I would like to introduce you to some of the best mayors in the province; of course, they are from the Glengarry–Prescott–Russell riding. You’ve got Mr. Normand Riopel, who is the warden of the united counties and mayor of Champlain; Geneviève Lajoie from Casselman; Mr. Mario Zanth from Clarence-Rockland; Pierre Leroux from the township of Russell; Yves Laviolette from the Alfred and Plantagenet township; and of course, Mr. Robert Kirby from East Hawkesbury.

I would also like to welcome to the chamber today the Rwandan Community Abroad organization here in Toronto. In this House with us today is the High Commissioner of Rwanda to Canada, HE Prosper Higiro, along with important members Rose Kangabe—I’m sorry if I don’t pronounce that right—and, of course, Wilfred Rusibira and Rwandan Community Abroad Toronto president, Theophile Rwigimba—

Interjections.

Thank you to the leader of the official opposition. We have been fully transparent with the public in terms of what our intentions are for the site since 2019. We are leasing the lands. We have a tenant in place. We have a development application with the city of Toronto. We are proceeding with environmental assessment work that is underway. We have made tremendous progress on the site.

But what’s most important is the sentiment of the public. People drive by the site and think, “What a waste that we let the site deteriorate to the point of it no longer being safe for people and pedestrians to be able to go there.” We are bringing the site back to life. We will make sure it is there for everyone in Ontario to enjoy.

Our government is making the financial investments necessary to preserve these two treasures, to bring them back to life, to make them a place that everyone can go and enjoy with their families. I 100% think the public is behind us on this one.

This allows us to talk about how we have a plan and how our plan is working for Ontarians. The latest data shows that Ontario has seen an 11% increase in 2023 on new housing starts, up nearly 1,200 from last year. Rental starts so far are double what they were at the same time last year. Ontario is the number one jurisdiction for business, jobs and newcomers. There are more active cranes right now in the city of Toronto than there are in New York; Chicago; LA; Washington, DC; Seattle; and San Francisco combined.

We’re going to continue to move forward with our aggressive plan to build 1.5 million homes by 2031. Let’s face it, Speaker, it already sounds like the opposition is looking for a reason to, for the fifth time, vote against more housing in our province.

But again, now we’re hearing from the opposition; here it is, after our announcement for Bill 97. Now, we’re starting to hear some of the real NDP coming forward. They’re standing up against farmers having the opportunity to sever a lot for their son or daughter. That’s where the NDP is moving. They’re going to stand against hard-working farmers and giving those sons and daughters the opportunity to create lots, or the opportunity to create housing for workers, something that our government believes is something that we need to move forward on. This is where the NDP are standing. They’re standing against farmers. They’re standing in favour of NIMBYism. That’s—

Thanks to the member from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke. I appreciate it.

Speaker, he is quite correct: We’ve been hard at work putting families back in charge of their energy bills since we formed the government back in 2018. We started by introducing customer choice on electricity plans, allowing Ontarians to choose a price plan that makes sense for them—either a time-of-use or tiered rate. We also introduced the Green Button program, which is being rolled out right across Ontario as we speak, and will be in full implementation in November.

Now we’ve taken the next step. Last week, down at Toronto Hydro, I had the opportunity to inform the public about our ultra-low overnight electricity rate, which, starting on May 1, customers in the member’s own riding in Renfrew and in Toronto and London and Centre Wellington and Wasaga—I’m sure it was a great weekend at the beach up there, Mr. Speaker. They can opt in on this new plan, the ultra-low overnight rate, that’s going to be available province-wide in the coming months.

Unlike the former Liberal government, which sold clean, night-time power to neighbouring jurisdictions, many times at a loss, our government is coming up with innovative ways to use that power and shift demand in the province in the overnight period, which will make our grid more efficient, saving our electricity grid up to $5.7 million which, at the end of the day, isn’t just going to save those folks who adopt the ultra-low overnight rate, it’s going to save every electricity customer in the province money on their bill.

Thank you. That’s very important. That member knows, in Barrie–Innisfil, the impact that our housing supply action plan is making.

Last year, rental housing, something that many members have spoken about—rental housing starts in the province reached and all-time high, something we should all be very proud of—

Interjections.

These trends have continued in 2023. I talked about it this morning in question period. I’ll repeat some of the statistics that I quoted in my answer this morning. Compared to last year, Ontario has already seen an increase of nearly 1,200 housing starts, which is an 11% rise—very positive numbers, so far, in 2023. Purpose-built rental starts are currently more than double compared to the same period last year—again, very positive steps. Whether you look at the housing starts or the rental—again, very good numbers, so far, this year.

Let’s take a look the city of Toronto, where Ontario’s housing supply has been felt pretty acutely. There have been more than 4,600 housing starts in the first two months of this year alone. What’s that number? It’s 50% higher than compared to the same numbers just a year ago—very good numbers. Even better is that more than 1,500 of these units were rental starts, which is five times the amount from last year—again, wonderful numbers.

These positive trends are a really good sign for the government that our policies that we’ve championed—that is why we’re continuing to move forward with new proposals to increase housing supply. It’s very, very good news.

Let’s talk about the bill that I’ve entitled Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act. The government’s proposed changes are really the basis of a number of strong measures that I speak about when I use the term “helping homebuyers and protecting tenants.” The proposed changes would obviously make life easier for renters in the province.

It would clarify and enhance a tenant’s right to install air conditioning in their own unit. These changes would really stress the importance of ensuring that an air conditioner is installed safely and securely. And if the landlord supplies the electricity, they would be allowed to charge tenants a fee for any additional electricity costs.

The proposed changes would, if passed, also further strengthen tenant protections against evictions due to renovations, as well as those for the landlord’s own use.

The other measure that I think is very important, even though the opposition voted against similar measures when we put it in Bill 124—we’re proposing to double the maximum fines for offences under the Residential Tenancies Act to $100,000 for individuals and $500,000 for corporations. Folks, these would be the highest maximum fines in Canada for these types of events. We’re serious about putting these measures forward. We were serious in our previous bill, in the middle of the pandemic.

We have looked at other ways to increase housing supply. We’ve made a number of changes in More Homes Built Faster. The plan that we’ve identified changes the opportunity for home builders to replace older, mid-size rental apartments with more modern rental buildings, something that we’ve heard, as part of our consultations, that people wanted us to consider—

Interjections.

We’re also proposing to create a new regulation-making authority to enable a balanced regulatory framework governing municipal rental replacement bylaws. It really will do a couple of things: It will create consistency across and between municipalities—something we felt needed to take place in this space when they establish these types of bylaws—and it really could help streamline the construction and revitalization of rental housing, while at the same point protecting tenants, which is something that we heard as part of our More Homes Built Faster consultation.

An example: Where municipalities are requiring landowners to build replacement units, we’re considering regulations that could require that these units retain the same core features. I’ll get to that in a moment. We’re also looking at measures to give existing tenants the right to move back into the unit at a similar rent. This would help keep rental housing affordable in those communities, while at the same point encouraging revitalization of older, deteriorating buildings and, at the end of the day, increasing rental housing supply. In other words, we’d be taking steps to help Ontarians who rent units that are no longer in satisfactory condition so that they can access more modern and appropriate housing, but at the same time, if they leave a two-bedroom apartment, they can return to a two-bedroom apartment, at the same level of rent as before.

We’re also—and the Attorney General talked about this this morning—making a huge investment in the Landlord and Tenant Board. As I said when we made the announcement a week and a half ago in London, this is the largest investment in the Landlord and Tenant Board since its inception—a very, very good decision. It’s $6.5 million to appoint 40 new adjudicators and hire five more additional staff in hopes of tackling the backlog. It’s very, very important right now. Minister Downey was asked a question at that announcement. You’re essentially doubling the amount of adjudicators—you’re at 39 right now; you’re going to add another 40. You’re going to add another five administrative staff—something that we were responsive to. That $6.5-million investment is a game-changer in the management of that tribunal. I think everyone in this House can agree, no matter what political stripe, that we need to have an adjudicative tribunal—the Landlord and Tenant Board—that works in a fair system both for landlords and tenants. I want to thank Minister Downey for accompanying this bill with this very, very strong policy that has been celebrated from both landlords and tenants across the province.

Our plan will also better protect homebuyers and their financial investments. I was pleased to join Minister Rasheed in Toronto three weeks ago, along with Associate Minister Tangri, to announce that our government is expanding deposit insurance for credit union members saving for the purchase of their first home. The first-home savings account which was introduced by the federal government—credit union members can now use them to save for the purchase of their first home. In the event that the credit union fails, the credit union member’s money in a first-home savings account would be protected.

We’re also exploring, through Minister Rasheed’s ministry, a cooling-off period on purchases of newly built freehold homes.

We’re also exploring the requirement that purchasers of all new homes receive legal advice on their purchase agreements—something I think that, again, is responsive to many of the things that we’ve heard as part of our consultation.

These changes that are in this bill would continue to support a number of very important measures—things like intensification—while making sure that there is sufficient land to accommodate new homes and jobs that our province needs.

So to increase housing supply and speed up planning approvals, this bill and our consultations—we’re proposing to update the provincial policy statement and integrate it with A Place to Grow: Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. This would create a single province-wide, housing-focused land use planning document for Ontario. This proposed merged document would simplify existing policies. It would also refocus them on achieving housing outcomes while giving large and fast-growing municipalities the tools that they need to deliver more housing. As I’ve said many, many times, all of Ontario, not just the greater Golden Horseshoe, is a place to grow. And that’s what our policies in this bill are reflecting.

More Homes for Everyone required municipalities to gradually refund zoning bylaw and site plan application fees if they fail to make a decision in a specified time period. We’ve listened to municipal feedback: We’re proposing to postpone the start date from January 1 to July 1 of this year to give them time to adjust. I want to thank municipalities for their engagement on this.

Municipalities also told us, as part of More Homes for Everyone, that some of the smaller projects need to be able to address concerns stemming from a site plan review. So we’re proposing, based on feedback, to allow municipalities to use site plan control for residential projects with 10 or fewer units in very certain circumstances—very specific recommendations that, again, responded to the feedback we received from our municipal partners.

This bill also—it was part of the announcement: We’re reducing the cost of building housing. We’re planning to freeze 74 provincial fees at current levels. This includes several fees related to Tribunals Ontario, the Ontario Land Tribunal, the building code. One of the things we heard when we had the consultation with municipalities and we talked about fees and charges—municipalities said, “What about the provincial fees?” So this decision by the government to freeze 74 provincial fees is a direct result of municipal feedback that we heard as part of consultation. We’re consulting on implementation of the fee freezes via Ontario’s Regulatory Registry, so there’s more to come on that.

In conclusion, our proposed Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, as I said at the outset of the speech, really builds on our previous actions that I detailed in the House. These are actions that support homeowners, renters and landlords, not-for-profit and private sector builders, and our municipal partners, so that, together, we can realize our goal of helping to build those 1.5 million homes by 2031.

This is a very bold and transformative plan, but under the leadership of Premier Ford, we said to the people last summer that we would put a plan in place to do this so that we can realize that goal of building 1.5 million new homes by 2031; pour que nous puissions réaliser ensemble notre but de contribuer à la construction de 1,5 million d’habitations d’ici 2031.

Thank you, Speaker, for giving me the chance to kick off debate. I’m now going to turn it over to my fantastic Associate Minister of Housing, the Honourable Nina Tangri.

I want to thank the members from Mississauga–Streetsville and Mississauga East–Cooksville for your comments today. I’ll address my question to either one of you, whoever wants to answer it.

This government has had all kinds of housing bills. You’ve overridden the democratic right of the people of Toronto, Niagara, York and Peel to majority-vote democracy in our municipalities. You’re paving over the greenbelt. You’re giving a $5-billion taxpayer-funded donation to developers. And yet, the price of housing keeps going up.

When you were elected in 2018, the cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Mississauga was $1,800; today, it’s $2,299. That’s a 24% increase over last year.

When will you start reducing the cost of housing in Mississauga? And what will the cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Mississauga be in 2026, at the end of eight years of Conservative rule?

I just want to thank everyone who spoke today.

Housing and our housing plan are so important.

Being from a riding in Etobicoke, you see cranes everywhere, building, building, building. They’re doing high-rises everywhere, as an example. But the problem is, not everyone can live in Etobicoke. Not everyone can live in Toronto. It’s also very expensive to live in Toronto, and it’s very expensive to live in Etobicoke.

Minister, I do appreciate the work you have done to date.

Can you tell the people of my riding what you are doing so some of these people can find homes in other places around the province, outside of Toronto?

Thank you to the member for Whitby for his debate.

We’re talking about affordability for housing. I looked up the average price of a one-bedroom in Sudbury, and it’s $1,472; in Toronto, it’s $2,400, and it says Toronto has had a 20% increase in the last year. With minimum wage at $15.50 until October, that means if you work 40 hours a week, four weeks every month, you go home with $2,480, which is gross—obviously, that’s not all the money you go home with. But if it was all the money you went home with, that means in Toronto you would be short being able to pay your rent every month—actually, you’d have $80 in your pocket.

In the housing plan, what is the design to provide affordable housing? I grew up in geared-to-income rent housing; I have never seen more built again. I think the government is ignoring the fact that people who cannot afford to buy a house need a place they can afford to rent.

Thank you to the member for Ottawa Centre. He really talked about the people he represents in Ottawa and he does such a good job for them.

I was driving home a couple of weeks ago from Toronto and looking at different apartment buildings and thinking back to my twenties when I was renting in an apartment building. It was all based on where I wanted to live in Sudbury: Did I want to be near Cambrian College where I went to school, or did I want to be downtown where the nightlife was? Did I want to be near the beach, so in the summer I could walk and go to the beach? And really, Speaker, the cost was about 100 bucks. I worked part-time; I was a full-time student. I had my own apartment and rent was affordable and the difference between where you wanted to be was about 100 bucks for a decent apartment.

What’s gone wrong over these years—to the member—and what do you think are some simple things that the Conservative government can do to address this?

Thank you to my colleague from Orléans for his excellent suggestions.

The housing crisis in Ontario has reached the point where it’s affecting many more in our society. Workers are being forced out of Toronto because they can’t afford to live in the city anymore.

I spoke to the owner of a small business, a garage, who felt forced to sell his business because he couldn’t hire mechanics, because mechanics are moving to the suburbs and to small towns because of high rents here in Toronto, and choosing to work nearer to wear they live.

People will keep fleeing this city and province to cheaper locales out west or in the Maritimes, and that will affect the ability—it is affecting the ability—of our province to thrive. This trend is a threat to our economic health, and it must be addressed. This government has been in power for five years, and this problem is not getting better; in fact, it’s getting worse. We risk a society that lacks sufficient young and middle-aged people to do the work that keeps our province working.

There was an article yesterday in the Toronto Star about Toronto Island and how it’s disproportionately occupied by elderly people, because young people can’t get there, can’t make their home there.

That’s the future we risk for the province at large, which is why it’s particularly disheartening that this government has failed to take meaningful action on the housing crisis. The refusal to adopt the recommendation of its own expert housing task force would be farcical if it didn’t have such a damaging impact, but the consequences of this inaction are grave and cannot be waved away by boasting about how many cranes we have in the province.

This government’s focus on sprawl and tall, and no other creative solutions, at the expense of farmland and our environment, hurts our province’s overall well-being. This legislation’s provisions for expanding urban boundaries go against the recommendations of this government’s expert housing task force.

That being said, there is a part of this legislation I could support. The tenant protections strengthened in this bill are a positive step in the government’s track record on rights for tenants. Half of the residents of my riding of Don Valley West are renters, and the increasingly precarious housing situation in Ontario disproportionately affects them. With the average price of a one-bedroom apartment reaching $2,500 a month, it has never been more difficult to be a renter in this city, and this government has thus far failed to help them. I receive countless phone calls and emails from constituents, many of them new immigrants and elderly women living on a limited pension, who are scared that their landlord will force them out through a renoviction or that they will be forced out because of above-guideline rent increases. Displacement has a serious impact on people’s lives, particularly those who have lower incomes or are already in a difficult financial situation. So we’ll need to see the details of how this bill will be implemented to see if the new protections do indeed deter renovictions, but it certainly is a step in the right direction.

But one must also wonder why the government is introducing these protections now, when they removed the city of Toronto’s ability to regulate demolition last year in Bill 23. Toronto had possibly the best rental replacement policy in the province, and this government removed it. Rental replacement makes sense from a supply perspective, because it does not make sense that it’s easier to redevelop an existing apartment building than to build the missing middle in residential neighbourhoods. The government has real power to address this crisis, if only they would wake up to that.

A way this government could further prevent displacement and help the affordability issue that so many Ontarians are facing is by looking at creative solutions for rent control that do not deter the building of new rental units, like rolling rent controls over a 10-year period. Because of this government’s current policy, all new builds are exempt from rent control, which means that anyone living in a new apartment is at further risk of displacement. I have heard of tenants in non-rent-controlled apartments receiving notices of rent increases of 10%, and they just cannot afford that on a big-ticket item like rent.

I will continue to advocate to this government to be creative, instead of offering Ontarians more of the same—that is, tall, sprawl, and removal of rent control. There are ways to implement rent stabilization that do not impact the ability to secure financing for the building of apartments, and I strongly encourage the government to consider those options. New challenges call for new solutions.

When affordable rental units are not being built—and they certainly won’t get built in the greenbelt—why not consider an idea like my colleague mentioned, the Ontario homebuilding corporation, to finance and build the affordable housing we need?

The new regulation permitting tenants to install air conditioning units is welcome, especially as climate change is causing warmer and hotter summers. I think my colleague from the NDP mentioned that earlier. Our reliance on AC will only continue to grow. And while this legislative change is positive, it’s a further reminder of how this government refuses to acknowledge the gravity of the climate crisis. We need to reduce our carbon emissions, not increase them. But under this government, we will be increasing our reliance on fossil fuels.

That’s not the government’s only failure on energy policy. This government came into power pledging to reduce the cost of electricity, that Ontarians would see lower electricity bills, but, in fact, the opposite has happened; their bills have increased. They discarded the long-term energy plan of the previous Liberal government, refused to implement a new one, and now energy costs keep soaring. With that kind of policy, low-income tenants may not be able to afford to keep their AC running.

I’m happy to see that this government is waking up to some of the struggles of Ontario tenants, but they need a new plan on housing if they want to get serious about helping tenants with affordability now.