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?

Thank you to my colleague across the way for her remarks. I appreciate listening to them. As she alluded to—she was commenting on some of the protections we’re providing tenants, and on renovictions, as they’re commonly known—we’ve taken some action already, Speaker. We increased fines for bad landlords and have taken action to prevent evictions.

I want to provide a quote, just for the record, of just one sentence: “We will stop unfair ‘renovictions’ and bad faith ‘landlord’s own use’ evictions.” Speaker, that quote is from the members opposite’s campaign platform from 2022. So my question is simple, to the member opposite: Will she support our government in strengthening the Residential Tenancies Act to prevent these renovictions and support tenants?

Thank you very much for that question, member for Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas. On paper, the Residential Tenancies Act requires a landlord to properly maintain a home, but in practice, many tenants are living in abysmal, unsafe, unsanitary living conditions where there are rodents or bed bugs. And unfortunately, the Landlord and Tenant Board has not been a place where tenants can seek redress. It takes upwards of two years for a tenant to have their case heard at the Landlord and Tenant Board. Who’s going to wait two years to get a bed bug issue addressed? And often, the Landlord and Tenant Board is not able to provide the necessary enforcement. They’ll do a rent abatement, but they often don’t properly enforce and require a landlord to fix a unit to a standard that’s acceptable. It’s a big problem.

Thank you very much for your comments today. It was very informative. I just want to get your comments on a situation in Hamilton that has just been reported on by the CBC: “Hamilton tenant says he’s being ‘eaten alive’ after living with bed bug infestation for over a year.” This tenant said “the bed bug problem in his ... apartment is affecting nearly every aspect of his life. He’s spent hundreds of dollars on laundry—washing and drying ... repeatedly, trying to get rid of the bugs.”

He’s never experienced this; it started right after he moved into his apartment in February 2022, within three weeks. He’s in touch with his landlord quite often. He emailed the landlord quite often, and they did spray, but it did not seem to be effective, so he asked them many times what they could do—could they provide him with another unit?

The day after the landlord was contacted by CBC for comment, this tenant received an N5 eviction notice. So does this bill provide these kinds of tenants any protection when their living conditions that should be—

Questions?

Right. And we know the effect of that on the economic development of the city of Oshawa in particular but also Bowmanville and Whitby, Ajax, and, to a degree, in Pickering as well.

The new policies would make more land available for development, with fewer and more flexible requirements for expanding settlement area boundaries and a more focused approach, Speaker, to protecting lands for employment. Why is that important? Well, you’ll know, from your own practical experience as a municipal politician, it’s going to allow and support the implementation of individual economic development plans at the municipal level. And if you’re an upper-tier government, that’s going to affect the implementation and evaluation of economic recovery plans overall. It’s going to underpin that process. So that’s a significant development.

The new policies would balance the need for housing with a need to protect resources by making it simpler and easier to plan for and encourage housing development while protecting prime agricultural areas, including specialty crop areas, and continuing to direct development away from hazard land.

I mentioned I was up in Myrtle Station, talking to the farmers about developing and building, taking an acre of land and building another house for their daughter or son. But I also talked about specialty crop areas, because we have a big agri business up in the region of Durham as well.

These new policies would ensure the creation of the necessary infrastructure to support housing developments by integrating planning for land use and infrastructure, protecting corridors for major infrastructure and coordinating school and municipal planning. So why is the coordination of school and municipal planning important? I’ll give you a practical example: I’ve had five new developments built in the west part of the town of Whitby since 2020, now 2022. I would suggest that what those new developments have brought, 20,000 people—there was an opportunity for a more coordinated level of dialogue both at the town level but also with the trustees of all three boards that find a place in the town of Whitby: the Catholic board, the public school board and the francophone board as well. The focus here is to ensure the coordination between municipalities and school boards to consider school and child care needs earlier in the planning process.

My colleague from Niagara West, who is just behind me, will appreciate this as a former parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Education, because it’s an area that has pressure points throughout the province. He has contributed in a strong way some of the solutions that you see evident here today and which I bring forward as part of debate, and I thank him for that.

These new policies, Speaker, will allow that families moving to new housing can expect that local schools will be available for their children. That’s part of the discussion that ensues on the capital priorities that we bring to the Ministry of Education and that’s worked well. I can speak to millions of dollars that have come into the town of Whitby either to build new schools, refurbish schools or develop child care spaces, whether it’s Willows Walk school or other schools of that type. I’m thankful to the Ministry of Education for their level of investment in hard-working families in the town of Whitby.

Speaker, through the new proposed provincial policy statement, we would continue to protect and support our province’s agriculture, including within the region of Durham. Within the region of Durham, we have a very strong agricultural-agribusiness plank as part of our economic recovery plan for the region of Durham. In fact, we have a standing committee within the region of Durham dealing with agriculture and they have contributed significantly over the years in this particular area. As under the current provincial policy statement and A Place to Grow: Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the proposed new document would continue to require planning authorities, such as municipalities, to protect specialty crop areas with policies to support agricultural uses, agriculture-related uses, and various uses on the farm.

I just spoke about a standing committee of the region of Durham. That particular committee deals with certain aspects of what I just said. More directly, the actual policy base falls within other standing committees of the Durham regional council.

Speaker, planning authorities would be required to map and designate prime agricultural areas and to support an agri-food network along the lines that I’ve just described. My colleague from Oshawa is well familiar with it because, in the north part of Oshawa in particular, there still are aspects that are agri-food-based, contribute to the region of Durham’s economic recovery plan, and contribute well to job creation and our local economies, whether it’s Oshawa, Whitby or, for that matter, Clarington, which borders the Oshawa riding.

On this new planning framework, yes, there’s a consultation under way. It started early in April and concludes June 6, 2023.

But meanwhile, Speaker, the government continues to work with municipal partners, whether it’s the town of Whitby or the city of Oshawa or other municipalities that form the region of Durham, to ensure that cities, towns and rural communities throughout the region grow with a mix of ownership and rental housing that meets the needs of people across the province. We live in a very diverse region of Durham.

Speaker, we’re also proposing several changes to further protect renters while supporting landlords. There has been a $6.5-million investment to appoint an additional 40 adjudicators and hire five staff to improve service standards and continue to reduce active applications and decision time frames at the Landlord and Tenant Board. This increase more than doubles the number of full-time adjudicators at the Landlord and Tenant Board, further strengthening protections against evictions due to renovations, demolitions and conversions, as well as those for a landlord’s own use, and clarify tenants’ rights to install air conditioners.

Our government has been steadfastly focused on Ontario’s housing supply crisis since the moment we first took office. We’ve introduced policies that are helping to get more homes built across Ontario, but we know more needs to be done. We absolutely know that more needs to be done. This legislation is the next step in our plan to ensure that Ontario’s housing supply continues to grow over the long term so more Ontarians can find a home they can actually afford.

Speaker, facts matter. In 2022, Ontario saw the second-highest number of housing starts since 1988, with just over 96,000 new homes. This is 30% higher than the annual average for the past 20 years. Ontario also broke ground on nearly 15,000 new purpose-built rentals—the highest number on record.

Importantly, Ontario will continue to call on the federal government to defer the Harmonized Sales Tax on all new large-scale purpose-built rental housing projects to tackle the ongoing housing affordability crisis. We’re going to support this measure, as it would help spur the construction of more rental housing units while helping to create jobs, encourage economic development and support growth.

The province is also continuing the process of launching third-party audits of select municipalities to get a factual understanding of their finances, including their reserve funds and development charge administration, as part of its commitment to ensure there should be no funding shortfall for housing-enabling infrastructure as a result of the More Homes Built Faster Act, provided municipalities achieve and exceed their housing pledge levels and growth targets. And 27 of 29 of those municipalities have already submitted their pledge.

Speaker, I’ve got two minutes, so I’m just going to move into my conclusion right now.

Always a leader in innovation, Ontario is looking at modular construction and other leading-edge options to reduce the cost of building attainable housing and speed up the creation of housing. As part of this work, we’ll engage with the housing sector, municipalities and Indigenous communities to consider different opportunities to build housing using modular and other technologies in communities across the province.

Speaker, the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act is the latest in a series of steps our government is taking to increase housing supply and help more Ontarians find a home they can actually afford. In my case, that means the region of Durham, the town of Whitby. In partnership with the eight municipalities throughout the region of Durham and in other parts of the province, Speaker, be assured we will help create the homes that hard-working Ontarians need today, tomorrow and in the decades to come.

Questions?

To the member from Sudbury: Thank you for the question.

The housing supply action is the latest in a series of steps we’re taking to increase housing supply and to help more Ontarians find a home that they can afford. I spoke about partnerships. Our plan is a plan that has been developed out of collaboration and consultation with a number of sectors, including municipalities. I purposely alluded in my presentation today—through you, Speaker. I’m sorry—through you to the member for Sudbury.

I spoke earlier in my presentation about the importance of involvement and collaboration with municipalities—

I spoke about the $6.5-million investment in the Landlord and Tenant Board to hire more adjudicators. I think that’s part of what I want to share.

I also want to share proposed changes which would double the maximum fines for offences under the Residential Tenancies Act, which underpins what we’re talking about. Maximum fines for offences under the act would be increasing to $100,000 for individuals, $500,000 for a corporation—the strictest and most comprehensive fines in Canada. This sends a strong message to bad actors overall.

Added to that, we’re going to bring more clarity and transparency to both landlords and tenants, as well.

I want to thank the member from Whitby for his eloquent speech. He always does speak so eloquently here in the House. He touched on all parts of the bill.

In my riding, probably about 64% of my constituents live in condos or apartments, and we’re growing. We grow every day. As I mentioned earlier, we have high-rises coming up constantly. There are cranes everywhere.

We have a lot of calls that I receive from our constituents with regard to the Landlord and Tenant Board. As we all know, it’s certainly not a perfect system right now. You touched on it briefly in your statement.

Can you tell us what the government is doing to help fix some of these problems at the Landlord and Tenant Board? It is an important fix, for sure, for our residents and our communities.

Thank you to the member for Whitby for his debate.

We’re talking about affordability for housing. I looked up the average price of a one-bedroom in Sudbury, and it’s $1,472; in Toronto, it’s $2,400, and it says Toronto has had a 20% increase in the last year. With minimum wage at $15.50 until October, that means if you work 40 hours a week, four weeks every month, you go home with $2,480, which is gross—obviously, that’s not all the money you go home with. But if it was all the money you went home with, that means in Toronto you would be short being able to pay your rent every month—actually, you’d have $80 in your pocket.

In the housing plan, what is the design to provide affordable housing? I grew up in geared-to-income rent housing; I have never seen more built again. I think the government is ignoring the fact that people who cannot afford to buy a house need a place they can afford to rent.

Just to that member’s comments around “fines are increased”—they increased fines in long-term care. Give me a list of all the long-term-care facilities that have been fined or shut down as they killed people in those facilities.

Building family homes on the farms—this is a question that was delivered this morning and attacked the NDP on this, even though our critic was very clear today during her presentation, saying that it’s something that we’re going to talk to shareholders with to see if it works.

We’re losing 319 acres of prime farmland every week to development.

In my riding, they’re trying to develop on heritage lands to build homes.

So my question is very clear to you—because you mentioned to our member from Oshawa: Do you agree that we should be building homes on the greenbelt?

Question?

Again, I draw on my experience as both a regional councillor and a local councillor—and also stepping back and reflecting on my time as the president of the Durham Region Non-Profit Housing Corp.

What I see that this legislation does—I’m just looking at my notes here. I think what it does is, it provides, for fast-growing municipalities like mine—I alluded to having five new developments in my riding since 2018-22—specific policy direction to ensure sufficient land and housing supply. Yes, the town of Whitby has an official plan, but the town’s—just like the seven other municipalities and cities—has to be consistent with the region of Durham’s official plan. This specific policy direction that we’re providing does come with some flexibility. I think it’s going to ensure the land and housing supply that this fourth plan and others have been looking to do, and I think it’s going to have the type of effect to provide—

It’s why we’re working with municipalities. That’s what we’re doing through the official plan process to support growth. As part of that, when you’re developing an official plan for a local municipality, you’re looking at affordability as well. And there are features that I’ve alluded to, both in my presentation earlier and in my responses earlier, that speak to that.

What we’re also addressing is opportunities in areas of high growth near transit, and I spoke about the opportunity that exists in the southern part of the town of Whitby.

To the question from the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore—I also spoke about some of the opportunities this legislation brings.

Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity of presenting today and responding to the questions.

It’s interesting; we sit in the Legislature and listen to different sides of debate at different portions of time of day. This morning, I was completely attacked for talking about cost of living against seniors. And now, here, again, we see another bill for housing. I believe it’s the fourth one from this government, and yet rents continue to rise.

In Hamilton, a very simple, basic one-bedroom apartment is over $1,800; a two-bedroom is $2,200.

Where in this legislation does the member see the cost of living actually decreasing for the benefit of people who are actually the tenants in these units and not to the benefit of builders who are building housing for, more than likely, people who can’t afford to live in them?

I thank my honourable colleague from Whitby for his remarks.

Just reflecting on my remarks that I gave in this House a few minutes ago—I stated that Ontario would maintain all of the greenbelt protections, including the policies of our environmental and agricultural lands.

My question to the great colleague from Whitby is, how do you see this bill and our proposed changes with the provincial policy statement and A Place to Grow help construct a mix of housing in your riding, whether that’s single-detached, apartments, townhomes? How do you see this helping your constituents?

I’m rising today to debate the government’s latest housing legislation, Bill 97. There are many things that come to mind for folks in Ottawa Centre. I do want to ask your indulgence, Speaker, to be able to say a few things off the top that I believe are related to this legislation, if not directly in some of the schedules and some of the aspects of the proposed bill.

First of all, we need housing, of course, but there’s also the question of how we get to our housing. A major way in which Ontarians want to get to their housing, certainly in urban centres, is with public transit.

I want to take this opportunity, as I begin my debate on this bill, to thank the Ottawa firefighters who rescued people on April 5 from our LRT, which stalled for a second time—a second time, Speaker, if you can believe it—given an ice storm. We live in a Nordic climate. We invested $2.1 billion in this light rail transit system. We managed to convince the government, in the last Parliament, to declare a judicial inquiry into this system because of the mess it has become. I want to note for the record: Transit is critical for how we get to our homes, and twice in 2023, in January and on April 5, first responders had to be called to the crossover by the Rideau River near the Lees station to cut a hole through a chain-link fence that people had to crawl under and through, to get out of an unheated train they had been waiting on for over an hour—including frail seniors, people with disabilities. I mention this for the record of this House, because I respect the job and the responsibility of this House, and it deserves mention that this is an absolute abomination, when we think about how we’re supposed to be building public transit that works. So I hope government members are listening to that. I do want to thank the firefighters and the first responders, and I do want to thank the people who took to Twitter as they waited, freezing, on the train. I want to thank them, but it shouldn’t have to come to that.

Secondly, I want to give a shout-out to some of our neighbours in Ottawa, who, sadly—because we have to think about how we pay for our housing, don’t we? We work for a living to pay for our housing. And 155,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada have given the Trudeau government a deadline of 9 p.m. tomorrow night, after two years of delay and obfuscation at the bargaining table, to finally come to a mutual collective agreement. It shouldn’t have to come to this. The very people, when nine million Canadians were unemployed in the pandemic, who made sure that that Canada economic recovery benefit that my colleagues in the NDP federally fought hard for—they’re the people who set that system up, they’re the folks who made sure people could get income when they were unemployed and their small businesses were shuttered. And now the Trudeau government is insulting them by threatening to throw them out on the picket lines. I want to say to all the PSAC members at home that going on strike is not an easy decision, but we support you 100%. We will be mobilizing to support you 100%, and I hope the Prime Minister gives you the deal that you deserve at the bargaining table. It is not a lot to ask, for people making $45,000 to $60,000 a year in key occupations in our public service, at the Canada Revenue Agency and at the Treasury Board. You deserve a deal, and we will be with you on your picket lines to support you.

Thank you, Speaker, for your indulgence. Let’s get into this bill.

Let’s talk about rent protection bylaws—schedules 2 and 5 of this bill. Once again, after Bill 23, we see another measure being introduced here to diminish the capacity of rent protection bylaws. Why is this important? It’s critically important because when these large, often investor, companies swoop in and buy up buildings in many of our major municipalities, there is an obligation in the city of Mississauga, there is an obligation in the city of Toronto, and there is an obligation in the city of Hamilton to compensate people. And why? Because we are losing the affordable housing stock we have at an incredible rate.

The research that I have, which comes from the great Carolyn Whitzman, the housing professor at the University of Ottawa, shows us that for every one unit of affordable housing—“affordable” defined by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.—that is being built in Canada right now, we are losing seven. When large real estate investment trusts swoop into a community, buy up a property that a landlord has not maintained effectively—in some cases, for decades—and turfs them out on the street, it’s called a renoviction, and it’s one of the things that my friends in government are talking about addressing with this bill. But it’s one thing to increase fines on individuals or companies—$100,000 for individuals; $500,000 for companies. That’s negative liberty. That’s one thing. But where’s the positive liberty? Where’s the support you give people? It’s through rental protection bylaws.

In the city of Toronto, the latest research I’ve seen from city staff in this city—over 16,000 units of actually affordable housing that we have have been protected with rental replacement bylaws. That’s critical. If you’re trying to maintain a family on an extremely low income—and so many people, as every member of every caucus in this place has risen to speak about since this Parliament resumed, are suffering out there, scraping by, barely making ends meet given the price of housing, food, getting around. This is critical that we have something to replace rent. I heard a friend over there say that it was all because of the carbon tax. I want to acknowledge that transportation costs are significant. But I want to remind the government that one of the major costs to any person, whether they rent or own, is housing. The poverty line, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.—where they say you’re getting into trouble is if over 30% of your income is going into housing. What I’m talking about in situations I’m going to describe this afternoon are situations in which, for affordable housing—affordable housing people are trying to cling on to—42% to 45% of their income is going into housing.

I want to talk about Amanda, a mom of four who lives in Manor Village, which is an area in the south of Ottawa. Manor Village was targeted for renovictions by its owner, Smart Living Properties. Smart Living Properties said to the low-income, working-class tenants of Manor Village, “You’re going to have to move out. The building is dilapidated. We need to do some repairs.” In Ottawa, unfortunately, unlike Hamilton, Mississauga and Toronto, we don’t have rental replacement bylaws. We were fighting for that in our latest municipal plan, but Bill 23 that this government proposed didn’t help us towards addressing any of it. So Amanda and so many other folks in Manor Village faced the threat of losing their homes. Amanda lived in a three-bedroom home in Manor Village for $1,400 a month. You cannot find a three-bedroom home for a low-income family in the city of Ottawa for that price—impossible. They faced the threat of losing it.

Years before, in 2018, we had the largest mass eviction in Canadian history since the terrible story of Africville. I invite members, if you don’t know what happened in Africville in the great city of Halifax, to look it up. It was an instance where Black residents of Halifax were literally moved out of their community, with their possessions, in dump trucks. It was a mass eviction led by the city.

That inglorious chapter of Canadian history was actually made worse with Heron Gate in our city, where 500 residents were evicted summarily by Timbercreek. It has since changed its corporate name. I guess when you get a bad reputation for turfing low-income tenants, you’ve got to change your corporate name.

We needed a rental replacement bylaw to make sure that these folks could actually find comparable housing. It doesn’t exist in the city of Ottawa.

So what is in Bill 97 to make sure there are robust rental replacement rules so that tenants, who have rights, as the member for University–Rosedale said very well, can get access to similar housing? I don’t see it. I see fines, but everybody in this place knows that smart, well-resourced people in housing can wait out a judicial process; they can drag their feet. And it puts the onus on the complainant to lawyer up to the same extent that the well-resourced person has. What you needed were resources off the top, a rental replacement bylaw system that actually works, that compels the landlord if they want to massively renovate a property and make a margin for that. Fine—make sure that the tenants have comparable housing. That’s what a fair regime would do, and I don’t see that in Bill 97.

What did residents in Heron Gate and Manor Village do to fight for their rights, in the absence of a rental replacement bylaw—because as I said, we don’t have it in the city of Ottawa. They worked with great organizations like ACORN in our city. They organized home to home, and they made sure that those landlords were held accountable for their decisions. I’m happy to say that the residents of Heron Gate negotiated an agreement with the landlord who threw them out, and people have found new homes, but not without a massive fight. And I’m happy to say that the residents of Manor Village persuaded the city of Ottawa to re-route our LRT so it wasn’t going directly though their community, to save their housing, and they are fighting, as I’m saying these words, to make sure they have comparable-quality and comparable-cost apartments—but by citizen action, people on their own, neighbour to neighbour. It’s important.

But we should actually have a safety net that matters in this province. I don’t see it in this bill.

If you go to downtown Ottawa, in the neighbourhood of Centretown, 142 Nepean Street is a three-storey walk-up that you’ll see. The city council at home just recently made the decision to demolish 142 Nepean Street—for a 27- or 25- or 34-storey building, you would think. It makes sense. Densification—that’s what we need. No, for a parking lot—for a parking lot. Despite the fact that there are parking lots at adjacent buildings, that was the priority for the developer. They told those residents of that affordable building right in the downtown, close to work, close to transit, close to amenities, that they had to move out. They fought back, but there is no rental-replacement bylaw that exists. The landlord offered spaces for a certain amount of time, three years, but then after that the rent can be jacked up by whatever the landlord would seek to charge, because, as the member from London North Centre said, after 2018, all bets are off when it comes to rent control in Ontario. It’s the Wild West.

So what was Amanda’s reaction from Manor Village when she was facing the loss of her housing for her four kids? She said to the CBC, “I don’t know what we’re gonna do. We could ... end up on the street or living in my van.”

That, sadly, is the reality of so many of our cities’ neighbours, who have become destitute or homeless, because the housing rules that we have favour large, multi-property owners and real estate investment trusts and they don’t work for people.

In the time I have left, I want to talk about the expansion of the urban boundary, which this legislation proposes, by changing a previous standard that had been talked about for development of 80 residents per hectare to 50 people per hectare. And the worry advocacy groups have with this bill is that you’re going to be encouraging housing further and further from urban centres and not moving towards what everybody seems to agree upon, as we work towards these 1.5 million homes we need to build, which is more densification in the downtown.

I love to ride my road bike at home, Speaker. It’s one of the ways I get my mental health. One of the communities I love to roll through when I have the chance is Piperville, southeast of Ottawa, Carlsbad Springs area. There’s a great park out there called the Ludger Landry Park on Piperville Road. Well, there was a bunch of neighbours recently there at a protest because they were awoken at 4 o’clock in the morning to the sound of clear-cutting of thousands of trees—thousands of trees.

And this is an area that wasn’t zoned for development of housing. This was an area, unbeknownst to the residents of the community, that had historically been farmland, but there had been an urban forest that had grown up. Kids went in there to play—I certainly have that memory from my youth, of just going into the adjacent forest to play, in rural eastern Ontario. People would walk their dogs in there.

But at four in the morning, for some reason, a mass clear-cutting operation happened, unbeknownst to the neighbourhood of Carlsbad Springs. It caused a complete uproar. And my question, Speaker, is the allegation here from Taggart Group—which is the developer—is that this is going to be used for farming, and that we need arable land for farming—no question. But I find it curious—for the record of this place, it is right adjacent to a development that is barely inside the urban boundary, once it was expanded by this government, called the Tewin development. City staff told Taggart that it was extremely expensive to pay for the utilities to be worked out there, to think about public transit to be worked out there, to extend municipal services out there. They actually recommended to city council, in the last iteration of city council, not to approve this development, to reject it. But this government changed the urban boundary. The Tewin project was approved. And just last month, residents in a plot of land even further away were awoken to the sound of clear-cutting in the middle of the night. I ask you, Speaker, is this the way we do development in Ontario now, where communities have to be surprised?

If I were in the government, if I were at their tables, I would be encouraging them to not move forward with that kind of an adversarial approach. The government has to be present. There have to be clear rules of engagement. And we have lots of success stories in Ottawa of great densification developments that happened, where neighbourhoods are consulted and they work, and everybody wins. But that’s not what’s happening right now, and I don’t see it being fixed with Bill 97.

So the rationale that was given to the residents of Carlsbad Springs—because immediately, when the city found out about the possibility of a clear-cutting operation on February 17, they sent their bylaw folk out there with a stop-work order. But apparently, after the clear-cutting happened, what city council learned last week is that there’s a gap in the bylaw. According to the city, in the reading of the bylaw, the injury or destruction of trees is required for farming practices. Again, I wish I could show the members of this House on some screen here, because members of the community flew drones to take pictures of the thousands of trees that were felled in the middle of the night. It is not starting off on a good foot to be treating communities like this. Community consultation should not be an afterthought. That’s what I’m trying to say.

Thank you to the member for Ottawa Centre. He really talked about the people he represents in Ottawa and he does such a good job for them.

I was driving home a couple of weeks ago from Toronto and looking at different apartment buildings and thinking back to my twenties when I was renting in an apartment building. It was all based on where I wanted to live in Sudbury: Did I want to be near Cambrian College where I went to school, or did I want to be downtown where the nightlife was? Did I want to be near the beach, so in the summer I could walk and go to the beach? And really, Speaker, the cost was about 100 bucks. I worked part-time; I was a full-time student. I had my own apartment and rent was affordable and the difference between where you wanted to be was about 100 bucks for a decent apartment.

What’s gone wrong over these years—to the member—and what do you think are some simple things that the Conservative government can do to address this?