My question is for the Attorney General. I’ve heard from many of my constituents, both tenants and landlords, concerning the delays they are experiencing when they engage with the Landlord and Tenant Board. There are many reports of the long delays when it comes to hearings to resolve tenancy disputes, causing uncertainty and confusion to both tenants and landlords. The consensus is that the time frames are way too long, the caseloads are too heavy, and service standards need to be strengthened. As the government, we must put forward resolutions that make wait times shorter and results much faster for those involved.

Speaker, can the Attorney General please explain how our government is taking action to address and resolve disputes at the Landlord and Tenant Board?

The Landlord and Tenant Board is part of our province’s tribunal system, which plays an important role in providing accessible dispute resolution to thousands of Ontarians. It is essential that our government continues to make investments that will modernize services so that the people of our province can have confidence in our tribunal.

Speaker, can the Attorney General please explain further how our government is making investments to improve access?

Thank you, Minister.

It really is an honour to be speaking today about the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act in my new capacity as the Associate Minister of Housing.

Interjections.

I look forward to supporting our government’s initiatives to help deliver on our commitment of 1.5 million homes in Ontario by 2031.

In my own riding of Mississauga–Streetsville, housing is a challenge for many of my constituents.

The Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act is proposed legislation that is crucial to our government’s work to get more housing built in the province—housing that Ontarians across the province so desperately need.

Our housing supply action plans have made great progress in addressing our province’s housing crisis. We are now building on the bold actions we have already put forward.

As the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said, more needs to be done. That is because Ontario’s housing crisis is affecting not just homebuyers. Renters, too, are struggling. This is significant, given that Statistics Canada data reveal the growth in the number of renter households has outpaced the growth of homeowner households from 2011 to 2021 in each of Canada’s 41 large urban centres. Ontario municipalities, like Barrie, Kitchener-Waterloo and Oshawa, saw some of the largest renter increases across the country.

That’s why I’m pleased to have this opportunity to highlight how the proposed Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act would better protect tenants in Ontario and make their lives easier.

Speaker, I would like to start by explaining a feature of our proposed legislation that will be welcomed by many renters. This concerns clarifying and enhancing the rules regarding air conditioning in rental units.

As we have seen for decades in summers past, the sun and humidity can take its toll on people if they don’t have access to cool space. We propose to amend the Residential Tenancies Act so that when a landlord does not provide air conditioning, tenants would be permitted to install a window-mounted or portable air conditioning unit. This would be subject to, of course, some rules. First, a tenant must give written notice to the landlord of their intention to install an air conditioning unit prior to installation. Second, the air conditioning unit must be installed safely and securely, and the installation must not cause damage to the rental unit or the rental complex. Renters would also have to ensure that the installation and maintenance of the air conditioning unit complies with any applicable laws, including municipal bylaws and any prescribed rules. Finally, tenants who do not pay for electricity—that is, it is included in their rent—could be charged a seasonal fee. This would be based on the actual electricity cost to the landlord, or a reasonable estimate based on the information provided by the tenant.

Of course, we’re not stopping there. Speaker, you can pick up a newspaper just about anywhere in Ontario and read about renters, some of them long-term renters, who are facing an uncertain future about where they and their family are going to live because their rental unit is being renovated. We know this is an issue in the rental system and we’re trying to help. That is why our proposed legislation and future regulations would, if passed, increase tenant protections, specifically against evictions due to renovations as well as those for a landlord’s own use. What our government is proposing to do is to give tenants greater access to remedies and also increase the reporting requirements that landlord must follow.

Our proposed changes state that a landlord, where they are ending a tenancy to do renovations, would be required to provide a report stating that the rental unit needs to be vacant for the renovations. A regulation would outline what details must be included in the report. Regulations would also set out the type of person who can provide this report, such as a professional engineer or an architect, for example. Once these regulations are made, if this document is not provided for the tenant along with an eviction notice, then the eviction notice would not be considered valid.

Our changes would also require landlords to provide tenants who indicated that they wanted to return to the unit with written notification of the estimated date of when the unit will be ready for occupancy after the renovations are completed. Written notification would also be required for any change in when renovations are expected to wrap up—that includes a new estimated completion date.

When the unit is ready for occupancy, the landlord would have to give the tenant a 60-day grace period to occupy that unit again. This will enable the tenant to provide the required 60-day notice to end their tenancy in their temporary accommodation if they are renting elsewhere while the renovations are completed. Landlords must continue to allow tenants to move back in at a similar rent once renovations are complete.

Currently, if a landlord fails to give the right of first refusal to an evicted tenant after renovations are completed, a tenant is able to file a complaint with the Landlord and Tenant Board within two years. So we’re proposing changes to the Residential Tenancies Act that would give a tenant two years after moving out, or six months after renovations are complete—whichever is longer—to file a complaint. Adding the proposed six-month post-renovation time frame recognizes that some renovations may take more than two years to complete.

Similarly, our proposed legislation and related regulations would tighten the rules regarding evictions when a landlord wishes to use a rental unit for their own use or for the use of one of their family members. In cases like these, in order to address less-than-genuine evictions, our proposed changes would set a time frame, to be prescribed in regulation, within which a landlord or their family member must move into the unit. If this move is not made by that deadline, the landlord would be presumed to have acted in bad faith if and when the tenant applies to the Landlord and Tenant Board for a remedy. The length of this time frame would be set at a future date once our government has consulted on a fair time period.

What’s more, our government is proposing to increase the maximum fine for these offences. If passed, our legislation would amend the Residential Tenancies Act to double the maximum fines under this act. The maximum fines would rise to $100,000 from $50,000 for individuals, and to $500,000 from $250,000 for corporations. Even currently, Ontario’s maximum fines for residential tenancy offences are the highest in all of Canada. Increasing these fines further will deter ill-intentioned landlords from committing offences such as unlawful evictions.

It is critical that tenants are protected from this type of behaviour.

However, we know that there are still many other kinds of landlord-tenant disputes that get resolved through the Landlord and Tenant Board. Our housing supply action plan wants to ensure tenants and landlords have timely access to justice. That is why the province is also investing $6.5 million to appoint an additional 40 adjudicators and hire five new staff at the Landlord and Tenant Board. This investment is critical to our dispute resolution system, and it should help eliminate the backlog of cases at the LTB and reduce wait times.

Our proposed legislation would also amend the Residential Tenancies Act to mandate the use of the Landlord and Tenant Board’s form for rent repayment agreements. This would be used when a tenant owes back rent and the landlord and the tenant agree to a repayment plan without immediately resorting to eviction. If the parties come to a repayment agreement, this legal document would set out the terms of repayment. Currently, there is no requirement for a repayment agreement to be in a certain form or format. This form provided by the Landlord and Tenant Board sets out, in plain language, that the landlord can apply to evict a tenant if the agreement is breached.

Speaker, I now want to move on to talk about what our proposed legislation would provide in terms of encouraging the building of rental housing. Our government is also working to protect and increase our province’s rental housing stock.

Building on More Homes Built Faster, we propose to make further legislative changes to the Municipal Act and the City of Toronto Act—and other acts, as necessary—to establish regulation-making authority to help create a balanced regulatory framework governing municipality rental replacement bylaws. Where municipalities require landowners to build replacement units, future regulations could require that new units contain the same core features as the original unit—this means features such as the same number of bedrooms, while permitting some flexibility when it comes to the size of the unit. Future regulations could also require municipalities to impose a requirement on landowners to provide existing tenants the right to move back into the unit at similar rent levels.

As well, we will be consulting on future regulations that would help form this balanced package of rules I have just talked about.

Speaker, as you can see, our government’s proposed Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act contains stronger protections and new rights for tenants. I truly believe that these proposed changes will make life easier for renters and landlords in Ontario.

I again want to express how much I look forward to supporting our government in my new role as we work towards our goal of helping build 1.5 million homes—homes for renters, homes for first-time homebuyers, homes for empty nesters who want to downsize.

We, as a government, are committed to making Ontario the best place to live, to work and to raise a family.

I encourage all members of this House to vote in favour of this bill.

I would like to now turn the floor over to the parliamentary assistant for municipal affairs and housing.

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

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

Thank you 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?

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.

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?

I think what we’ve seen in our legislation is a commitment to taking as balanced an approach as possible to the competing interests of landlord and tenant. Obviously, we see here legislation about preventing and reducing renovictions, the air conditioning legislation.

Ultimately, the existence of private landlords—they provide a key source of rental housing in the market. The more we penalize landlords or force landlords to subsidize housing, the fewer of them will bother to be in the business, and we will end up having far less access to a diverse range of rental properties than we currently have.

While I hear these concerns, it’s really about balancing it, because losing the landlords will not help the housing crisis.

Waterloo region takes its farming history very clear—and again, I come back to that context of national emergency.

I think what’s important here is for communities and municipalities to come together when it comes to identifying the green spaces, the farmland, the wetlands that need to be protected, and at the same time, looking at areas that can be turned over for housing and taking a very critical and practical view of it. I think what this bill is making clear is that that is the goal—to be trying to identify that type of land.

I commented on this briefly, but one of the things that bothers me so much about what I think is literally a missing middle type of housing is that we do not build apartments, high-rise, condo-style living for families, for people with pets, children and hobbies. I refuse to accept that it’s because it’s impossible. We just haven’t done it. There hasn’t been a great deal of incentive for developers and home builders to do so, partly because of development charges and also because of the way that these builds are financed. You need to sell most of them before you can actually build it. Right now, a four-bedroom, family-style apartment is a bit of an unknown quantity on the market, and so it would be harder to sell. But again, that’s where I think that comes in—saying, “Hey, if you’re going urban, if you’re going infill, if you’re building family-style, reducing or waiving the development charges.”

So I think that’s where you need to look at—unconventional types of housing and how we’re encouraging that.

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.