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?

Any thought would be nice, the member from Hamilton just said.

Again, I want to close the time I have, Speaker, before entertaining questions by remembering how residents have come together to defend their affordable housing. This is a good story. There’s an elderly couple that I’ve worked with on Elgin Street in downtown Ottawa that were forced to move from their home on Elgin Street, which they have lived in for 38 years, because of a building fire. But what was curious about the fact that this elderly couple—who would like me to not use their names now because we negotiated an amicable agreement with the landlord. They were told to move out of their home, as were many people in this building, because of the fire damage. But as people started to move back in that were actually closer to the fire in the building, they found it curious that they were still being told to stay out.

Their insurance was running out. Their ability to stay in a hotel was running out, because these are low-income seniors, so they gave me a call. They said, “Joel, we don’t know what we’re going to do. There’s a new, shady, kind of property manager guy around our building all the time and he gives us the evil look. He’s changed our locks; we didn’t even know about it. We can’t go in to get our stuff. This doesn’t seem right.” We hooked them up with Community Legal Ottawa to get access to their property and their stuff.

But what stepped into the breach once again was ACORN Canada. A bunch of neighbours came together at the doorstep with a locksmith they hired. They got into that building. They defied the landlord. The police came, and we said calmly to the police officers who came, “These tenants are being prevented from accessing their property. They are about to run out of their ability to pay for housing outside of this building and everybody else has moved back in.” Wouldn’t you know it, Speaker, they were living in a rent-controlled unit for all that time and everybody around them were more recent tenants, paying at least twice, if not three times what they were paying.

So this couple fought back. They got in the news. They organized their neighbours. They pressured the landlord, and thankfully, I’m happy to tell this House, they are back in there. They sent me pictures of their newly repainted room. It’s beautiful. They have a beautiful mauve dining room with an old table where they love to enjoy meals with friends.

But again, it shouldn’t have to come to this. There should be clear rules that make sure landlords cannot engage in this kind of activity. And you’re not going to stop this, Speaker, by increasing fines. You’re going to stop this, if I understand what the Attorney General is saying, by increasing the capacity at the Landlord and Tenant Board to give tenants and landlords access to justice, so when they are being harmed, they can get decisions.

But that’s not the Ontario we’re living in right now. We’re living in an Ontario where, under this particular government, the cost of a home has doubled, if you’re in the ownership market. Rent is going through the roof. Costs of life are going through the roof. And there are a lot of people lining up to help: the real estate investment trusts of the world, the Timbercreeks, the Smart Living Properties. They’ve got all the consultants and lawyers they want. What we need is a government that’s going to stand up for tenants, stand up for homeowners and stand up for communities. Bill 97 does not do that.

We need legislation with teeth to help people who are in a tough position, and that’s not what’s here.

What is driving up the cost of living, Speaker, are rich folks connected to this government driving up rent, driving up the price of food, ruining our communities. This government is not standing up and fighting for people. They are fighting for Galen Weston. They are fighting for the De Gasperis family. We will fight for people.

Interjections.

Thank you to my colleague from Ottawa Centre for his remarks. As he is very well aware, Speaker, our government has proposed many pieces of legislation to protect tenants and increase fines for bad landlords.

My question is simple: Will the NDP choose, this time maybe, to vote with us and help us enhance those protections under the RTA?

What’s the price—price per tonne?

Questions?

The member from Niagara Falls.

The member opposite has spoken very passionately about low-income families and the challenges they face with rent, with access to justice—his opinions about that. I’m curious: It’s become patently obvious that the carbon taxes have had an incredible impact on prices across the board—not just on energy, but also on other necessities of life. I would like to know, what price per tonne does the member opposite feel is an appropriate tax to put on those families for whom he is so concerned?

I just want to correct—I asked a question last time, and I actually made a mistake. I want to admit I made a mistake. I know you’re all surprised at that. I actually said that we were losing 319 acres per week of prime farmland. You know what? It’s 319 acres per day—per day. So I apologize to the farmers on that particular issue.

I want to talk about a young lady in my riding who was renovicted—told that they were going to fix up the apartment. She had to move out. She ended up getting a place on the same street in a basement. And she waited and looked at the apartment, looked at the apartment—never once was anybody in there fixing it. But then, what did they do? They upped the rent and rented it out. And what happens in this bill? You’re relying on that renter who can’t afford to pay their rent in the first place to fight through the courts to take on somebody—or a corporation. It makes no sense to me.

In my riding, in Fort Erie, there’s a 13-year wait-list for an affordable one-bedroom apartment and a 57% increase in rents. So my question is: Why is there nothing in this bill that addresses the housing affordability crisis in all our communities? To you—I’ve listened to you—what is the solution to help this government stop the poverty that’s going on in this province?

Thank you the member from Ottawa Centre. You’re always bringing the fire that we need here when we’re standing up to defend people in our communities.

In Hamilton, we have right now about 1,500 people who are homeless, as the best estimates tell. We have 500 shelter beds. And we have growing renoviction applications at the LTB. People end up homeless because they lose what affordable housing that they have, and they’re losing it at an extraordinary rate.

My question to you is, why does this bill not have the teeth that it needs to protect people from being evicted from their affordable homes when we see such a crisis in all of our communities when it comes to homelessness?

I’ll be actually constructive instead of rhetorical as I was in my last response, because I think that was the invitation for the members opposite.

Do you know there’s a Conservative government, Speaker, in England that has actually made sure that price gouging at the pump—they call it petrol in England—doesn’t happen? Do you know there are conservative governments elsewhere in the world that are taking on the grocery giants that are hiking up the cost of food? There are rent control arrangements in other major countries of this world that make sure that everyday people—tenants, residents—don’t get gouged, and landlords can make a margin so they stay afloat.

But this government believes in a free market where the powerful run roughshod over others. But the good news is—and this is actual advice—if you’re at home and you’re facing renoviction, pick up the phone and call ACORN. Organize with your neighbours, because that’s what works. When government won’t help, organize and fight for change, and get in touch with the NDP.

You’re diminishing the capacity of those to help working-class families. Why? Just so a real estate investment trust can make a little bit more margin? How much of those organizations actually care about the Canadian economy and Canadian families? Is their profit much more important than the livelihoods of ordinary people struggling and trying to get by? I don’t think it is.

At the end of the day, people in crisis know, who have faced eviction from their property, that they do not have a friend in this government. The way they can get what they deserve is to organize with each other and push for change. People are doing that. They will do that.

Hold on, folks, because an NDP government is coming in a couple of years, and then you will really get the help you need.

I’m going to be splitting my time this afternoon with the member from Don Valley West.

It’s an honour to rise to speak to Bill 97 with all of you this evening. Of course, this government has had nearly five years to improve the housing affordability crisis that is facing our province. But under this government’s watch, we’ve continued to see both the rental market and the price of home ownership reach all-time highs. Middle-class families starting out are having a nearly impossible time entering the housing market. Couples with a combined income that is higher than the Canadian average are spending years and years and years looking for an affordable option to enter the market and begin their families. When they do finally find something, new homeowners are struck immediately with another phenomenon made worse by this government. Not only is the price of housing skyrocketing, but the price of heating their new home is going up. The price of electricity for their new home is skyrocketing. The price of putting food on the table for their family in their new home is skyrocketing. And, of course, as a result of this government’s policies and their actions towards municipalities, these new homeowners are facing skyrocketing property taxes, as well—property tax increases that haven’t been seen in many parts of this province in nearly a generation. So when these young couples can finally enter the market, when they can finally afford a home, all of their costs to manage and maintain their new home are skyrocketing, without any support from this government. Because of their policies to starve municipalities, the neighbourhoods that these new homes are in are becoming more and more incomplete. The roads and sidewalks aren’t going to be built for years and years because the cities can’t afford to do them. The parks and community centres won’t be ready until after the children are grown.

When you starve municipalities of the funding necessary to build complete neighbourhoods, you end up with incomplete communities.

The government has set a goal of building 1.5 million new homes by 2031. They’ve all but explicitly acknowledged that their efforts aren’t working. This is, I believe, their fourth attempt to get things right, their fourth attempt to move the market in the right direction. The government’s biggest problem has always been, as we know, their inability to take responsibility for the failure to deliver on their promises. Clearly, what the government has been doing, what the government has been trying to do, what the government further promises to do isn’t working.

So what might work? Instead of putting all of their eggs in the basket of private builders—and unlike the New Democrats, I’m not attacking home builders. Many of Ontario’s home builders are family-owned and family-operated businesses. Most of us, if not all of us, live in a home that was built by a developer or a home builder. They contribute immensely to our communities, both with their core business and of course with their charitable work. But the reality is, their business is making money. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if we want to bring prices down, perhaps we should be looking at more not-for-profit options.

We need a government that is going to make the province a true partner in building affordable homes in Ontario. We need a government that won’t continue to push responsibility for building affordable housing onto overloaded and financially starved municipalities, unlike nearly every other province in Confederation.

To help double the pace of homebuilding, just last year, the Ontario Liberals proposed the creation of the Ontario homebuilding corporation. What is the Ontario homebuilding corporation? The corporation would allow the government to work with communities, not-for-profit housing partners and developers to build and maintain affordable homes of all types for new home buyers, either as a primary financing source or as a builder. This corporation could leverage provincially owned and underutilized lands—efforts I think the Minister of Education might have been talking about earlier this afternoon. We don’t need to be paving over the greenbelt to develop surplus lands and to build affordable housing. The corporation should be provided with the capital funding, subject to strict oversight by whatever measures the government wants to bring in, including a hard cap on the administrative expenses and salaries and a 15-year mandate to ensure housing is built rapidly. It will help cool the housing market, and it will end the wait-list for affordable public housing. Most importantly, homes sold by the corporation should only be made available to first-time homebuyers, and all the proceeds could go directly back into creating more affordable homes—it would be the never-ending cycle of financing of new home construction for new home buyers and so on and so forth.

In summary, if the government wants to address the affordability of housing, their actions to date haven’t done so. We’ve seen skyrocketing prices, both in the home ownership market and in the rental market, and it’s time for the government to explore more not-for-profit options.

Questions?

My question to the member opposite is—I’ll quote from one of his colleagues, from Toronto Centre: “We are seeing many people struggling as they’re waiting for their hearing date, and of course, while they’re waiting, that means everything is in limbo.... It benefits no one when the tribunal system doesn’t work.” As my colleagues have alluded to earlier today, we invested an additional $6.5 million in the Landlord and Tenant Board to clear the backlog and provide timely service, both for the landlords and the tenants.

So my question to the opposition is, will they not walk their talk and support this common-sense move?

Thank you to the member from Orléans for his debate.

During his debate, he talked about how the cost of everything has gone up, and we heard that very loud and clear at the doors about a year ago. The cost of food, housing, utility, property tax—now that the developer fees are being downloaded onto municipalities—are all going up. Utilities have gone up—when you think about electricity—ever since Hydro One was privatized. When you look at Hydro One—it has been five years the Conservative government has been in place. If you look at the affordability issues with food and housing and property tax—it has been about a year.

What do you see that’s new in the last year that has made things more affordable for people? Can you think of anything?

Thank you to my colleague from Orléans for his excellent suggestions.

The housing crisis in Ontario has reached the point where it’s affecting many more in our society. Workers are being forced out of Toronto because they can’t afford to live in the city anymore.

I spoke to the owner of a small business, a garage, who felt forced to sell his business because he couldn’t hire mechanics, because mechanics are moving to the suburbs and to small towns because of high rents here in Toronto, and choosing to work nearer to wear they live.

People will keep fleeing this city and province to cheaper locales out west or in the Maritimes, and that will affect the ability—it is affecting the ability—of our province to thrive. This trend is a threat to our economic health, and it must be addressed. This government has been in power for five years, and this problem is not getting better; in fact, it’s getting worse. We risk a society that lacks sufficient young and middle-aged people to do the work that keeps our province working.

There was an article yesterday in the Toronto Star about Toronto Island and how it’s disproportionately occupied by elderly people, because young people can’t get there, can’t make their home there.

That’s the future we risk for the province at large, which is why it’s particularly disheartening that this government has failed to take meaningful action on the housing crisis. The refusal to adopt the recommendation of its own expert housing task force would be farcical if it didn’t have such a damaging impact, but the consequences of this inaction are grave and cannot be waved away by boasting about how many cranes we have in the province.

This government’s focus on sprawl and tall, and no other creative solutions, at the expense of farmland and our environment, hurts our province’s overall well-being. This legislation’s provisions for expanding urban boundaries go against the recommendations of this government’s expert housing task force.

That being said, there is a part of this legislation I could support. The tenant protections strengthened in this bill are a positive step in the government’s track record on rights for tenants. Half of the residents of my riding of Don Valley West are renters, and the increasingly precarious housing situation in Ontario disproportionately affects them. With the average price of a one-bedroom apartment reaching $2,500 a month, it has never been more difficult to be a renter in this city, and this government has thus far failed to help them. I receive countless phone calls and emails from constituents, many of them new immigrants and elderly women living on a limited pension, who are scared that their landlord will force them out through a renoviction or that they will be forced out because of above-guideline rent increases. Displacement has a serious impact on people’s lives, particularly those who have lower incomes or are already in a difficult financial situation. So we’ll need to see the details of how this bill will be implemented to see if the new protections do indeed deter renovictions, but it certainly is a step in the right direction.

But one must also wonder why the government is introducing these protections now, when they removed the city of Toronto’s ability to regulate demolition last year in Bill 23. Toronto had possibly the best rental replacement policy in the province, and this government removed it. Rental replacement makes sense from a supply perspective, because it does not make sense that it’s easier to redevelop an existing apartment building than to build the missing middle in residential neighbourhoods. The government has real power to address this crisis, if only they would wake up to that.

A way this government could further prevent displacement and help the affordability issue that so many Ontarians are facing is by looking at creative solutions for rent control that do not deter the building of new rental units, like rolling rent controls over a 10-year period. Because of this government’s current policy, all new builds are exempt from rent control, which means that anyone living in a new apartment is at further risk of displacement. I have heard of tenants in non-rent-controlled apartments receiving notices of rent increases of 10%, and they just cannot afford that on a big-ticket item like rent.

I will continue to advocate to this government to be creative, instead of offering Ontarians more of the same—that is, tall, sprawl, and removal of rent control. There are ways to implement rent stabilization that do not impact the ability to secure financing for the building of apartments, and I strongly encourage the government to consider those options. New challenges call for new solutions.

When affordable rental units are not being built—and they certainly won’t get built in the greenbelt—why not consider an idea like my colleague mentioned, the Ontario homebuilding corporation, to finance and build the affordable housing we need?

The new regulation permitting tenants to install air conditioning units is welcome, especially as climate change is causing warmer and hotter summers. I think my colleague from the NDP mentioned that earlier. Our reliance on AC will only continue to grow. And while this legislative change is positive, it’s a further reminder of how this government refuses to acknowledge the gravity of the climate crisis. We need to reduce our carbon emissions, not increase them. But under this government, we will be increasing our reliance on fossil fuels.

That’s not the government’s only failure on energy policy. This government came into power pledging to reduce the cost of electricity, that Ontarians would see lower electricity bills, but, in fact, the opposite has happened; their bills have increased. They discarded the long-term energy plan of the previous Liberal government, refused to implement a new one, and now energy costs keep soaring. With that kind of policy, low-income tenants may not be able to afford to keep their AC running.

I’m happy to see that this government is waking up to some of the struggles of Ontario tenants, but they need a new plan on housing if they want to get serious about helping tenants with affordability now.

Unlike the Premier, who claims that the finance minister is a close personal friend who is in almost daily contact, I’m not a friend of Mr. Trudeau’s and I don’t have his phone number—although I’m happy to talk to him next time I see him.

I wasn’t here for the 15 years of the previous government. I was on Ottawa city council, and when I was on council we were building homes faster than any pace before that. My signature is on subdivision plans and com-munity-design plans for the construction of thousands of new homes which I was happy to oversee as councillor for Cumberland, one of the fastest-growing parts of Ottawa. And I’m sure the city of Ottawa will continue those efforts to expand housing.

If they were truly listening to municipalities, they would provide the financial assistance to bridge the challenges that cities are going to face financially as a result of losing development charges; they would provide the transit funding bridge to address the enormous impacts that COVID-19 has continued to have on transit systems. Those are the kinds of things they would do if they were listening to municipalities.

So, no, I don’t really see anything getting more affordable for families. Things are only getting tougher and tougher and tougher, and what we’ve seen from this government are policies that will make that worse and a budget that really ignores middle-class families right across the province.

To either one of my colleagues here—I’m just wondering if you feel that these policies that we’re looking at in all these different bills are going far enough for this goal of 1.5 million homes in 10 years? Three units per property, not looking at main streets but instead looking at the greenbelt—what do you think of actually having the backbone to push further and get four units per property, build up main streets, especially along the subway corridor? Why not just upzone main streets to six storeys and really get behind that 1.5 million goal and build in urban centres where the services are, where people want to live?