When I first heard of this bill, I was excited. We all know full well that we are in a housing crisis. I was glad to see that the government wanted to acknowledge this and take action to address it.

Ontarians want safe, healthy, affordable and comfortable places to call home. This includes all types of homes: townhouses, co-operative housing, laneway and garden suites, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, affordable housing, multi-residential and missing middle—not just single-family detached homes with white picket fences.

We need to be building walkable, sustainable communities where people can work and play where they live. We need to be adding gentle density across our neighbourhoods, building up instead of out. I truly hope this government will address these issues as they work through this bill, and I am happy to work on positive amendments with them.

It’s not about whether we grow or whether we build; it’s about how we grow and how we build. Building homes is a vital part of addressing our housing crisis. We all know that. This development, however, cannot simply be a free-for-all, but rather implemented thoughtfully and sustainably. It must be done with proper consultation for the safety of all Ontarians. Aimless construction will ultimately only cost the government and the people of Ontario more in the long run. It will not be affordable nor safe without careful, logical and forward-thinking planning.

Around the world we are seeing the effects of climate change: the horrible extreme heat in Europe, out-of-control forest fires in British Columbia, devastating flooding in Pakistan, and Hurricane Fiona heartlessly demolishing the east coast. We have already experienced the risks right here in Ontario and, sadly, it is only the beginning. We must have climate adaptation top of mind when we put shovels in the ground.

One of the largest growing risks and expenses of climate change for Ontarians is flooding. The Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo found that in the GTA it costs an average of $40,000 per homeowner to restore flooded basements—$40,000, per homeowner. For most this cost is unthinkable. Unfortunately, these disasters will only become more and more common.

Madam Speaker, you may be wondering what flooding has to do with the More Homes Built Faster Act. This bill is proposing to remove the need for the expertise of the conservation authorities for building development. This legislation will repeal 36 specific regulations that allow conservation authorities to directly oversee the development process. They would also be compelled to identify and give up any land they hold that would be suitable for housing. One of the main reasons these regulations are in place is to protect Ontarians from flooding by preventing building on flood plains.

I want to reiterate a tragic story from Ontario’s past that the member from Guelph spoke about this morning. Hurricane Hazel hit Ontario in 1954, destroying or seriously damaging over 1,000 homes that had been built on flood plains and killing 81 Ontarians. The province quickly expanded the duties of the conservation authorities to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again. I cannot sit back and let us put our beautiful province and lovely residents at risk for a disaster like this to occur again without us having learned lessons from the past and having fully prepared ourselves for future events.

I know that this government prides itself on being fiscally responsible. To that end, they should aim to be proactive in protecting Ontarians from future disasters to save money on hardships. We need to focus on emergency preparedness and climate adaptation and do everything in our power to ensure we are ready when these extreme events come, because we all know they are coming, more rapidly than we ever anticipated.

Let me share a case you may not be aware of: Banfi v. Town of Oakville. In 2020, a nearly $1-billion class action claim was made by Oakville property owners, which alleged that overdevelopment in the town has led to increased flood risk, making their homes more prone to water damage, and less valuable. The claim alleged that rampant urbanization and the loss of thousands of acres of once pristine green space upstream from this area has led to increased storm water runoff and flood risk in the downstream watersheds. That doesn’t sound like affordable housing to me, and we shouldn’t be allowing it to happen again. Building on flood plains affects the value of homes and costs homeowners their money and sometimes their safety.

This bill will gut wetland protection in southern Ontario, making each individual wetland have to qualify as significant on its own. That’s almost impossible for most wetlands. Wetlands protect us from flooding, drought and climate change. They protect wildlife and clean the water we enjoy.

Biodiversity loss is also at an all-time high. Southern Ontario alone has lost more than 70% of its wetland habitats, 98% of its grasslands and 80% of its forests. Over 200 plant and animal species are now classified as at risk of becoming extinct in Ontario. We need to tirelessly work hard to preserve what we do have left, not pave paradise.

On Tuesday, the Insurance Bureau of Canada called on governments and the housing industry to be transparent about climate risk, lest “catastrophic loss to homes and communities will continue to increase in severity and cost, year after year.” Let’s make the suitable amendments to this act and protect the important work of the conservation authorities so we can save Ontarians money, hardship, relocation and, in severe cases, their lives.

Each of us in this House has residents in our ridings who are looking for homes to buy, lease or rent. The people living in my riding of beautiful Beaches–East York consistently share their stress around the housing crisis and also their basement flooding with me. During my time as Toronto city councillor, I championed housing in our riding, approving many affordable housing applications, working with developers on well-designed mid-rise buildings, and spearheading the game-changing laneway suites housing policy—mentioned many times by this government today—with the goal to have garden suites as the second phase. I pride myself in getting things done and having the track record to prove it.

TransformTO, the city’s first-ever climate adaptation and mitigation plan, was an immense amount of work, but I’m proud of obtaining a unanimous vote at Toronto city council for this vital and ambitious strategy to reduce community-wide greenhouse gas emissions in Toronto to net zero by 2040. This ambitious goal relies heavily on the requirements of the Toronto Green Standard being met by new private and city-owned developments. Unfortunately, these requirements will be deemed obsolete if the More Homes Built Faster Act is made law as it currently is written.

Section 41(4), 2(d), was a clause under the Planning Act regarding plans and drawings that could be reviewed to ensure they are aligned with the Toronto Green Standard, and this act will repeal it. The legislation would remove site plan control and abolish all green standards for building in Ontario. Think about that for a moment. The world is in a climate emergency, horrible disasters are devastating communities around the world, and the need to properly prepare and protect ourselves well in advance has never been more clear. So why on earth would we wish to remove our green standards, especially when they allow residents to live more comfortably in their homes and to save money in the long run while living sustainably?

Madam Speaker, I’ll be calling on the government to approve an amendment that would allow municipalities with established green standards to continue their current practices and approvals and to replicate those standards right across Ontario to ensure everyone is safe and protected. We cannot let a decade’s worth of work be squashed. Cutting these standards will not lead to more affordable housing. Quite the opposite, Madam Speaker: The cost of inaction is high. Building environmentally efficient homes ends up being a win-win for all involved.

I am also curious about the development charges. The loss of this revenue for municipalities all across Ontario will be catastrophic. Has the government completed or planned to do a financial impact study on the municipalities for this bill?

Madam Speaker, I am happy to work with the government to get more homes built and ensure this act would lead to more homes being built. But again, it’s not about whether we build or whether we grow; it’s about how we build and how we grow—and affordably done and sustainably done in the right places. In the meantime, I am looking forward to working with communities, organizations, stakeholders and residents on this issue to ensure their voices are heard and valued. As well, I’ll be preparing amendments to ensure our green spaces are protected and we are building with climate adaptation at top of mind.

Thank you for that question. Yes, my first planning application when I became city councillor in 2010 was a proposal for a six-storey condominium on Queen Street, where a famous burger joint you may know—you may have eaten at Lick’s hamburger joint, a landmark place. It was proposed there. There were many people opposed to that building which I strongly stood up for. We need gentle density, we need homes for people and we need our residents, especially seniors who were over-housed in their big beach homes, to be able to change their living accommodation and age in place in the community they volunteered in and raised their kids in. So I have much experience with NIMBYs and YIMBYs.

But with laneway suites in particular, we brought everyone into the—we did very creative, outward-thinking community engagement all across the city. We did walks and talks and town halls and all kinds of things—

But we also need to deal with vacant properties, which is an issue. I don’t know; it doesn’t seem this government is proactively working on that. We have many empty homes in Toronto that we need to—