I’m proud to rise to speak to Bill 23, the government’s new housing bill. This government’s bill is big, very big. It’s sweeping. And it was introduced yesterday at 3 p.m., which means that we are still digesting the changes, going through the schedules, consulting with planners, municipalities, housing experts, renters and the building sector to determine what this bill means, how it will affect our province and how it will affect the housing sector.

A few things come to mind just off the top. One is that this bill gives the province far greater control over development and planning. The minister has much greater authority to change heritage, to give fines to consumers, to change municipal laws that hurt developer profits. That’s our initial take.

The other measure that advocates have raised very quickly with us is the decision to get rid of cities’ right—the rental housing replacement program. The reason why I just want to dwell on this for my first few minutes is because this measure ensures that a renter, if they need to move because a building is being demolished, has the right to return once the new building is complete at approximately the same rent that they were paying before.

The reason why this is important is because, in Ontario today, we have thousands and thousands of purpose-built rentals that were built in the 1960s and 1970s. These are typically buildings that have far more affordable rents than the kind of unit you’re going to get if you move into a new condo downtown; you might be paying closer to $1,100 to $1,600 for a one- to two-bedroom apartment.

In my riding, many of the people who live in these buildings are older. They are rent-controlled. They have lived there for many years, and the beauty of a purpose-built rental is that it provides a tenant with more certainty that they’re going to be able to stay there year in and year out. That’s very different if you move into a rental property that’s part of a single-family home. Maybe it’s being bought by an investor who wants to flip the property within a year to five years. It does mean that if you live in a semi-detached or a single-family home, it’s far more likely that you could be evicted because the landlord wants to move in or sell it or the property has a new homeowner.

Those people who live in purpose-built rentals deserve protections, and they deserve to keep the protections they’ve got. Getting rid of the requirement—that any renter that is evicted is then potentially not allowed to move back into the new development means that every renter who lives in a purpose-built rental, every renter who is living under rent control, every renter who has more affordable rent could be in a situation where they could face eviction because their corporate landlord or a potential investor could see these properties as an opportunity to convert into luxury condos and force these tenants out. That’s where our affordable units are in the city, so I’m very concerned to see that measure in there.

We are already hearing from housing stakeholders who have raised this issue, and the reason why I’m focusing on this to such a great extent is because if we are going to build new homes, which we absolutely need to do, we also need to keep the affordable homes that we have.

I’ll give you an example of an individual, Carolyn Whitzman. She is an expert on housing supply, including meeting new housing supply. One of her biggest concerns is the decision to get rid of section 11, and this is what they say: “This would have a disastrous impact on net affordable housing. Canadians lost 15 homes renting at $750 or less for every one new affordable home created at that price point between 2011 and 2016. Most of this net loss was due to demolition and renovation of residential rental properties.”

What that means is that this rental housing protection bylaw that exists in some municipalities, including the city of Toronto, is the main reason why many of these—

I know, right? I started reading this at 5 a.m.

So the definition of “affordability”—this is the definition that they’re looking at proposing: A unit is affordable—which means it would get a reduction in development charges—if it is 80% of market rent or 80% of the purchase price of the average area, and those definitions of affordability will be set by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

There are a few concerns that we’re already hearing about. One is that having developers get a development charge exemption—which is what you’re proposing—by only having an affordable unit for 25 years seems very generous to developers. And to give you an example, in the city of Toronto we just passed an inclusionary zoning law—which the Ontario government is sabotaging—which would require developers to get a development charge discount if the affordable housing units were for 99 years.

There is a move here that I’m seeing with this change to affordable housing where they’re affordable for less period of time and the definition of affordability is linked to market rents, as opposed to what a renter can afford—so based on income—and the discount of fees that developers get has gone from a little bit to completely.

There is a benefit in having lower development fees for affordable housing units, but we have a lot of concerns around this decision to change the definition of affordability. We’re exploring that a little bit more and we’ve got a lot of concerns.

The other piece that we have concerns with when we’re talking about development charges is, how does this impact municipalities? The reason why I say this is because municipalities across Ontario rely on development fees to fund the services that current and future residents use. We’re talking garbage pickup, parks, child care, schools, constructing affordable housing, transit and sewage. When there is a reduction on development fees—some of them are good if it’s for non-market housing, non-profit housing, deeply affordable housing—it means that municipalities are in the hole. And it’s a significant hole.

In the case of Toronto, Toronto has an $800-million funding shortfall. That’s the shortfall that they’re facing right now. We just got a report here. This is the budget that the new city council is going to be debating. They have a deficit of $857 million. What is challenging is that they’re already having to make cuts. The city of Toronto is going to make cuts of $300 million to planned maintenance and repair projects because they don’t have enough money. The provincial and the federal governments have said that they don’t want to pay.

Then we also have the case where interest rates are going up. That means that the ability to access money and pay back money is going to become tougher and tougher and tougher. Matt Elliott, this reporter here, explains it. He says, “As inflation hammers the global economy, interest rates on new city debt have been going up fast. City hall was getting 30-year interest rates as low as 2.4% in 2020. Toronto’s latest 30-year debt issue carried an interest rate of 4.4%.”

So we’ve got this challenge now with this bill where the government has said, “We need affordable housing, we need to reduce development charges to incentivize more affordable housing, but we’re not going to cover the shortfall. We’re going to make municipalities just deal with it”—at a time when we have an inflationary crisis, we have budget shortfalls and we have interest rate hikes, which make these fees, or the ability to borrow, higher and higher and higher.

That is very concerning, that there is not a commitment from the provincial government to help out with this development fee shortfall so that we get the affordable housing but we also have the transit and the services and the child care and the parks and the sewage infrastructure and the electricity infrastructure that is necessary to house current and future residents. That is a big concern.

It’s a concern that AMO shares. They issued a press release—wow, they were quick. They introduced it at 5:51 last night, so maybe they got a heads-up this bill was coming. Who knows? They say, “Municipalities will welcome some of the proposed changes”—like I said, it’s a mixed bag—but are “very concerned about others, such as changes to the Development Charges Act. We will work with the government on the ideas that have the potential to make housing more affordable, and we will oppose changes that undermine good economic and environmental policy.” So they’ve got some concerns about how they’re going to balance their budgets and provide services to residents given that this bill guts their ability to access development fee charges. That’s the concern, and I’m not seeing this government come up with economically wise solutions to that. That’s a concern.

The next piece—like I said, this is a big bill—is schedule 5. Schedule 5 is called the New Home Construction Licensing Act. We heard a lot about this issue in the media because, across Ontario, people are buying homes that, in some cases, are shoddily built. The developer does not build the home to the standard that the homeowner expects: There’s mold, there are leaks, and then the homeowner has to pay the bill because the regulatory authorities are not strong enough at holding developers to account.

We’re also seeing this disturbing trend where homeowners will buy a home pre-construction. They’ll put down the deposit in the hope of getting access to this home, of buying their home and moving into it within two or three years once the home is built. Their dreams, their hopes are all tied up in this; as well their money is all tied up in this future prospect of living in a home. What we have seen as housing prices have risen, changed, and risen again and changed is that developers have turned around, often for no good reason, and said, “Actually, I know we said that we would let you buy this home for $600,000, but we took another look and we think that you’re going to have to pay $800,000 for that home, and if you don’t like it, too bad, so sad. We’ll give you your deposit back and we’ll just cancel the contract.” Then they turn around and sell it to someone else at a higher bid. That is really unethical. If developers sign a contract with a potential home buyer, that contract should be upheld by the Ontario government in a court of law, and the developer has a responsibility to honour that contract.

We have seen the Premier talk a good talk about how he’s going to slap developers on the wrist and fine them and ensure they have consequences if they do the wrong thing, but we have seen very little action—close to none—to ensure that developers build the homes that they say they’re going to build at the price that they committed to in the contract. It’s a huge concern.

In this schedule, the New Home Construction Licensing Act, there has been a decision to increase the maximum fines for developers that break contracts with first-time home buyers, with home buyers who are looking at moving into these homes. That is a good thing. There is also a broader range of actions the developer can be fined on, which is good. They’ve expanded the powers and the number of things that can be fined—good. It gives the minister the power to decide how much of a fine goes to the home owner. This is a bit confusing to me, because Minister Clark says one thing—that he’ll give it to the home owner—but when I actually read the schedule it says something else. I’m trying to get some more information there. It could be good, could be—I don’t know.

The big thing that we’re not seeing and what we’re hearing from stakeholders, such as Canadians for Properly Built Homes, is that there’s no commitment to actually enforce the laws on the books and ensure that developers are actually held to account. Doubling the fines, good, but it’s not worth anything unless you’re actually going to fine developers that aren’t doing the right thing. That’s what people are calling for and that’s what this government needs to do.

As Karen from Canadians For Properly Built Homes tweeted, “Please show us evidence, any evidence, that you’re ‘cracking down on unethical developers.’ There’s no disciplinary action on the website of your regulator, @hcraontario.” That’s what they’re looking for: They’re looking for enforcement. Let’s see if the government moves through on that.

There are other measures in this bill that we are talking to stakeholders about that could have a significant impact. One is changes to the Ontario Heritage Act, schedule 6. Schedule 25.2 gives the minister the power to override any heritage designation on any provincial property or any public property. That’s a lot of power. I welcome feedback from residents and municipalities on these proposed changes because they seem pretty significant.

Interjection.