My question is to the Associate Minister of Housing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exactly.

What is going on here, that there is such a huge call for tenants to be evicted from their buildings? There must be a financial incentive. I can’t think of any other reason why landlords and property owners would seek to evict tenants at such a great rate, a large rate.

There are no real rental protections in the province of Ontario. This government, in whatever wisdom, if I can even say that, has exempted all new buildings in the province from any rent controls at all.

So you can see why there is a financial incentive—where the financial incentive would be for landlords to want to evict tenants, raise the rents, and put new people in those units. And this government has not provided strict enforcement or follow-up.

At the Landlord and Tenant Board, it has been said, it takes up to two years for anybody to get a response, despite your government increasing—which is great—the amount of money to support the Landlord and Tenant Board. It’s still not enough—because it’s not only the hearing, but it’s the tracking and the enforcement of orders, which is not mentioned anywhere in this bill that is purporting to protect tenants.

I’m just going to talk a little bit about a Hamilton tenant who is a perfect example of what could happen to any of us in how they’re being failed by this government in their ability to be protected under the Landlord and Tenant Board. There’s a tenant in Hamilton who says he’s being eaten alive after living with a bedbug infestation for over a year. And so, this tenant said that he has had a bedbug problem in his apartment that is affecting nearly every aspect of his life. He’s spending hundreds of dollars washing and drying his clothes, buying new bedding, including new beds, trying to get rid of the bedbugs. The landlord has sprayed—the landlord has done that, but it has not been effective. He continues to live with this horrible situation. He says he rarely gets a good night’s sleep without feeling the tiny pests crawl across his skin or itching the bites. I mean, this is what this young man is living with and he said he never experienced this in his life. In fact, he started experiencing it just within three weeks of moving into his new building.

Despite going back and forth with the landlord, trying to get some resolution to this horrible problem, he emailed the property owner—it’s a group, a corporation—about the bedbugs and he finally said, “You either need to book a spray or find me different accommodation because I’m getting bit daily.” And he said, “Why should I have to suffer through this?” And this is really a legitimate question to ask.

Despite his efforts to get his home rid of these bedbugs and to live in the kind of condition that everyone should expect to live in, he ended up being served with an eviction notice. The suspicion of this is that the day after the landlords were contacted by CBC for this article, he was served with an N5 eviction notice. And so, not only has this person had to live in these conditions forever, despite trying to get the landlord to help him out, he’s now facing an eviction notice.

My question is, what is going to be this tenant’s experience if he decides to fight this at the Landlord and Tenant Board? We know that it’s costly, we know that it’s difficult and we know that it’s rarely the case that the tenants are on the proper side, or on the winning side, of remedies of the Landlord and Tenant Board. And even if they are, the enforcement is not there, so people can take the time and effort to go advocate for their rights, but when they do get a judgment, there’s no follow-up, there’s no enforcement on the part of this government. And you would think that, in a bill—like, these problems are common. They’re common to all of our constituents and all of our communities. You would think that, in this bill, the government would choose to be very clear about putting in here protections and enforcement so that people are not left just at the mercy of landlords and developers, that they actually have a government that stands up for them when they most need help. This certainly is the case for this gentleman, who now is facing an eviction and facing the problem of trying to find a new affordable home for himself to live in.

Let me just say that renovictions are illegal evictions. They’re one of the biggest contributors to people being homeless and not being able to find a place to live, not being able to put a roof over their heads. The financial incentive that appears to be here for renovictions is something this government is just not addressing and is turning a blind eye to, but it’s causing real harm to people in our communities. What happens to people and families when they’re evicted or they can’t find a safe place to live? We see in all of our communities that people are dying living on the streets. They live on the streets and they are dying living on the streets.

I have a very sad story to share about a young man in Hamilton who died on our streets. He was homeless. He could not find supportive housing. He couldn’t find support for his mental health challenges. And he was living in buildings that were slated for demolition in the Westdale area. A number of times, police were called because there was a fire started; he started a fire to keep himself warm living in these buildings with no heat. Sadly, at some point, he died from the impact of being in a fire. The building caught fire and this young person died. This was a 20-year-old. In what world does a 20-year-old—a child living on the streets and dying on the streets because they don’t have a safe place to live, they don’t have a warm bed to sleep in, they don’t have somewhere to cook their meals. When you look at the pictures of where he was living, you could see that he was trying to feed himself—some of the cans of food. I mean, it’s just deplorable and it’s really nothing short of a humanitarian crisis. It’s a tragedy.

This is the ultimate failure of the system. It’s a perfect storm of failure that led to this young homeless man’s death: the failure to provide adequate housing, the failure to provide any of supports that he needed. We have an opioid crisis, we have a mental health crisis, and none of the supports are there. That’s why the municipalities are declaring states of emergency. That’s why the city of Hamilton has declared an emergency, not only to do with homelessness, but to do with an opioid and mental health crisis.

These are real stories of young people that are dying in our province, and this bill lacks any kind of the humanity, any kind of the urgency. It doesn’t seem to address what is needed when we talk about protecting tenants, when we talk about trying to provide supportive housing for people that have been evicted, that have fallen through the cracks. This government seems to think that just deregulation—taking regulations away, reducing red tape, giving tax breaks to developers—is going to solve the problem, but it’s not solving the problem. The problem is getting worse in this province. Housing starts have gone down. Rents are skyrocketing. The cost of housing is not going anywhere but up. So your plan is not working, and not only is it failing at the housing, it’s failing people actually to keep them safe and to keep them alive.

I just want to talk about the confluence of this government letting developers essentially off the hook for development charges. Development charges are what municipalities use to pay for services like supportive housing, to pay for services like mental health and addiction programs, to pay for—

Interjection: Water and sewer.

Thank you.

The second thing I want to talk about, which is really key, is this government’s changes to eviction laws in the Residential Tenancies Act. There are some good changes in this bill when we’re talking about eviction protection. I want to summarize them before I get to the loophole that I see.

One, it is encouraging to see that Bill 97 doubles the maximum fine for violations under the Residential Tenancies Act—so it’s for the entire Residential Tenancies Act; it’s not just for evictions—to $100,000 for an individual and $500,000 for a corporation. But let’s also be clear: That money doesn’t go to the wronged tenant; it goes to the board or to the government. It’s not like a tenant walks away with a $500,000 windfall. Let’s be clear about that.

The second thing that I see as a positive move is that this government is looking, with Bill 97, to require landlords to get a report justifying a home must be vacated for renovations before a tenant has to leave. There needs to be some criteria there to ensure it’s not just some Joe Blow writing this report so a landlord can just say, “Look, here’s a one-page summary: Renovations need to be done, bye-bye tenant.” This government is acknowledging that a landlord needs to have some kind of evidence and needs to do some due diligence before they move to the LTB to evict a tenant. I see that as a step forward as well.

I also see as a step forward in the right direction this government’s decision to be more flexible around the time frame that a tenant has to apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for a remedy, if they are renovicted, to go to the Landlord and Tenant Board to say, “Hey, look, I think I’ve been illegally evicted and I want to seek redress.” Currently it’s two years, and this government is looking at adding up to six months after renovations are complete. The reason why that’s important is because in many cases, renovations—especially big renovations when you’re looking at demolitions—take longer than two years. We also have situations in our ridings where developers are just running the clock. They know that after two years the tenant can’t apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for redress, so they just wait them out.

We actually have a situation like that in our riding, at 11 Walmer Road. Shortly after I was elected, we canvassed the building, and we very quickly learned that the new property manager, Cromwell property management, was looking at doing some renovations to the building and was actively encouraging—and I’m being polite there—to have tenants leave. So tenants agreed to leave, and there were a few tenants—we are currently working with an individual called Caitlin and an individual called Delroy who is 83, who made it clear in writing that they want to move back in after renovations are complete. It has been over two and a half years. We have sent numerous emails, made numerous calls to Cromwell property management. Caitlin lives nearby; so does Delroy. They see U-Haul units come in as new tenants come into the building to move into these units, but Cromwell has never approached them and said, “Now it’s time for you to move in to your unit.” So they’re waiting, and there’s nothing they can do. There’s nowhere they can go. The two-year time frame has passed. So they’re worried. It is good to see that they now have six months after renovations are complete to apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for a remedy. My hope is that they will be eligible to apply.

So that’s the good.

Now I want to talk about the very bad which undercuts many of the modest improvements that you’ve made. The massive loophole that this government is not addressing with Bill 97 is the fact that there’s no enforcement. I want to explain to you what happens if a tenant is illegally evicted, so that you can understand this enforcement issue as well, in the hope that you’ll take illegal eviction seriously and work to address it. This is the loophole: For a landlord to be fined, a wronged tenant must become a volunteer private investigator and a good Samaritan for at least a year to make a case to the Landlord and Tenant Board, because it’s an average of a year for a tenant to get a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board, compared to six months for a landlord. Landlords are getting fast-tracked right now. It takes a year. Successful tenants—

Interjection.

Successful tenants almost never get their home back.

One of the most high-profile examples of tenants trying to get back into their units is something that happened in my riding, actually, a few years ago, at 795 College Street. These people decided to take their illegal eviction seriously. They took it to the Landlord and Tenant Board. It took them two years, and the landlord got a $75,000 fine. None of it went to the tenants. Then they took it to court, and the landlord got a $48,000 fine. The tenants never got their rent-controlled apartments back, and they got $12,000 in compensation for two years of work.

That’s why this enforcement issue—it destroys all the work you want to do to address illegal evictions. That is a massive loophole. I’m very concerned about it.

I asked FMTA how many fines were issued last year for the one million rental units in Ontario. Their response was flippant. They said it was maybe more than 20. Was it more than 20? I doubt it. Fines don’t happen. I have asked the Attorney General now. I’ve just done an order paper question to ask them how many fines have been issued for landlords who illegally evict, and the average amount of fine, and how many times a tenant is returned to their unit, so we can get these statistics. But I know these numbers are going to be extremely low. So we’ll see about that. That’s a big hole.

Excuse me for spending so much time on that, but we just get so many calls from renters who are terrified that they’re going to lose their home, and it really matters. You need to get this right. So please get it right.

The next piece that I want to talk about is this government’s decision to listen to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and the advocacy we have done and thousands of tenants have done—including this Speaker and the work that she has done—to ensure that tenants have a right to reasonably enjoy their unit and have a maximum temperature set for Ontario of 26 degrees. Other municipalities have this, and it’s time for the province to have this as well. This government has taken a step in the right direction to enshrine the right for a tenant to install their own air conditioning unit, provided that it’s done safely, they inform the landlord they intend to do so, and they pay for any excess electricity costs. The right to have an air conditioning unit in these extreme heat wave summers that we now have because of all governments’ lack of action on climate change—and yours is up there—is the right thing to do. But I want to repeat a statement that I said earlier, which is that only the Conservatives could turn a human rights tribunal ruling into a rent hike for low- and moderate-income renters, and it seems like you’ve successfully done that here.

This government is starting to have a bit of a track record of doing a bit of a rush job when they write their legislation, and I’m finding that they make amendments and changes in future legislation because they realize they’ve made a mistake or an error or they were a bit too quick to listen to one side but not the other. I also see this here. You might notice that the Residential Tenancies Act actually explicitly bans the use of seasonal fees, and there’s nothing in this bill to address that pretty core feature of the Residential Tenancies Act. So that’s a problem. The Residential Tenancies Act also enshrines the right to reasonably enjoy your unit, which—at this point, it is becoming essential to have an air conditioning unit, if you don’t have air conditioning. So there are some contradictions with this legislation here, which really just shows that sometimes you’re rushing a little bit when it comes to legislation. You’re not doing the kind of due diligence and taking the care that you need to get it right. That means listening to stakeholders and doing those consultations before you write the legislation—as well as during. So I hope to see some amendments in the committee to really look into this issue of keeping tenants reasonably cool, protecting them from heatstroke, ensuring that they’re not miserably hot in summer, especially given how much rent they’re paying right now.

The next thing I want to address is some of the planning changes to Bill 97 that talk about supply and housing supply. This is really twinned with what the members opposite have been talking about when it comes to this government’s decision to merge the provincial policy statement with the growth plan to create a new, I would say, radical vision for how we plan in this province—a very expensive and unsustainable radical vision for how we build. So I’m going to address them in turn.

One—and this is a real mystery for me; I don’t even know what this fully means yet, but I’m sure we’ll learn in time—is that with Bill 97, it requires landowners and municipalities to enter into agreements where a provincial land development facilitator has been appointed. I’ve heard this government talk a bit about what these facilitators could mean. I don’t know what municipalities or areas these facilitators are going to be assigned to. We don’t know how much power these facilitators are going to have. But what we are concerned about is that these facilitators, in partnership with the ministry, will likely have the power to change official plans as they go, to change municipal laws around planning as they go. These are very powerful changes to include in a bill, especially since we don’t exactly know what they mean, what they are, or what kind of powers they’re going to have. That seems like a real black box to me—that you’re going to have this unelected, unaccountable individual, who reports directly to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, being able to meddle in official plans that, as the member for Waterloo was explaining, sometimes take years to develop, involve the work of elected officials, and require hundreds of hours of public consultation. So I’m concerned about that power grab. It kind of falls into your track record when it comes to planning and how you like to control all of it. It is a concern, and I look forward to seeing more details of that piece.

The other piece that I see here with Bill 97 is that the municipal zoning orders are made even stronger. It gives the minister the ability to exempt MZO-designated lands from other provincial policies and official plans, such as farmland and wetland preservation. As we all know, MZOs can’t be appealed, and they do not require public consultation before approval. In short, the government loves these MZO tools. You want to keep making them stronger and stronger, so in case there’s an obstacle coming up, you can override it. That’s one piece.

And then the second thing is, I really think it’s important to also look at what these MZOs are being used for.

When I look in my riding, there have been examples of MZOs which I am quite comfortable with. The city of Toronto has requested them. One was used to lower parking requirements for a supportive housing facility at 877 Yonge Street—good. The other one will likely be used, if it hasn’t been used already, to expand the emergency room at Toronto Western Hospital—good. You’re not going to be seeing any objections from me on those kinds of important, publicly beneficial zoning changes to expand hospital capacity and ensure that affordable housing gets built quickly, and the city of Toronto supported them—good.

What concerns me, and what I’ve seen this government doing, is using MZOs to help your developer donor friends build housing that is incredibly expensive in areas that are precious, that are on flood plains, that are in wetlands, that are on farmland, that are on greenbelt land. That’s where I start to see the red flags, and I’m not the only one who has been raising those flags. Some reporters have done some deep dives into this, and they’ve seen that these MZOs have benefited developers who have donated over—this is a while back, so I’m sure the number is higher—$262,915 to Progressive Conservatives and Ontario Proud. These are the very developers who are now tangibly and immediately benefiting from these donations, because they get to maybe call up the minister, get an MZO, and get their development fast-tracked. It seems like it’s a bit of a pay-to-play, and I don’t think that’s how 14 million Ontarians want to see their government operate. I think they want a government that’s more accountable and transparent and that puts people first. And there are a lot of people who are questioning who this government prioritizes and who this government doesn’t. We see that with the use of MZOs.

These changes to the MZOs and these changes to the facilitators—it’s all part of this grand plan that the government keeps going back to time and time again, to really upend and change our planning process so that we are building sprawl on land that many of your developer donors either bought on cheap or already owned. It’s not the kind of planning that is sustainable, that is affordable, that is modern, and that’s really going to build the kind of houses that people want to see and need. That’s where I see this government going.

I want to spend a few minutes looking at the provincial planning statement changes so that the public understands what exactly this government is doing.

This government is ending firm density requirements for new developments. So there can be a single-family home on a half-acre lot and a single-family home on a half-acre lot, and that’s precious farmland. You would think, if we’re looking at building, that we’d want to take advantage of every acre of land we’ve got, which means building up, increasing density; not building out. That’s very concerning. It’s a fundamental change.

We’re also seeing that now municipalities are no longer required to meet minimum density targets of 50 residents per hectare, but they are just encouraged to set their own density targets, which is a fundamental change to the trajectory of planning and development in this province. You’re fundamentally changing it so that it’s now advisory only—that’s pretty concerning. It used to be 80, this government reduced the per-hectare standard to 50, and now you’re just saying, “It will be encouraged.” That’s not good.

This government is also making it easier for municipalities to expand their urban boundaries and permit development on nearby green space and farmland whenever they want. Previously, municipalities could only expand their boundaries as part of a review process and only if certain conditions were met—such as housing needs that couldn’t be met by increasing density on areas zoned for development.

This government is just declaring open season on farmland even though the farming sector in Ontario is one of the most productive farming sectors in the world. We are one of the few provinces and regions in the world that is a net exporter of food, and it is one of the biggest economic drivers of our province—all these jobs. They need to grow food somewhere, so we should be doing everything we can to keep the farmland we’ve got. Instead, this government is saying, “Nope.” We could be building homes that are more affordable and building them more cheaply in areas already zoned for development, but instead we are just going to declare open season on one of the most productive economic drivers in the province, and that is our farming sector. It’s bananas; it really is.