SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 09:00AM
  • Mar/27/23 10:40:00 a.m.

Speaker, over the last two years, housing starts have reached a level that this province hasn’t seen in over 30 years. Last year, rental housing was at an all-time high. We’ve never had more rental housing starts than we did last year.

Speaker, the member can say all she wants, but the facts are right in Hansard. When we proposed to give a break to non-profit housing, they voted against it. When we decided to make it cheaper and easier to build more purpose-built rentals and provided those incentives, her party voted against it. Time and time and time again, we present positive opportunities to create better gentle density in neighbourhoods, more rental opportunities, and more non-profits. It’s the NDP that is the party of no. They are the ones—

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  • Mar/27/23 10:50:00 a.m.

Speaker, you’ve got to be kidding me. In Minister Bethlenfalvy’s budget, the number 1 and number 2 asks for municipalities: (1) we need more supportive housing—$202 million we’re adding to the homelessness prevention program; (2) wraparound mental health and addiction services with those supportive housing units. We have delivered exactly what municipalities asked as their number 1 and number 2 asks.

It’s going to be very interesting though, Speaker, to see if the Leader of the Opposition and Ontario New Democrats support the number 1 and number 2 requests from 444 municipalities.

That’s who we’re listening to.

Interjections.

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  • Mar/27/23 11:10:00 a.m.

I want to thank the member for Beaches–East York for her question. As I said earlier in the House, over the last two years, we’ve seen housing starts in Ontario the likes that we had not seen in over 30 years. In fact, on the rental piece, as I said earlier, it’s the highest amount of starts in Ontario’s history last year.

We need everyone, all three levels of government, to work together.

I want to specifically talk about the member for Beaches–East York because she repeatedly, as a member of Toronto city council, voted to exempt development charges on affordable housing, supporting the city of Toronto’s Open Door Affordable Housing Program. I want her to take the same principles from when she was at Toronto city council and apply them to support our measures in More Homes Built Faster, because that’s exactly what we need to do.

We need to incent non-profit housing. We need to incent more rental opportunities—

“The Ontario Alliance to End Homelessness is pleased to see this significant investment in homelessness services from the government of Ontario. This is a much-needed increase in funding to help address the homelessness crisis affecting municipalities throughout the province.”

Again to the member, I hope she continues to support our budget and support those initiatives to help prevent—

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