Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

The supplementary question.

Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

To reply, the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

I’m not sure where that question is coming from. We made a historic investment, under the leadership of Premier Ford and Minister Bethlenfalvy: $202 million, additional, for the Homelessness Prevention Program. Members were in their ridings last week for a break week, and some of the announcements that have come out of our municipal partners have been amazing. With this extra $202 million, our Homelessness Prevention Program now provides funding of almost $700 million to provide service managers—like the one that the member opposite just talked about—additional funds to keep shelters open, to build capacity.

Definitely, we’ll be reaching out on what the city of London will be doing with the extra dollars that the government just gave them and that the member opposite voted against.

You should speak to the OFA; I hope you do.

Interjection: Once you pave it over, you can’t go back.

What is also changing—and I’ll just go into this before I go into the consequences of sprawl—is the new changes to the PPS. It will require municipalities to have enough designated land available for 25 years of growth or more, instead of up to 25 years, which was the previous standard. Essentially, this government is saying, “You need to plan for growth for a really long time out so we can open as much land as possible to our developer friends.”

And there’s no longer any requirement for a municipal comprehensive review. It’s just no longer required anymore, which is, wow, radical. Municipal comprehensive reviews involve municipalities reviewing and updating their official plans so that they’re in line with the growth plan. It’s all about planning right and using the land that we have and the resources that we have in a cost-effective and useful manner. That’s what it’s about. And you’re saying, “No, let’s just do urban sprawl. It’s fine.”

I want to talk a bit about the cost of sprawl. There are a few things. One, I’m going to talk about how it’s expensive to service. When I was preparing for this speech, I looked at a recent study done by Hemson. They were paid by the city of Ottawa to look at the cost of building and maintaining services and infrastructure for low-density homes built on undeveloped land, and to compare that to the cost of maintaining and building services and infrastructure in infill development, such as apartment buildings or duplexes and triplexes—so building in areas already zoned for development. This is what they found. I hope you’re listening, because I know that you like to talk about cost-effectiveness. It costs $465 per person each year to serve new low-density homes built on undeveloped land. It’s a net loss to municipalities. Compare that to servicing homes in areas already zoned for development. It’s actually a net gain. When you factor in the property tax revenue and all that, municipalities actually gain $606. They gain when you build in areas already zoned for development, and they lose money when you service areas that are about single-family homes and suburban sprawl. When we’re talking about providing services in a cost-effective manner, sprawl is bad—just to make it really simple—and providing services to infill housing is better. This is particularly relevant right now because across the GTHA and across Ontario homeowners are opening up their property tax bills, either by email or in the mail, and they’re seeing big tax hikes. We actually did a little bit of a survey to look at what kind of tax hikes are coming. And it’s because of Bill 23 and your tax cut giveaway to developers that these hikes are coming. Durham region, 5% property tax hike; Clarington, 4%; Waterloo region, 8.55%—

Burlington, 7.5%; Niagara Falls, 7.4%; Niagara region, 7.58%; Newmarket, 7.67%—these are big tax hikes—and Toronto, 7%. There’s a whole range. I read out the higher ones, but almost all of them are seeing a property tax hike. At the same time, they’re also seeing service cuts. So you get a property tax hike, and you get service cuts, and you’re seeing delays in necessary infrastructure maintenance. When you all get in your cars or walk down the sidewalk or take the TTC, you’re going to see more potholes, because cities no longer have the money available to maintain our services to a standard that we expect.

Interjection.

This is happening in Waterloo. The member for Waterloo has raised this. There is a development at Beaver Creek Road and Conservation Drive. It’s a large subdivision, and they are delaying approval because the municipality in the region cannot afford to service it.

Interjection.

What you’re doing is actually hurting your own goals of improving housing supply. You don’t care about affordability. But on your own goals of supply, you’re failing.

I’m not going to spend tons of time on this because sometimes environmental messaging doesn’t work so well with the Conservatives, but I’m going to bring up one thing: It is so environmentally destructive to create the kind of housing development system that we’re going to create, because it locks people into soul-destroying commutes to get to where they want to go. When you’re building single-family homes, the density is not there to provide a bus or a streetcar or a train to provide transit to these areas. What that means is that when Ontarians buy these homes, they’re going to have to have one car or two cars to get wherever they want to go. It’s so expensive, and it’s going to blow our greenhouse gas targets out of the water, because transportation and building are the leading contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. This kind of approach to planning and building will lock us into unbelievably unsustainable development patterns. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that, because I think it’s going to be not necessarily the message that’s going to convince you—but the cost thing, at least think about that. I know your constituents—

Interjection.

And tax—thank you, member for Waterloo. I know that your constituents care about that.

A few other changes: This government is looking at changing development fees. It seems like, once again, you have realized the error in your ways. You’ve just been rushing this legislation through so quickly. You’re not doing the necessary due diligence. So you are choosing to respond to municipal concerns, and you are allowing municipalities to gradually refund zoning bylaw and site plan application fees if a municipality fails to make a decision within specified time periods. You were originally going to require municipalities to refund fees starting on January 1, 2023, but you’re extending that to July 1, 2023. So you’re giving municipalities the six months’ reprieve. It’s a small change, but the reason why I want to bring it up is because it really does speak to the need for this government to be more diligent, for this government to do proper stakeholder feedback, especially with AMO. It speaks to the need for this government to be more organized in how it introduces bills and just the lack of coordination. You represent 14 million people, so it’s extremely important that you do the necessary research and the public consultation so that you get it right, so we don’t see this process where you’re heading here one way, here another way, here another way. It has led some commentators in the news to muse that this government actually doesn’t know what it’s doing when it comes to housing—that’s a TVO reporter who just said that. Let me tell you, that’s not praise.

There are a few other changes here. One, there are some changes to farm properties. Additional residences will be permitted on farm properties, up to two additional on one parcel and up to three additional residential parcels. We’re still reaching out to residents and groups to see what people’s take is on this. We can see some pros; we can see some cons. So I’m curious about that. What does it mean? What do people think about it?

There are some proposed changes to employment lands as well. It looks like the government is looking at making it easier to convert employment lands, like retail or commercial, into housing.

And the definition of employment areas: It looks like you’re looking at changing it, in both the Planning Act and the new provincial policy statement as well as with Bill 97. It does look like new employment focus will be on uses that cannot be put in mixed-use areas such as heavy industry, manufacturing or large-scale warehousing. So essentially, my take is that this government wants to make it easier to convert retail and commercial office space into housing. That’s my take on that.

We’re also securing stakeholder feedback on this. I can see some pros and cons to this. I’m very open-minded about it, because the need for housing is great. Housing supply is a real issue, and employment patterns have certainly changed. Vacancy rates in offices, including in downtown Toronto, are still very high. There is a lot of vacant space there. My caution is that it is important that we think about what employment land is needed, not just now but 20 years from now, 40 years from now, because the pandemic certainly is an unpleasant chapter, and as we move away from it, it will be in the history books. That’s the goal, and it’s very important that we don’t make any rash decisions now to get rid of large chunks of employment land if, as our population grows, we need to return, we need some more employment land in the future. So I urge caution there and a need to ensure there’s balance there.

In conclusion, I do want to say a few things. One is that it is good to see that the government is acknowledging that we have a housing affordability crisis and that it’s not just a housing supply crisis. We certainly have a housing supply crisis; we do need to build 1.5 million homes in 10 years. There are people who are living in their parents’ basement. There are families who are two, three families living in a rental apartment. And we know immigration has reached record levels. So there is absolutely a need to build more homes, but it is also essential that we are very mindful and ensure that government uses the right kind of incentives and regulations and rules to build the kind of homes that are for Ontarians and ensure that the homes that we build are in line with what people in Ontario—not just investors, but people in Ontario—need.

That means more two-, three-, four-bedroom homes and apartments in areas people want to live in, in areas already zoned for development. It means ensuring that there are good services—transit, schools, daycare, community centres, supermarkets, nearby jobs, places of faith—that are near where people live. And it is important that we really focus on the segments of our population in Ontario that are really struggling to find that home that they can afford: low- and moderate-income people; seniors who are looking at downsizing; students and families that can’t make it work in a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom apartment anymore but can’t find anything else. That’s really the shortfall here. It’s not investors that want to buy their fourth home. That’s not what our housing sector should prioritize, and I fear that the government is really focusing on that.

The other thing I also want to emphasize is that it can never just be all about supply. This government has had five years to show that supply alone will address the housing affordability crisis, and it hasn’t. Housing has never been more expensive. It has never been more expensive to buy a home. It has never been more expensive to rent. Our homelessness crisis has spread across Ontario. The number of people who are homeless in Toronto right now is through the roof; it’s well above 10,000. It’s just getting worse and worse and worse, even though, as the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said, we have a record number of cranes. It’s not just about supply. It has to be about affordability as well.

And when we’re talking about affordability, it’s going to require a bunch of things. It is going to require a definition of affordability that’s not based on the market, which is what this government is choosing to use; 80% of average market rent is not affordable, and 80% of average sale price for a condo is not affordable. It’s not affordable for even middle-income families, let alone moderate-income families and low-income families. It’s just not. It doesn’t work. It needs to be rent based on income, because that’s the definition of affordable. It’s based on the person—what they think is affordable, what they see as affordable.

It’s going to require acknowledging that the amount of money in the budget for addressing homelessness and affordable-housing construction is just woeful. It’s not enough, and it is a cut from the previous budget, the 2022-23 budget. I know you slapped a new name on it, and you’ve used these figures a lot—$202 million over, you know, $202 million and then $202 million. But it’s a cut; it’s a cut, cut, cut. And the amount of money in the previous budget was woeful, so now you’ve just made it even harder. That is not where we need to go, especially at a time when the cost of everything is going up and people can’t afford the rent. It’s just going up. Food bank use in Ontario has increased by 300%, and shelters—at least in Toronto—are at 100% capacity or more. That’s what we’re facing right now. I’m not seeing this government take that seriously. I’m really not.

And what I’m also seeing—and this is a real tragedy—is that as interest rates go up and the effect of Bill 23 is starting to take hold, we are starting to see affordable housing projects that were viable no longer being viable.

We’re seeing this in Peel. Peel had a plan to build 2,400 affordable homes. It’s at risk because of the $200-million loss in development fees, which means they’ve lost the CMHC’s matching money, which means the entire program is at risk.

It’s the same with the city of Toronto. I’m going to quote Gregg Lintern: “In the absence of the city being fully reimbursed by the province for the lost revenues related to the above legislative changes”—he’s talking about Bill 23—“plus provided with additional financial and policy tools, it will not be able to provide the services and infrastructure essential to support growth over the long term, deliver existing housing programs”—these are affordable housing programs—“to scale up supply, and achieve complete communities overall.”

What Gregg is trying to say is that Toronto’s affordable housing program is also in jeopardy because of this government. It’s in jeopardy. It’s terrible.

What this government is doing is clearly not working. We are proposing real solutions to Ontario’s housing affordability crisis and housing supply crisis, and that means committing to building 1.5 million homes by ending exclusionary zoning, which means allowing triplexes and fourplexes as of right. It means increasing density along transit stations. And it means protecting farmland by holding a firm municipal boundary line so we can protect one of our most important economic drivers in the province.

It also means spurring a career in the trades and recruiting skilled labour to join the trades. And it means making sure that developers pay their fair share. It means bringing in inclusionary zoning so there are more affordable homes being built. Montreal has been doing it for 20 years. Rent is $1,000 less a month in Montreal, and their economy is booming.

Developers need to pay their fair share, and I’m not seeing this government take that seriously. I’m really not, because the city of Toronto has had an exclusionary zoning law on their books for some time now, and this government refuses to let them implement it. That’s a shame, because it’s a massive lost opportunity.

So we need to build these new homes. We need to build these affordable homes. We need a public builder who can build homes at cost on provincial public land so that we can build the kind of affordable homes we need and the size of homes that Ontarians need.

We also need to get real about rent. It is unfathomable to me that we have a situation where there is no rent control on buildings built after 2018. We constantly get calls from people who are being economically evicted because a landlord knows they can get more rent. It is essential that in Ontario, we bring in real rent control and vacancy control so that people who rent have stable, affordable rent, so they can live good lives in this province. It’s essential.

We also need—and this is absolutely essential—to clamp down on investor-led speculation. It is shocking to hear the minister talk about how he believes in home ownership, but you’ve created the market conditions that allow 25% of all new purchases to be purchased by investors. Those homes should be going to first-time homebuyers so that they can live in them, they can raise children in them, they can retire in them, they can go home at night and have dinner in a home they own where they’re paying off their own mortgage and not someone else’s mortgage.

That’s what we stand for. Our housing sector is about providing homes for Ontarians first. Our position to build more affordable homes, to build 1.5 million private-sector homes, to clamp down on speculation and make life more affordable to renters will ensure that we get there.

I am looking forward to committee for Bill 97. My hope is that you take some of the recommendations and concerns that you’re going to hear from stakeholders and us so that we can make life more affordable for renters and we can ensure that our housing sector puts Ontarians first.

Right. And we know the effect of that on the economic development of the city of Oshawa in particular but also Bowmanville and Whitby, Ajax, and, to a degree, in Pickering as well.

The new policies would make more land available for development, with fewer and more flexible requirements for expanding settlement area boundaries and a more focused approach, Speaker, to protecting lands for employment. Why is that important? Well, you’ll know, from your own practical experience as a municipal politician, it’s going to allow and support the implementation of individual economic development plans at the municipal level. And if you’re an upper-tier government, that’s going to affect the implementation and evaluation of economic recovery plans overall. It’s going to underpin that process. So that’s a significant development.

The new policies would balance the need for housing with a need to protect resources by making it simpler and easier to plan for and encourage housing development while protecting prime agricultural areas, including specialty crop areas, and continuing to direct development away from hazard land.

I mentioned I was up in Myrtle Station, talking to the farmers about developing and building, taking an acre of land and building another house for their daughter or son. But I also talked about specialty crop areas, because we have a big agri business up in the region of Durham as well.

These new policies would ensure the creation of the necessary infrastructure to support housing developments by integrating planning for land use and infrastructure, protecting corridors for major infrastructure and coordinating school and municipal planning. So why is the coordination of school and municipal planning important? I’ll give you a practical example: I’ve had five new developments built in the west part of the town of Whitby since 2020, now 2022. I would suggest that what those new developments have brought, 20,000 people—there was an opportunity for a more coordinated level of dialogue both at the town level but also with the trustees of all three boards that find a place in the town of Whitby: the Catholic board, the public school board and the francophone board as well. The focus here is to ensure the coordination between municipalities and school boards to consider school and child care needs earlier in the planning process.

My colleague from Niagara West, who is just behind me, will appreciate this as a former parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Education, because it’s an area that has pressure points throughout the province. He has contributed in a strong way some of the solutions that you see evident here today and which I bring forward as part of debate, and I thank him for that.

These new policies, Speaker, will allow that families moving to new housing can expect that local schools will be available for their children. That’s part of the discussion that ensues on the capital priorities that we bring to the Ministry of Education and that’s worked well. I can speak to millions of dollars that have come into the town of Whitby either to build new schools, refurbish schools or develop child care spaces, whether it’s Willows Walk school or other schools of that type. I’m thankful to the Ministry of Education for their level of investment in hard-working families in the town of Whitby.

Speaker, through the new proposed provincial policy statement, we would continue to protect and support our province’s agriculture, including within the region of Durham. Within the region of Durham, we have a very strong agricultural-agribusiness plank as part of our economic recovery plan for the region of Durham. In fact, we have a standing committee within the region of Durham dealing with agriculture and they have contributed significantly over the years in this particular area. As under the current provincial policy statement and A Place to Grow: Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the proposed new document would continue to require planning authorities, such as municipalities, to protect specialty crop areas with policies to support agricultural uses, agriculture-related uses, and various uses on the farm.

I just spoke about a standing committee of the region of Durham. That particular committee deals with certain aspects of what I just said. More directly, the actual policy base falls within other standing committees of the Durham regional council.

Speaker, planning authorities would be required to map and designate prime agricultural areas and to support an agri-food network along the lines that I’ve just described. My colleague from Oshawa is well familiar with it because, in the north part of Oshawa in particular, there still are aspects that are agri-food-based, contribute to the region of Durham’s economic recovery plan, and contribute well to job creation and our local economies, whether it’s Oshawa, Whitby or, for that matter, Clarington, which borders the Oshawa riding.

On this new planning framework, yes, there’s a consultation under way. It started early in April and concludes June 6, 2023.

But meanwhile, Speaker, the government continues to work with municipal partners, whether it’s the town of Whitby or the city of Oshawa or other municipalities that form the region of Durham, to ensure that cities, towns and rural communities throughout the region grow with a mix of ownership and rental housing that meets the needs of people across the province. We live in a very diverse region of Durham.

Speaker, we’re also proposing several changes to further protect renters while supporting landlords. There has been a $6.5-million investment to appoint an additional 40 adjudicators and hire five staff to improve service standards and continue to reduce active applications and decision time frames at the Landlord and Tenant Board. This increase more than doubles the number of full-time adjudicators at the Landlord and Tenant Board, further strengthening protections against evictions due to renovations, demolitions and conversions, as well as those for a landlord’s own use, and clarify tenants’ rights to install air conditioners.

Our government has been steadfastly focused on Ontario’s housing supply crisis since the moment we first took office. We’ve introduced policies that are helping to get more homes built across Ontario, but we know more needs to be done. We absolutely know that more needs to be done. This legislation is the next step in our plan to ensure that Ontario’s housing supply continues to grow over the long term so more Ontarians can find a home they can actually afford.

Speaker, facts matter. In 2022, Ontario saw the second-highest number of housing starts since 1988, with just over 96,000 new homes. This is 30% higher than the annual average for the past 20 years. Ontario also broke ground on nearly 15,000 new purpose-built rentals—the highest number on record.

Importantly, Ontario will continue to call on the federal government to defer the Harmonized Sales Tax on all new large-scale purpose-built rental housing projects to tackle the ongoing housing affordability crisis. We’re going to support this measure, as it would help spur the construction of more rental housing units while helping to create jobs, encourage economic development and support growth.

The province is also continuing the process of launching third-party audits of select municipalities to get a factual understanding of their finances, including their reserve funds and development charge administration, as part of its commitment to ensure there should be no funding shortfall for housing-enabling infrastructure as a result of the More Homes Built Faster Act, provided municipalities achieve and exceed their housing pledge levels and growth targets. And 27 of 29 of those municipalities have already submitted their pledge.

Speaker, I’ve got two minutes, so I’m just going to move into my conclusion right now.

Always a leader in innovation, Ontario is looking at modular construction and other leading-edge options to reduce the cost of building attainable housing and speed up the creation of housing. As part of this work, we’ll engage with the housing sector, municipalities and Indigenous communities to consider different opportunities to build housing using modular and other technologies in communities across the province.

Speaker, the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act is the latest in a series of steps our government is taking to increase housing supply and help more Ontarians find a home they can actually afford. In my case, that means the region of Durham, the town of Whitby. In partnership with the eight municipalities throughout the region of Durham and in other parts of the province, Speaker, be assured we will help create the homes that hard-working Ontarians need today, tomorrow and in the decades to come.

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?