I would like to start my remarks today by thanking both the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the Associate Minister of Housing for sharing their time with me today as we speak about this next important bill in our government’s plan.

It is my pleasure to rise for the second reading of the government’s proposed Better Municipal Governance Act, and I will echo the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing in saying that Ontario is the best place in the world to call home, yet finding a home is all too challenging for too many people.

I am proud to be speaking on behalf of a government that recognizes this problem and is continuing its work to provide real, timely solutions. We know that if we reduce delays and get the cost of building homes down, we can lower the price of a home for the average buyer, because delays in building housing drive up costs. Delays are contributing to the housing supply shortage, even as we try diligently to make up the time we lost when the pandemic first hit.

Throughout the province, we need to significantly increase the speed of new housing building to meet the demand and lower costs for Ontarians. Study after study has found development approvals and appropriate zoning are often delayed or hindered because of opposition from some members of municipal councils. Some projects are abandoned altogether. Even if the project finally gets the go-ahead, the damage has already been done, and it’s ordinary Ontarians in search of a home who are paying the cost.

A study released in September by the Building Industry and Land Development Association reports that costs can increase substantially each month a permit is stuck in the approval system. They found development application timelines in the GTA have gotten 40% longer over the past two years, and that each month of a delay in a typical high-density project amounts to $2,600 to $3,300 in additional construction costs per residential unit.

In fact, the Ontario Association of Architects also looked into the cost of delays and concluded that the total cost of site plan review application delays could range between $300 million and $900 million every year in Ontario. Think about that, Speaker. This drives up costs for builders, for renters and for homeowners alike.

While our new housing supply action plan currently before the House addresses many of the barriers that cause housing delays, the changes we are proposing in the Better Municipal Governance Act take additional steps. Municipal councils play a crucial role in determining the housing supply. For example, they must approve the zoning changes necessary to increase the density in a given area. We believe that our proposed changes will help municipalities better meet the needs of their rapidly growing communities and help to drive increased housing supply in some of Ontario’s biggest and fastest-growing municipalities.

Speaker, the legislation we are speaking to today is one of the many bold actions our government is taking to address the housing supply crisis. Let’s take a few minutes to remind some members of this House of some previous initiatives we’ve taken to address the housing supply crisis.

Let’s go back to May of 2019, when our government announced More Homes, More Choice, our first housing supply action plan. That plan included a full spectrum of legislative changes to increase the supply of housing—housing that is attainable and housing that provides buyers and renters with more meaningful choices on where to live, where to work and where they can raise their families. That plan cut red tape to make it easier to build the right types of housing in the right places. It did all that so we could get much-needed homes built more quickly. From ownership housing to rental housing, whether built by private developers or non-profits, our first action plan and its accompanying legislation helped to give people more choice. It also helped bring costs down from what they would be otherwise. It aimed to make housing more affordable and helped taxpayers keep more of their hard-earned dollars.

We reviewed every step of the development process, every policy, every regulation and every applicable piece of legislation. We did that to eliminate any unnecessary steps, any duplications and any barriers. But we knew that addressing the housing supply crisis required a long-term strategy. It needed a long-term commitment and collaboration at all levels of government. With those thoughts in mind, our government again acted. In December, our government created the Housing Affordability Task Force, which was made up of industry leaders and experts, to recommend additional measures to increase the supply of market housing.

As the task force stated at the beginning of its report, “For many years, the province has not built enough housing to meet the needs of our growing population.” The task force noted that many “efforts to cool the housing market have provided only temporary relief to homebuyers.” They said, “The long-term trend is clear: house prices are increasing much faster than Ontarians’ incomes.” They stated, “The time for action is now.”

That is why, at around the same time, we convened with our municipal partners at both the Ontario-Municipal Summit and the rural housing round table to seek their input into the province’s housing supply crisis. We also heard from more than 2,000 people through a public consultation that we held to gather even more input.

Nonetheless, while we have been creating a record amount of housing, there is still a severe shortage of supply. Rental housing and affordable home ownership are even further out of reach for hard-working Ontarians. We knew more needed to be done. It was clear that without an increase in housing supply to match the housing demand, housing prices will keep going up and affordability will worsen. That’s worth repeating. It’s a supply-and-demand issue that we need to address and we are addressing.

We took all the information we gained from our many consultations and created our second housing supply action plan called More Homes for Everyone, which was what launched earlier this year. We wanted to build on the success of More Homes, More Choice. More Homes for Everyone outlined the next steps we’re taking to address Ontario’s housing crisis—steps such as accelerating approval timelines and protecting homebuyers from unethical business practices.

We also took further steps to make it easier to build transit-oriented communities. As many members of this House will recall, transit-oriented communities are our government’s vision for higher-density, mixed-use developments that are next to or within a short walk of transit stations and stops.

As the Associate Minister of Housing previously stated, we also introduced the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, which received royal assent in September. That legislation gives the mayors of Ottawa and Toronto more tools to deliver on shared provincial-municipal priorities, including increasing the supply of housing. The changes will help strengthen mayors’ ability to reduce timelines for development, standardize processes and address local barriers to increasing the supply of housing in Toronto and Ottawa.

As you will know, Speaker, last month, we introduced the More Homes Built Faster Act in the Legislature. Our goal is to introduce almost 50 new changes to legislation and regulations that will support our newest plan to speed up housing creation in Ontario. These policies would, if passed, represent our boldest efforts yet to cut through red tape, unnecessary costs and other bottlenecks that are standing in the way of the housing supply that Ontario needs. They would create ways for missing middle and low-income Ontarians to enter the housing market.

The policies would provide the groundwork for growing the housing supply by reducing the bureaucratic costs and red tape that are delaying construction and pushing home prices even higher; promoting the building of more homes near transit and creating more gentle-density housing; protecting new home buyers and consulting on ways to help more renters become homeowners; using provincial lands to build more attainable homes; and much more.

More Homes Built Faster supports the commitment that we made in our previous housing supply action plans to further reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies that delay construction and increase costs for homebuyers and renters. It also supports greater density near transit as well as measures to protect and keep homebuyers and use provincial lands as sites for more attainable homes, and to freeze, reduce and exempt government fees to spur new home construction and help address Ontario’s housing supply crisis.

So you can see, Speaker, our government is moving quickly to take every step we can to help support the construction of more homes in the province for hard-working Ontarians.

We just heard the Associate Minister of Housing expound on the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act and on how we are proposing to build on and further support this act by bringing forward changes that would enable the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa to propose certain municipal bylaws related to provincial priorities.

There’s been much discussion and speculation on when or how our government would expand strong-mayor authorities and tools to other municipalities. Toronto and Ottawa will be the first to receive strong-mayor powers, and as they begin to use these new tools we are already turning our attention to other high-growth municipalities which could also benefit from these powers as they look to grow and build more housing.

We began our strong-mayor framework with single-tier municipalities. Specifically, we now want to explore how these powers might work in other jurisdictions with two-tier systems of government.

As the province considers how best to expand the strong-mayor tools to more of Ontario’s rapidly growing municipalities, we want to hear from the experts. Provincially appointed facilitators will assess the two-tier regional governments in Durham, Halton, Niagara, Peel, Waterloo and York. With populations of around 500,000 or more, these six regions represent some of Ontario’s fastest-growing communities, where increased housing supply is desperately needed.

We want to ensure these communities are ready and prepared for the growth that is coming their way. This assessment will help us determine the best mix of roles and responsibilities between the upper- and lower-tier municipalities in these regions to allow them to get shovels into the ground faster so they can build the housing needed to support their growing communities.

Which brings us back to our legislation and why we are here today. The legislation we are proposing would give the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing the authority to appoint the regional chairs of Niagara, Peel and York. We would do this for the current term of council, while the regional assessment occurs. As the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said, if the proposals pass, he intends to reappoint the existing regional chairs, drawing on their knowledge and experience to work with the provincially appointed facilitators to provide an accurate assessment of how the regions can best work with our government to adapt to the new strong-mayor powers. This proposed continuity at the regional level would help determine the best way forward for the current two-tier municipalities.

Speaker, municipalities are on the front lines of the housing crisis, and they see the harmful impacts that a lack of homes has on the communities. That is why we need strong local governments to help us to make the dream of home ownership attainable for Ontarians. I know first-hand how important municipalities are to getting homes built, having served previously as a mayor in my riding of Thunder Bay–Atikokan. I know that Ontarians expect their mayors and councils to get behind new housing and to work with the province to increase the supply of attainable homes. That is precisely what our latest actions propose to do.

Of course, this is not the only time we have worked with our municipal partners to help us address housing supply. Speaker, let me take you back earlier this year. In January, we held an Ontario municipal housing summit. We wanted to find ways to coordinate our efforts with big-city mayors and regional chairs. We have also rolled out programs such as the Streamline Development Approval Fund. This fund is providing more than $45 million to help large municipalities streamline, digitize and modernize their approach to applications for residential developments.

We are also engaging with all municipalities to discuss ways they can unlock housing. Earlier this year, we also met with smaller, rural, northern and remote municipalities at our rural housing round table. Understanding the full spectrum of experiences with the housing supply crisis, such as the cost of supplies, helps us to align housing and infrastructure needs based on the unique ways Ontario’s populations continue to grow and change.

Again, Speaker, let me reiterate by drawing on my experience as a northern MPP and a former mayor, how important it is for our plan to address housing concerns across the province and to keep the lines of communication with municipalities open. This summer, I was honoured to have met with municipal leaders at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference. It was a perfect forum to share new ideas and best practices, as well as to promote discussion around policy recommendations that support increasing our housing supply. We are happy to work with our municipal partners at conferences like this, as well as at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association, which happens every January. As a former mayor, we appreciated the opportunities to sit in front of the ministers to discuss the priorities of our region.

Speaker, municipalities remain the driving force in getting housing projects through to the finish line. To address the housing crisis, we’re taking decisive action: Action that addresses the housing crisis in Ontario’s fastest-growing communities so everyone can find the home they need and can afford. That’s what our government promised to do and that’s what this proposed legislation does.

Premier Ford made it crystal clear to Ontarians that the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act was just the start, that we wanted to ensure that by the time those two new mayors were sworn in in Ontario’s two largest cities, Toronto and Ottawa—he made it crystal clear that that was the start.

The announcement yesterday, in Bill 39, which it’s pretty obvious New Democrats don’t support—just to add to the litany of housing initiatives this government has done; we’ve done over 90 since 2018. And every single time we try to increase housing supply and actually provide an opportunity for a young person to realize the dream of home ownership, New Democrats vote against it. So it’s no surprise that this member and their party, under the leadership of Marit Stiles, is going to not support—

We’re going to stand up for the dream of home ownership.

Speaker, in the supplementary, I will talk about the significance of that minimum of 50,000 homes in relationship to our 1.5 million homes.