Thank you to the member opposite for the question.

Our government is promoting trust and confidence for Ontarians when they are investing in one of the biggest purchases of their lifetime: a new home. That is why we continue to enhance public protections while holding builders and vendors to high professional standards. The Premier spoke about it as well.

Through the New Home Construction Licensing Act, HCRA has strengthened regulatory tools for addressing licensees’ conduct, created a formal complaints process, and enhanced the Ontario builder directory to reflect disciplinary actions taken by the registrar.

Additionally, a new mandatory code of ethics for licensed builders and vendors, which came into effect on July 1, protects buyers and owners even further against bad actors.

All together, these stronger penalties and approaches would cost unlawful developers very dearly on a single home, from hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines to the loss of their builder’s licence.

We are making bad builders think twice before trying to take advantage of our homebuyers.

My question is to the Premier.

Premier, I want to tell you about Jennifer LeFeuvre. In 2019, Jennifer signed a contract and put down a deposit for a new home to be built in Stayner, Ontario, by Briarwood Development Group—whose CEO happens to be a big donor of the Premier and the PC Party.

Three years later, Jennifer is still waiting for her home to be built, and now the developer has told Jennifer that she needs to pay an additional $175,000 for the home or the contract is broken and she won’t be getting her home at all.

Jennifer is devastated. As she describes it, “These people are getting away with murder and there’s nothing that I can do.”

Premier, can you step in and ensure this developer honours the deal they made to build Jennifer a home at the original price?

This is my question to the Premier: Can you properly strengthen Ontario’s laws so homebuyers are protected from developers who price-gouge?