we do need to build 1.5 million homes in 10 years. There are people who are living in their parents’ basement. There are families who are two, three families living in a rental apartment. And we know immigration has reached record levels. So there is absolutely a need to build more homes, but it is also essential that we are very mindful and ensure that government uses the right kind of incentives and regulations and rules to build the kind of homes that are for Ontarians and ensure that the homes that we build are in line with what people in Ontario—not just investors, but people in Ontario—need.

That means more two-, three-, four-bedroom homes and apartments in areas people want to live in, in areas already zoned for development. It means ensuring that there are good services—transit, schools, daycare, community centres, supermarkets, nearby jobs, places of faith—that are near where people live. And it is important that we really focus on the segments of our population in Ontario that are really struggling to find that home that they can afford: low- and moderate-income people; seniors who are looking at downsizing; students and families that can’t make it work in a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom apartment anymore but can’t find anything else. That’s really the shortfall here. It’s not investors that want to buy their fourth home. That’s not what our housing sector should prioritize, and I fear that the government is really focusing on that.

The other thing I also want to emphasize is that it can never just be all about supply. This government has had five years to show that supply alone will address the housing affordability crisis, and it hasn’t. Housing has never been more expensive. It has never been more expensive to buy a home. It has never been more expensive to rent. Our homelessness crisis has spread across Ontario. The number of people who are homeless in Toronto right now is through the roof; it’s well above 10,000. It’s just getting worse and worse and worse, even though, as the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said, we have a record number of cranes. It’s not just about supply. It has to be about affordability as well.

And when we’re talking about affordability, it’s going to require a bunch of things. It is going to require a definition of affordability that’s not based on the market, which is what this government is choosing to use; 80% of average market rent is not affordable, and 80% of average sale price for a condo is not affordable. It’s not affordable for even middle-income families, let alone moderate-income families and low-income families. It’s just not. It doesn’t work. It needs to be rent based on income, because that’s the definition of affordable. It’s based on the person—what they think is affordable, what they see as affordable.

It’s going to require acknowledging that the amount of money in the budget for addressing homelessness and affordable-housing construction is just woeful. It’s not enough, and it is a cut from the previous budget, the 2022-23 budget. I know you slapped a new name on it, and you’ve used these figures a lot—$202 million over, you know, $202 million and then $202 million. But it’s a cut; it’s a cut, cut, cut. And the amount of money in the previous budget was woeful, so now you’ve just made it even harder. That is not where we need to go, especially at a time when the cost of everything is going up and people can’t afford the rent. It’s just going up. Food bank use in Ontario has increased by 300%, and shelters—at least in Toronto—are at 100% capacity or more. That’s what we’re facing right now. I’m not seeing this government take that seriously. I’m really not.

And what I’m also seeing—and this is a real tragedy—is that as interest rates go up and the effect of Bill 23 is starting to take hold, we are starting to see affordable housing projects that were viable no longer being viable.

We’re seeing this in Peel. Peel had a plan to build 2,400 affordable homes. It’s at risk because of the $200-million loss in development fees, which means they’ve lost the CMHC’s matching money, which means the entire program is at risk.

It’s the same with the city of Toronto. I’m going to quote Gregg Lintern: “In the absence of the city being fully reimbursed by the province for the lost revenues related to the above legislative changes”—he’s talking about Bill 23—“plus provided with additional financial and policy tools, it will not be able to provide the services and infrastructure essential to support growth over the long term, deliver existing housing programs”—these are affordable housing programs—“to scale up supply, and achieve complete communities overall.”

What Gregg is trying to say is that Toronto’s affordable housing program is also in jeopardy because of this government. It’s in jeopardy. It’s terrible.

What this government is doing is clearly not working. We are proposing real solutions to Ontario’s housing affordability crisis and housing supply crisis, and that means committing to building 1.5 million homes by ending exclusionary zoning, which means allowing triplexes and fourplexes as of right. It means increasing density along transit stations. And it means protecting farmland by holding a firm municipal boundary line so we can protect one of our most important economic drivers in the province.

It also means spurring a career in the trades and recruiting skilled labour to join the trades. And it means making sure that developers pay their fair share. It means bringing in inclusionary zoning so there are more affordable homes being built. Montreal has been doing it for 20 years. Rent is $1,000 less a month in Montreal, and their economy is booming.

Developers need to pay their fair share, and I’m not seeing this government take that seriously. I’m really not, because the city of Toronto has had an exclusionary zoning law on their books for some time now, and this government refuses to let them implement it. That’s a shame, because it’s a massive lost opportunity.

So we need to build these new homes. We need to build these affordable homes. We need a public builder who can build homes at cost on provincial public land so that we can build the kind of affordable homes we need and the size of homes that Ontarians need.

We also need to get real about rent. It is unfathomable to me that we have a situation where there is no rent control on buildings built after 2018. We constantly get calls from people who are being economically evicted because a landlord knows they can get more rent. It is essential that in Ontario, we bring in real rent control and vacancy control so that people who rent have stable, affordable rent, so they can live good lives in this province. It’s essential.

We also need—and this is absolutely essential—to clamp down on investor-led speculation. It is shocking to hear the minister talk about how he believes in home ownership, but you’ve created the market conditions that allow 25% of all new purchases to be purchased by investors. Those homes should be going to first-time homebuyers so that they can live in them, they can raise children in them, they can retire in them, they can go home at night and have dinner in a home they own where they’re paying off their own mortgage and not someone else’s mortgage.

That’s what we stand for. Our housing sector is about providing homes for Ontarians first. Our position to build more affordable homes, to build 1.5 million private-sector homes, to clamp down on speculation and make life more affordable to renters will ensure that we get there.

I am looking forward to committee for Bill 97. My hope is that you take some of the recommendations and concerns that you’re going to hear from stakeholders and us so that we can make life more affordable for renters and we can ensure that our housing sector puts Ontarians first.

My thanks to the member for University–Rosedale for her participation today in debate, I listened with interest to her contributions this afternoon, and one of the pieces that I thought was fairly interesting was her commentary around BC, and specifically—I know you mentioned Burnaby and what they’re doing. “We support Burnaby’s plan,” I think was what you were saying. You said there’s a lot of building happening there.

I think that’s great. I think it’s really important, as legislators, that we’re looking at other jurisdictions who are bringing forward ideas. I think there’s always more that can be done. I think there’s a lot that’s good in this bill, that’s moving things forward to help tenants and to build more housing stock.

But I’m wondering if she could elaborate a bit further as to what she is seeing in Burnaby, where, as she mentioned, a lot of housing is being built and a lot of progress is being made. What is she seeing there that she believes could be learned here, as well, in future housing bills?

I’d like to thank the member from University–Rosedale for her excellent presentation and overview of Bill 97, Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act.

I’d like to take the member back to 2021, when she, along with the member from Parkdale–High Park, as well as the member from Ottawa Centre, introduced the Rent Stabilization Act, which Conservatives voted down. At that time, they said no to protecting renters. The Conservatives said no to making sure people have an affordable place to live, and Conservatives said no to long-term stability for renters, as well as for seniors. At that time, while the opposition was introducing legal protections for renters, the Conservative government actually removed rent control from all new buildings first occupied after November 2018.

My question for the member: We see all sorts of legislation with these titles which become ironic in practice. Would the member like to see the government pass the reintroduced Rent Stabilization Act?

Thank you to the member for Perth–Wellington for your comments. Yes, we have been very clear that the Residential Tenancies Act needs to be strengthened to ensure that renters are not illegally evicted, either by a landlord claiming own use or by a landlord claiming that they’re going to renovate the apartment, but then once the tenant has moved out, they don’t do renovations or they do modest renovations, and then the tenant can never get back in.

What I am asking this government to do is to listen to stakeholders and what we are telling you, and to fix the massive loophole of enforcement. The government can raise the fines however much they want, but the reality is that landlords are not being fined in Ontario today, because it’s the responsibility of a tenant to become a good Samaritan and a private investigator and to volunteer their time in order for that eviction protection law to be enforced. So please fix that loophole.

Manitoba has similar rent stabilization laws, Quebec has similar rent stabilization laws, and their economies are very healthy. So it is very important that this government look seriously at vacancy-control legislation, so people can afford to live in this province.

Questions?