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?

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?

I met earlier today with one of the legislative interns that is doing a paper on polarization in political debate and politics at large, and I’ve been sitting here listening to the various speakers talk about this bill and that word, “polarization,” has gone through my mind multiple times. One of the questions he had asked me was where I thought it came from and what was feeding it. One of my answers was media and social media. In a party system, there will always be an aspect of winning and losing, and it’s traditional, unfortunately, in humanity that we are easier to unite around what we dislike and distrust more so than we are easy to unite around what we like and want.

So I don’t have a background in zoning, in municipal government, in urban planning. I have no idea what Facebook algorithm brought this up years ago, but there’s an organization—it’s American, but a lot of their principles apply to Canada as well—called Strong Towns. Strong Towns calls itself sort of roughly an advocate for urban prosperity. A lot of that is through urban density, so I fully admit the organization itself definitely has more of a pro-transit, anti-car stance, however, which I think is less possible in our area. But a lot of what they wrote about really interested me, enough so that despite the fact that, as I said, I have no idea how the algorithm decided I would be interested in Strong Towns, they were right, and I did become very interested in Strong Towns.

One of the things that they talk about is how the concept of the traditional downtown didn’t need to die, but even having died, it is impossible to bring it back to life again. Places that attain a certain level of urban density, almost by virtue of that density, tend to attain a certain level of urban prosperity as well. And what I keep hearing about this bill in the criticism of this bill is this very sort of polarizing description of it being “sprawl and tall” versus, in some way, an urbanization infill or densification bill. The more I look at it and the more I look at the housing bills that have come before it, I am still failing to understand how this bill prevents or complicates any of the urban densification or infill that we also need to have happen. What I see here is a bill that is written in the context of a national emergency, and I think that is one of the most important things that we need to consider here when we get into this polarizing debate about sprawl versus urban.

I remember—I think it was 2021 when the Scotiabank article came out that put Canada last among G7 countries for homes per Canadian. It was something like, I don’t know, 420 or something homes per 1,000 Canadians, with, frankly, eye-watering amounts of homes needing to be built in order to bring us up even to the average of G7 countries and certainly to a point where we would be comfortable.

As a member of this government, when we were first elected, obviously we ran on a platform of building and of building homes. We already knew that we were coming into this second term with the housing crisis continued. Particularly in COVID, we saw a shift, actually, from urban living to more of a suburban sprawl-rural living, which also changed some of the requirements. But ultimately, we were still behind the clock as far as providing homes required.

It doesn’t matter what party you’re in; if you’ve talked to your stakeholders, you will have been told by countless people that they have a labour shortage, that they need more people to work. And then on top of that, we received the information from the federal government about the immigration targets that they are looking for and how many people are going to be coming to Canada, to Ontario, and to southern Ontario specifically.

It would be lovely if we could put our heads together and come up with ways to attract some of these new arrivals to places other than southern Ontario that are looking for workers. Frankly, I don’t think that’s impossible. But right now, here is where they will undeniably arrive. I feel that our housing bills and this housing bill are being written in an attitude of recognizing that we are years behind and that we are in a state of emergency when it comes to providing housing.

I’m from Waterloo region. The Waterloo region plan was sort of amended in a way. They had written several versions, and one was their worst-case scenario of maximum arrivals to the region, which is essentially what the province took, what the government took. We’ve kept this countryside line intact, which doesn’t mean anything to many people here, but it’s very important in Waterloo region.

What I see happening here with the bills we’ve had before, with accessory dwelling units, with starting to target exclusionary zoning, with the language in this bill talking about focusing on downtown areas, transit areas, that type of thing—I am not seeing a bill that is hostile to urban development. In fact, when I speak to urban home builders, I don’t receive criticism for these bills. In fact, I receive a lot of praise and appreciation and, frankly, feed-back on what they would love to see in our subsequent bills in order to make urban development even easier.

Interestingly, when you talk about urban prosperity, places that are nice places to live tend to attract labourers and attract people that want to be there simply by virtue of being nice places to live. The member from Cambridge will recognize this, but one of our local urban home builders who’s quite innovative wrote a book about happy cities. He described a road in Cambridge, Hespeler Road, as being one of the signs of Cambridge’s unhappiness. It’s a six-lane road full of parking lots and strip malls right next to the 401 that he described as being a place where you would simply drive to as the most efficient place in order to shop and then drive back home again with no community aspect.

As a resident of Cambridge, I’ve always found Hespeler Road not exactly the most attractive place. But particularly after I discovered Strong Towns, I began to be increasingly frustrated by it, because what I would see—and what I see throughout Ontario—is the result of poor municipal planning and the idea that you would simply toss something up where it was convenient. And so we now have all of this land that is, as the author of that book put it, dedicated to parking lots, to single-storey strip malls etc.

What I see in this bill, when I read about being transit-oriented, about downtown, about looking at areas that we can target, is I see a government that is acting, as I said, in awareness that we are in a state of emergency, but also extremely open to the concept of urbanization, to infill, to densification. I believe the reason that, as I said, we need to act as though we are in an emergency is, first of all, because we are in an emergency. But secondly, as a resident of Waterloo region, when I look around—I’ve been there since I was seven years old. I’ve seen the planning decisions, I’ve seen the sprawl, and I’ve seen the lack of urban development that has occurred, and all of that—that sprawl, that lack of urban development—occurred under the municipality’s watch, under the region’s watch, under the local politicians’ watch, not anything to do with the province. This isn’t the case where they were headed 100 miles an hour in the right direction and the province has somehow interfered.

Rather, what I see, particularly after the most recent municipal election—one of my closest friends ran for city councillor—is municipal politicians are faced with, in comparison to our type of campaign, not being connected to a party. The amount that they can raise and spend is very small. The number of people who come out to vote for them is very, very small. And so, frankly, I don’t love the term “NIMBY,” but a small community of NIMBYs can very, very easily influence a municipal councillor to make decisions that are really only benefiting the current residents of a community and not the future, the yet-to-arrive residents of that community, because, as I said, they may be able to leverage the loudest voice. They may be the ones that are able to organize to come to the community meeting. But really, is that listening to everybody? Is that actually being equal, being forward-thinking? I don’t think it is.

From my perspective, a lot of municipal politicians, in many ways, have had their hands tied for years now by that attitude and by the requirement that they stick by that. We’ve seen it in Toronto, where we’ve had councillors say that supporting a certain project would be political suicide and they, indeed, found out that it was and lost their position in the next election because they went against the small group of people that were able to mobilize in a municipal election.

The way that I look at this is, this bill—for example, take Waterloo region—unlocks a much larger area of land for development than the region’s, perhaps, ideal version would have done. However, that ideal version is, again, based very much on that small group of people who are able to mobilize, who are able to have their voice heard and, frankly, very, very rarely live in an apartment building, based off of at least my data that I’ve received and my somewhat unofficial polling. But again, these bills are not stopping urban development. They’re not stopping infill. They’re not stopping innovation. In fact, I believe that that is the direction we are heading, and we have already shown a clear commitment to innovation, to listening to other voices in the housing debate. I see no reason why that would stop, and this bill, to me, is just another example of that.

At the end of the day, I’m almost 36; I bought my house in 2015. It was a foreclosure. It’s one of those 1950s one-and-a-half-storey bungalows, and it was kind of falling apart. I went in at asking, and I bought it for $187,000—and this is in Cambridge. An identical house—frankly, not nearly as nice as mine—sold during the peak of the real estate prices last year for $860,000, the house across the street. So I am faced every day with the knowledge that even on an MPP’s salary—for those listening, it’s a base salary of $116,000; I’m a parliamentary assistant, so I get another $16,000 on top of that, so $132,000—I wouldn’t be able to afford my own house if I had to buy it now.

I love my house. It’s a detached house. It has a garden. I love the ability to have a garden, and so I don’t feel that I’m in any position to tell somebody who has that same dream that I had of white-picket-fence homeownership that they can’t have it. I also think that we are not currently, because of years of neglect of urban densification of infill projects, in a position where municipalities or regions are ready to be full speed ahead on infill projects. When you look at a place like Hespeler Road, you see competing ownership, competing zoning. It’s a perfect place to intensify and develop, but there are so many strings in order to get through to be able to do that that it’s going to take quite a lot of time. It’s going to take a lot of political will in order to make it happen.

The way I look at it is that we are still in a state of emergency, so if continuing to build the way we have always built is the most efficient and fastest way to get homes built and get them occupied, then that is what we have to do, but there’s absolutely no reason that any of these bills prevent us from working together, from listening to our stakeholders, from listening to those who are in urban homebuilding, from listening to people advocating for missing-middle housing, to make that happen.

One of the things that has occurred to me: There’s some talk in this bill about seniors, about building for seniors. We have a lot of seniors who are aging at home in very, very large houses that arguably a younger family could perhaps make better use of, and perhaps they might have considered downsizing, but we really don’t build a good community for them to downsize to. We built a retirement home, an adults-only home somewhere on the outskirts of Waterloo. We don’t create a retirement home that has two or three bedrooms, that’s located in the heart of the city, that’s a place that their children would want to come to. That is not historically what we have built, and therefore how can we expect them to leave their houses?

I believe that what these bills are doing is saying that there are a number of different pathways to creating housing. I do firmly believe that the housing supply crisis—really it is at the most basic level the reason why we do have an absolute crisis: because supply is so incredibly low. But by working together, by trying to take down the polarization of this debate and instead looking at these housing bills, including this one, as increasing opportunities to do things differently—but again, always in the actual, current environment, which is a literal state of emergency as far as housing goes. Are we all going to love everything that we’re going to do? No, but we’re making up for 20 years of inaction.

And this is inaction across Canada, you know. This isn’t a particular party or a particular province; this is something that has been happening for years. If we don’t act now, if we don’t act dramatically, if we don’t act quickly, it is only going to get exponentially worse as time goes on.

Ultimately, I would never take that dream of white-picket-fence homeownership away from somebody, and I’m not going to support anybody who tries to do that, but I do believe that there are a number of other housing options that we can look at, and that these bills make possible—the legislation that we have done before and the legislation that we are doing now. When you read the text of this bill, when we talk about transit-oriented, when we talk about downtown areas, in my head I’m thinking Hespeler Road. And the funny thing about Hespeler Road which, as I said, was called a symbol of Cambridge’s unhappiness by that urban home builder—who actually loves Cambridge very much. There’s a Hespeler Road in practically every city in Ontario.

Again, we absolutely need to, I think, take away this “sprawl and tall” versus “urban and infill” discussion of this bill. This is about building homes. It’s about building homes in the context of a national emergency. It’s about making sure that young people are not locked out of that dream that probably many of us in this chamber have of owning a house—one that I relatively recently went through, and I know that if I was in their position, I wouldn’t be able to have my house. Really, those are my thoughts on this bill.

Thank you to my colleague for the question.

Yes, the latest budget showed that this government’s plan to build 1.5 million new homes is not working. They’re only at half the target. Their plan seems to be, as I say, all about tall or sprawl.

In my riding of Don Valley West, we continue to see applications for 35-storey condo buildings get approved at the OLT, despite the objections of the city, because the infrastructure isn’t there.

There are lots of opportunities to build that missing middle, to build those six-storey buildings, to build walk-ups and other options for people who don’t want to live in tall condos.

So I think there are lots of other opportunities this government could be taking to increase density in our cities and our towns without going into the greenbelt and causing further environmental harm.

I just want to ask a couple of questions to my colleague who decided to throw something into his presentation. I want to know if he’s aware that the Conservative Party was in official opposition for 15 years. I want to know if he’s aware that the Liberal Party was in government for 15 years.

Are you aware that the Liberals sold off Hydro One, causing hydro rates to skyrocket? Are you aware that the NDP voted against Bill 115? Are you aware that the Liberals and Conservatives voted against anti-scab legislation and increases to minimum wage?

Do you think that the decisions over those 15 years that you guys were together led to the affordability and rent crisis that we’re currently facing today? We are in an affordability crisis in the province of Ontario.

I want to thank the member from Kitchener South–Hespeler. In response to her comment, yes, every single place in Ontario has a Hespeler Road; mine is called Tecumseh Road. One of the great things that I remember from my time on municipal council is our community improvement plan to try and get purpose-built rentals and intensification to turn a downtown that was not vibrant, not walkable and get it to a place where it was once again the pride and joy of the community. Unfortunately, the member was correct: There are a lot of people who don’t like the reduction in traffic lanes or the streetscaping to be added, it being seen as frills and not worthy of incorporation into a complete community.

I wanted to ask the member this: Can you elaborate a little bit on what might exist in our bill to help incentivize the improvement to our supply for purpose-built rentals and to ensure that this intensification and improvement to density does occur in our communities?