Thank you very much, and congratulations. It’s good to see you in the chair.

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, about Bill 23, this new bill. One measure that I’m particularly concerned about is the proposal to do away with protection for tenants who live in purpose-built buildings, who might find that their purpose-built rental will be converted to a condo and they will have no right to return to their unit at the same rent that they’re currently living at. Can you commit to ensuring that renters can return to their original unit once construction is complete?

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. I’m joined today by Susan De Rosa, a tenant whose purpose-built rental is set to be demolished and replaced by a condo. I have been working with Susan and her neighbours at 145 St. George to ensure that if the city approves the development, she and her friends and her neighbours still get the right to return to their homes at the same rent once the condo is complete. But this government is looking at scrapping the rules that give tenants the right to return to their homes at an affordable price, which threatens thousands of affordable private market rental units across our city.

Minister, can you ensure that renters who are evicted can return to their rent-controlled apartment once building is complete?

First of all, I want to thank the member for University–Rosedale. I saw her on CP24 this morning praising our government for Bill 23 and the fact that it would be creating new housing in the province. So I look forward to her party and the other opposition members who asked us to put many of these measures into the bill—I look forward to them supporting Bill 23 as we move forward.

In debate this morning, both her and the opposition House leader mentioned this consultation that the government is doing on the rent replacement bylaws that are in a very few select communities in Ontario. I’m just wondering about the motive of the question. Is this setting up the opposition for voting against a bill?

Many times, the members opposite have presented suggestions on increasing Ontario’s housing supply, and a lot of those suggestions are incorporated in Bill 23. We think it’s a bill that everyone in this chamber can support, because we desperately need more rental housing stock—

We are launching consultations to determine how to protect our supply of housing. I want to make sure, for the people who are in the gallery—it’s important to keep in mind that the proposed amendments would not impact renter protections or requirements under the Residential Tenancies Act. Our government has made changes to the RTA to better protect tenants, to stop renovictions, to avoid evictions. I just wish the opposition would have supported it.

On the issue of the charges: We have to get those baseline costs down so that we have more affordable housing and more attainable housing. But even in our own financial information returns, it shows that municipalities have $8 billion in their DC reserves, including $2.25 billion in the city of Toronto.

We’re going to continue to work with our municipal partners. We’re also going to work with the federal government on their $4-billion Housing Accelerator Fund. We think that would help municipalities as well.

We have a cost-of-living crisis, and housing is a big part of it. Rents are becoming unaffordable, especially in cities like Toronto.

The Rent Stabilization Act amends the Residential Tenancies Act to end vacancy decontrol, a mechanism that allows rents to be raised with no limit when a unit is vacated, which is being used to unfairly evict tenants and drive rents skyrocketing.

The bill also requires the Landlord and Tenant Board to create and maintain a rent registry so tenants can be confident in knowing that they are not being gouged on rent. This bill will stabilize rents and end the incentive for unfair evictions by ensuring new tenants pay what the last tenant paid.

Ms. Bell moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr6, An Act to revive Nextblock Inc.

Yes, it’s a huge issue. The Landlord and Tenant Board is the busiest tribunal in Ontario. It hears over 90,000 cases a year, and it resolves disputes between tenants, who see a house as a home, and landlords, who see that house as an investment. That means that they need to resolve very challenging disputes in a quick, fair and fast manner, so that everyone can get a fair outcome.

The challenge, however, is that people—landlords and tenants alike—are waiting months, and in some cases years, for their day in tribunal to get their issue resolved. We have a situation right now with an individual called Pin, whose landlord moved into their home without getting prior permission, has damaged the kitchen, has on occasion made their washroom not available for use—it doesn’t function properly. They have been waiting two years for a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board. That is extremely concerning. That means they are living in misery. It means they are living in very difficult housing conditions, and they have to go back to that every single night at the end of their working day.

The Landlord and Tenant Board needs to be improved. It needs to be fast and fair. There need to be fair and competent adjudicators hearing cases, and people need to have a right to an in-person hearing if either the landlord or the tenant requests it. This government knows that this is an issue, and they’ve done very little about it.

And then the final piece when it comes to addressing the housing affordability crisis—you’ve got the renter protections; you’ve got building new supply—is this critical measure that we need to address, which is to clamp down on investor-led speculation, so that people who intend to live in a home that they buy or rent are prioritized by our housing sector.

This government, in the last week, has started to make some moves to address the sharp rise in investor-led speculation that we have seen in Ontario over the last decade. This government has made a decision to increase the non-resident speculation tax from 20% to 25%, and this government has also made a decision to expand it from the GTHA to include the entirety of Ontario. That is a move that we support. Increasing speculation taxes to allow people who intend to live in the home that they buy or rent is a good move. It needs to be more affordable. The challenge is that there needs to be a whole lot more done in order to make housing affordable again.

We have called for the government to bring in an annual speculation tax and an annual vacant homes tax to make housing more affordable for first-time homebuyers and to increase rental supply. The annual speculation tax has precedent—it was introduced and implemented in BC—and the annual vacant homes tax was also introduced into BC, and it has been remarkably successful. In the case of BC, they did a report on the effectiveness of the speculation and vacant homes taxes this year, in June 2022. They found that the 2% tax raised over $231 million in revenue, which was then moved to build affordable housing, and it added over 20,000 long-term rental units into the Vancouver area—20,000 long-term rental units were added, all with the stroke of a pen.

The reason why it is so effective, especially the vacant homes tax, is because it gives investors a choice: They can choose to keep the property empty and pay a tax and contribute to affordable housing; they can choose to open it up to a long-term rental market and provide someone with their own home; or they could choose to sell it and give a first-time homebuyer who intends to live in the property an opportunity to live in it. It’s win-win-win. It’s an extremely effective policy measure.

This government has talked about setting up a vacant homes round table to discuss the possibility of bringing in a vacant homes tax. I was hoping to see a vacant homes tax in this sweeping housing bill, but I did not see it.

Our request is that the speculation taxes that you have started to introduce need to be expanded to include an annual speculation tax and a vacant home tax, so we can raise the revenue we need and increase supply to ensure that Ontarians can get access to that safe and affordable home.

Now I want to move to the bill itself. It is a complicated bill. As I mentioned, we received the bill at 3 p.m. yesterday. It’s over 130 pages long. We’re doing outreach to municipalities and planners and housing advocates and tenant associations and experts and conservation authorities to better understand what this bill means and how it’s going to affect our housing sector.

Already we are getting written statements and feedback expressing some concerns with the bill—some things people like, some things people have some concerns with. I’m going to spend my time going through some of the feedback I have received and also highlighting some of the concerns and things that I think are interesting in this bill.

Number one is the government’s plan to reduce protections for renters. This is in schedule 1, changes to the City of Toronto Act, as well as schedule 4, the Municipal Act. Essentially, the changes are to impose limits and conditions on a municipality to prohibit and regulate the demolition and conversion of rental properties under section 111. So what does that mean? I want to explain using an example.

We have a building in our riding, 145 St. George. It is a 12-storey building. It is a building with many seniors in it. I’ve canvassed and talked to residents many times in that building. It’s an older building. I think it was built in the 1960s, maybe the 1970s. Many people in that building have lived there for 20-plus years. The entire building is rent-controlled because it was built before 2018. That means there are tenants in there paying between $1,100 to $1,600 in rent, which is more affordable. A big developer came in and said, “We want to demolish this building and replace it with a condo. That’s our plan.” The city of Toronto has this bylaw, section 111, which says, “Hold on, developer. Renters deserve protections too. We’re going to assess whether you’re going to be allowed to build a condo or not, but at a minimum requirement, all the renters who live in that 12-storey building need to be able to move back into the condo once it is built and live in those units that are built, at the same rent as they were paying before.” Essentially, what that means is, the condo is larger, so there’s a percentage of units that are sold off because they’re condos and then there’s a percentage of units that the former tenants can live in. That’s how it works.

Interjection.

The developer gets the density bonus, and they get to make their profit. They bought the property knowing full well that that was a requirement and that renters permanently displaced from a neighbourhood that they’ve lived in for 20 years will continue to pay the affordable rents that they are accustomed to and that they can afford.

If you’re a senior on a fixed income, it is very difficult being evicted in this housing market and being forced to pay upwards of $2,300 to $3,200 for a new market apartment. You just can’t do it.

So that’s how the measure works. And the power of this measure is that it ensures that the thousands and thousands of tenants across Toronto and Ontario who live in purpose-built rentals are protected from developers and investors that want to turn that purpose-built rental into condos. That is the purpose of that bylaw. It is extremely important. And I was very concerned to see this government’s decision to give themselves control and override and change municipalities that have introduced this bylaw to protect tenants in private-market affordable apartments.

Interjection.

I, too, would like to congratulate my colleague on doing a great job on very short notice on a very large bill. Thank you for that.

My question has to do with renters. Comment came out from city of Toronto planners, I believe yesterday, that this bill meant open season on tenants. With her experience in Toronto, being from a riding in Toronto, I’d like to know: Does she agree with the statement that this is open season on tenants? What are the red flags she sees in terms of rents going up as a result of this bill?