What’s the price—price per tonne?

Any thought would be nice.

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.

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?

Thank you to my Liberal colleagues for their comments.

My question is to the member from Orléans. It was very interesting listening to his comments.

I’d just like to highlight they had 15 years to address housing in this province and did nothing, Speaker.

We’re listening to municipalities. That’s why we’re tabling a fourth housing supply action bill, and we’re going to table more. We were very clear with the electors in Ontario during the election that we would table a housing supply action bill every year of our four-year mandate, if we got one. Guess what? We got one. So there will be more, because we’re listening to municipalities.

He was talking about non-profit housing and rentals. I was wondering if the member from Orléans would be willing to call his friend Justin Trudeau and tell him to take an ask that they remove HST from large purpose-built rentals, as this government under Premier Ford is asking the federal government to do.

Questions?

Question?

What I am aware of is, the last time the NDP was in power, they sent public servants home without pay for two weeks a year.

Liberals have a strong track record of investing in education, investing in health care, and, as I said, investing in home construction across the province.

If the NDP want to go back in time and recall Bob Rae and the infamous government of the 1990s, I’m sure both the government—and, I know over here, we would love to have that conversation over the next couple of years.

One of the major challenges with Bill 23 was the definition of “attainable housing,” the yet-to-be-defined “attainable housing,” and the risk that that provides.

Most cities and most suburban or outlying cities that are building new subdivisions are building with densities that are much higher than in the past. Many of those homes are townhomes, executive townhomes etc., which would be considered attainable housing by many definitions.

If cities lose development charges for 50% or 60% of new builds, that’s going to create a financial crisis within cities.

That was one of the major problems with Bill 23 and the yet-to-be-defined definition of “attainable housing.”

I have a question for my friend from Orléans.

I couldn’t help but notice the assertion there that we hate developers here in the New Democratic caucus. It will come as a surprise to my uncles in the development industry, I will say. But what I can say we don’t like are developers who build improper homes.

So my question to the member, because that isn’t something focused in this bill—Cardinal Creek is a community in the member’s constituency that has had serious problems with improperly built homes, with zero help from Tarion and zero help so far from this government. Do you have a message for them, some vision for them, about how we can make sure that when people make that risk of buying that home, that it’s a properly built home?

My question is to the member from Orléans.

He was referring to non-profit, and I know on this side of the House and in the middle over there we support our non-profit sector. Habitat for Humanity does great work in building affordable rentals and houses for people in need in Ontario. Obviously, in Bill 23, we removed development charges from non-profit housing, but unfortunately, the members opposite voted against that.

My hope is that they will choose to support this bill, which freezes 74 provincial fees related to building permits and other fees to get purpose-built rentals built.

Again, for the record, we are at the highest number of purpose-built rentals in the province of Ontario—the highest number, ever, building right now.

So will the member opposite support these cost-cutting measures in our bill?