I just want to bring a bit of a Waterloo-region lens to the perspective of the conversation here. Waterloo region is slated to need somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 70,000 homes to meet targets over the next—well, looking at roughly by 2031. That’s coming up pretty quick. There are a lot of pieces of this legislation that I can really get behind, because we’re looking at ways to really move the needle forward in a much more expeditious measure.

One of the things that we talk about a lot in Waterloo region is student housing. When we look at what this does with as-of-right zoning for multi-unit housing, whether that be duplexes or triplexes, and not having to go through rezoning and being able to speed those things up—I’d love to hear some of your comments on that, looking at it from not just the people that are going to be living in these places, but students that often come to our country to experience our fantastic education system here or folks that are maybe coming from your riding to come out to one of our fantastic universities.

I’m so pleased you raised that question. I’ve spoken to your former planner in the Waterloo region about what Waterloo is doing right to plan, and they’ve moved forward with really sensible regulation to encourage the construction of homes for students, because that is a real need, and also for baby boomers that want to downsize into smaller units but don’t really want to move into a retirement home and are certainly not ready for a long-term-care home. There’s been a lot of thought there—as well as increasing density along transit zones. There’s a lot of sensible development happening in the Waterloo region.

We certainly need new student housing. Enabling three units within a property will help that. It’s something that we support, and we also need to augment that with better protections for students. What we see with the Residential Tenancies Act is that a lot of student housing is exempt from rent control and Residential Tenancies Act protections. There’s a real need to expand it to ensure that students have the same kind of protections as older people, people who—