No, that’s fine. I welcome heckling from this side.

There are also changes in schedule 7 to the Ontario Land Tribunal Act. This government has moved forward with legislation to change the appeal body. It used to be called the OMB, then it got called the LPAT, and now it’s called the land tribunal. Time and time and time again, the changes have always gone in one direction, and that is to make it harder for municipalities and residents to have a say in land tribunal decisions and much easier for developers to override official plans, rules, in order to get a development built.

There are two schedules here that we are looking into to get more information on and that we also have some concerns about. One gives the adjudicator of the land tribunal the right to dismiss a hearing if there’s undue delay, so we interpret that to mean that even if a third party has a valid claim, it could still be dismissed. The second thing is schedule 20, which gives the adjudicator the power to make an unsuccessful party pay costs. That has some concerns as well, and the reason why is that there are cases that go to the land tribunal that benefit affordable housing and that help with housing supply in a way—for affordability purposes.

The example that comes to mind, for me, is the city’s short-term rental rules in Toronto. The city, after years of consultation, developed short-term rental rules that would ban short-term rentals and investment properties. You can only do short-term rentals on your own property. But you couldn’t just buy up a house, kick out all the long-term tenants, and make it a short-term rental property—which continues to happen in the city of Toronto, because there’s no enforcement—so short-term rental providers took that to the land tribunal, or the OMB, to contest it. It got held up at the land tribunal for years, until eventually it got overridden or it got rejected and the city of Toronto was able to move forward with its short-term rental rules.

I wouldn’t want a situation where Fairbnb and the federation of metro tenants is fined because they’re making a genuine claim to the land tribunal about a short-term rental law that is turning long-term rental units into short-term investment properties. So that’s a concern.

The same thing is happening in Ottawa right now. Ottawa’s short-term rental rules to clamp down on investor-led short-term hotels and increase long-term rental units are being held up at the land tribunal.

We are calling for land tribunal reform, but we need to make sure that municipalities and residents have a say and that the land tribunal is a force for good, meaning that it benefits the public interest and it really addresses the issues of affordability—because sometimes it doesn’t.

So that’s where we’re at on that.

I have three minutes to go, so I’m just going to conclude with what we are calling for.

We want to see this government move forward with a comprehensive housing affordability plan that looks at building new homes as well as building more affordable homes and more supportive housing. That is key. This bill moves forward with building more homes, but I’m not seeing a lot of evidence here that we are going to see a net increase in the number of affordable homes that exist in Ontario. And I’m very concerned about the decision to get rid of protections that would allow for purpose-built rentals to be turned into condos and tenants to not be able to move back into their affordable rent-controlled units. That is very concerning.

What we also want to see from this government is a commitment to move forward with better protections for renters, so that the million-plus renters in Ontario can have an affordable and safe home that they can live in and can commit to a community in.

We absolutely need to clamp down on investor-led speculation. It’s absolutely critical. Increasing the non-resident speculation tax from 20% to 25% is a step in the right direction. I’m never going to criticize that; it’s a good thing. But we need to augment that with measures that really focus on domestic speculation as well. A vacant home tax and an annual speculation tax are measures that have worked effectively in other provinces, and I ask this government to really look into implementing those kinds of changes in this province as well.

I believe that’s all I have time for for now. If there are stakeholders, residents, community groups, experts who want to give us feedback, I encourage you to do that. This bill will be going to committee I hope, and I encourage you to sign up to speak to committee as well so that we can ensure this sweeping housing bill is as good as it can be.