This petition is on behalf of my community in St. Paul’s. It’s called “Protect Ontario Tenants: Pass the Rent Stabilization Act Now.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas average rent has increased by over 50% in the past 10 years;

“Whereas average monthly rent in Ontario is now over $2,000;

“Whereas nearly half of Ontarians pay unaffordable rental housing costs because they spend more than a third of their income on rent;

“Whereas the rent affordability crisis risks all other tenant rights to a safe and stable home as tenants are fearful of unlawful evictions of affordable and/or rent-controlled units if they were to exercise them;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the government of Ontario to implement the Rent Stabilization Act to establish:

“—rent control that operates during and between tenancies so a new tenant pays the same rent as a former tenant, with allowable annual rent increases calculated by the government of Ontario and based on annual inflation;

“—a public rent registry so tenants can find out what a former tenant paid in rent;

“—access to legal aid for tenants that want to contest an illegal rent hike; and” lastly

“—stronger enforcement and tougher penalties for landlords who do not properly maintain a renter’s home.”

I absolutely support this petition, shout out our community on Vaughan Road, and I will hand it to Rachel for tabling at the front.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas most people in Ontario who receive social assistance are being forced to survive on as little as $650 a month;

“Whereas affordable, subsidized rent-geared-to-income housing is inaccessible to most people, with wait-lists of many years;

“Whereas clients need to eat, as well as pay their rent, and since clients would still have to dip into their basic needs allowance to cover rent because even doubling the shelter allowances still won’t cover all of the rent at today’s prices;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to call on the Premier of Ontario to double the Ontario Disability Support Program and Ontario Works rates” now.

I absolutely support and will hand these petitions over to Karma for the Clerks.

“Petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas data shows there are an estimated 131,000 vacant homes in Toronto as of 2021, representing an increase of 32% in the past five years;

“Whereas one in four homes across Ontario are purchased for the sake of investment as the cost of housing for working Ontarians is further and further out of reach;

“Whereas average rent prices in Toronto have increased by 20% over the last year, with 60% of renters reporting they have to cut back on food to afford rent;

“Whereas the housing crisis is as much about increasing affordable supply as it is limiting demand from housing profiteers and speculators;

“Whereas failing to make housing affordable risks Ontario’s economic recovery as working Ontarians will be driven out of the province or made unhoused, to rely on far more expensive budget items such as shelters, hospitals and prisons;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to fix the housing affordability crisis in Ontario through proven-effective policies including, but not limited to, implementing speculation taxes, rent and vacancy control, improving demoviction and renoviction protections, addressing the ‘missing middle’ of housing supply and increasing social, supportive, and transitional housing investments.”

Again, thank you very much to my community and communities across Toronto, actually, that signed this petition, and I’m handing it over to Mitchell for the Clerks.

“Petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the nursing shortage across Ontario has pushed our public health care system to collapse;

“Whereas the vacancy rate for registered nurse positions in Ontario is 12.63%, nearly double the vacancy rate of 2017;

“Whereas Bill 124 has capped the wages of public sector workers, including nurses, to a 1% increase per year, which once adjusted to the current inflation rate of ... 8% in 2022, represents a pay cut of 7%;

"Whereas any increase in hospital beds across the province is inconsequential without the staff to provide the care;

“Whereas public health care is a human right that must be available to all Ontarians when they need it;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately repeal the wage-suppressing Bill 124 as part of the solution to recruit and retain nurses and front-line health care workers in the sector.”

Again, thank you for the job of all of our front-line health care workers. I couldn’t support this more.

Thank you, Molly.

As I was saying this morning, I really appreciate this opportunity to join the debate on Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act. As every MPP in this chamber is hearing from their constituents, we are in a dire housing crisis in this province.

I just want to set the stage a little bit in terms of what’s going on in my community in London. London recently achieved a number of firsts, and they are not firsts that we are proud of. Rentals.ca just reported earlier this week that London experienced the biggest average rent increase in Canada, a 33% increase in average rents over the last year. Tenants in London are being hit hard by having to deal with a 33% rent increase, and the reality is that many may be financially evicted from their units because they can no longer afford the rent.

That’s especially the case for tenants who are living in buildings that were built after November 2018, because one of the earliest things this government did on the housing file was to remove rent control off of new builds, or post-November-2018 construction. That is causing huge pressures in our housing market, when tenants are facing that kind of rent increase and struggling to try to afford that in the face of all of the other affordability questions or pressures that Ontarians are experiencing.

Two other firsts: The latest census data that was released earlier this fall showed that London is the fastest-growing city in Canada. There was a 10% increase in population over the last decade, and that, of course, exacerbates the pressure that we are experiencing in our housing stock. And London is a destination that embraces newcomers, that has really put a focus on welcoming newcomers to locate in our city, and so that is another issue that is putting pressure on the housing stock, combined with our post-secondary institutions and the need to ensure that there is housing available for all of the students who come to study in our city.

The third first that we recently became aware of—again, from Statistics Canada—is that London’s homeownership rate is dead last among major Ontario cities. So actually, that is not a first; that’s the opposite of a first. We have the fewest percentage of homeowners in our city compared to other cities in Ontario. The Ontario average is 68.4%. In London, we’re four points below that: Only 62.6% of our population own homes.

As we all know—I have young adults in their twenties; many of us are in that same demographic. It is particularly challenging, disheartening and frustrating for these young adults to ever imagine a future where they will be able to afford a home. We hear that a lot about Toronto, but it’s the same reality in communities like London. That was corroborated in the data that show that in London, only 50% of young adults aged 30 to 34 in London own a home. That’s down from 56.3% in the previous census, and there was a four percentage point decline for young adults aged 35 to 39. So the housing crisis is real. The housing crisis is affecting both tenants and people who want to own a home, particularly young people who are looking to get into the housing market, and we collectively have a responsibility to do something to address this crisis.

The bill that is before us today attempts to do that, and that is important. We need to see more homes built faster, as in the title of the bill. But we also need a whole swath of other strong measures and bold actions to be taken.

The intensification provisions that are in this bill, the changes to the Planning Act, will take some baby steps to increasing that stock that we know we need to achieve. The government’s task force before the election had shown that Ontario will need 1.5 million new homes built over the next decade. It was sad to hear that the government’s own background papers estimate that the intensification provisions in this legislation will add about 50,000 new units over the next decade. That is far, far short of the 1.5 million homes that are necessary to meet the needs of our growing population. In terms of supply, we need purpose-built rentals. We need non-market options. We need co-op housing. We need supportive housing. We need so much more than what this bill is going to deliver.

And when we have a population that is so reliant on rental housing, we need to strengthen protections for tenants. What does this bill do? We see in schedules 1 and 4 that this bill weakens protections for tenants. It allows the minister to impose limits and conditions on rental replacement bylaws that require that any affordable units that are demolished or converted during redevelopment are replaced. This bill eliminates those rental replacement provisions that are in place through municipal bylaws in Toronto and Mississauga, but it also prohibits any municipality from having those kinds of provisions.

Former Toronto city planner Jennifer Keesmaat said this is going to this is going to make it open season on low-income tenants who are living in purpose-built rentals that, like many of the purpose-built rentals in our province, are deteriorating in condition and are demolished. Those units will be gone. Municipalities will no longer be able to require that tenants can move back into a new building that is constructed at the same rent. Once again, it is going to displace thousands of vulnerable tenants across this province and increase the pressure on other communities that perhaps have lower average rents versus Toronto and Mississauga, where those bylaws are in place.

We need to ensure that there is a strong public role in new housing investments to make sure that those new builds that are constructed actually are affordable. This legislation defines affordable as 80% of market rent, but when market rent is over $2,000, 80% of that is far from affordable for many, many, many people in this province. We need to increase the supply of deeply affordable housing as well as those supportive homes that are so, so lacking in supply in our province.

We also need to take stronger regulatory measures, like a speculation tax, a vacancy tax. We heard earlier this week that the government is increasing the non-resident speculation tax, but there is so much more that can be done on the regulatory side to really spur the construction of those 1.5 million homes we need.

This bill is a step forward in some senses. As the government has estimated, it will increase our supply by 50,000 units over 10 years, and the difference between the 50,000 units that will be spurred by this bill and the $1.5-million target that we know we have to meet—the difference, this government has decided, will be made up by municipalities. So the legislation requires municipalities to have a housing pledge with a specific target that they are supposed to meet in terms of new home construction. But as the Globe and Mail has pointed out and as various commentators have pointed out, a housing pledge without any kind of penalty for municipalities that don’t meet that pledge is not going to produce those units that are necessary.

Before I reach the end of my time, I want to raise some very significant concerns about other measures that are proposed in this bill, in schedule 2 and schedule 9. Those relate to the Conservation Authorities Act and, in schedule 9, the Planning Act. Specifically, I’m referring to the changes that the government is proposing to the role of conservation authorities in planning matters. The changes that are set out in these two schedules of the bill limit or, as some would say, gut the oversight role of conservation authorities in the planning process.

In schedule 2, the role of conservation authorities in reviewing and commenting on planning and development matters within their jurisdiction will be strictly limited to matters falling under their core mandate, so that would be flooding, erosion or drought. The bill would prohibit conservation authorities from reviewing or commenting on specific proposals under a prescribed act. Conservation authorities will no longer be allowed to prohibit certain activities relating to the use or modification of water courses, wetlands, erosion and other matters. This is of grave concern to many people in this province, not just environmentalists, but of course environmentalists have sounded the alarm. We are in a climate crisis. We just saw the impact of Hurricane Fiona. These are not just 100-year severe weather events; these are 500-year severe weather events that we are experiencing on this planet. There was just a recent report showing that we’re going to be nowhere close to meeting that UN target of reducing global warming in the amount of time that we have to unless we take stronger measures. Undermining the role of conservation authorities, limiting the role of conservation authorities is exactly counter to what we should be doing.

Interestingly, the federal parliamentary budget office had recognized the work that Ontario’s conservation authorities had been doing to keep losses associated with flooding in Ontario lower than losses seen in other Canadian provinces. The last thing we want to do is to limit and undermine the role of conservation authorities in sound and sustainable development planning.

I just want to close by saying that this government has given us no confidence that it is committed to housing. We just saw in this year’s estimate a $100-million cut to the provincial government’s housing program. They have to do a lot better than what’s in this bill.

I appreciate the comments from the member for Windsor–Tecumseh. You know what I would like to see? I would like to see the government say yes to the proposals that the NDP has put forward to really meet this crisis that we are facing, to meet the challenge head-on to actually achieve the 1.5 million homes target that we must meet if we are to serve the needs of the people of this province.

As I said, yes, we need intensification, but we also need much stronger protections for tenants. Why is there no rent control on post-November 2018 builds? Those tenants deserve protections, and the tenants who will be affected by the removal of the rent replacement provisions that is set out in this legislation will be deeply affected by the lack of protection—

Thank you to the member from London West for her remarks. I will say I’m disappointed that the status quo is better than what’s in Bill 23, from what I’m understanding from that statement.

We’ve said many times that due to the severity of the housing crisis, there is no single silver-bullet solution. That’s why our government has put forward many pieces of legislation to tackle that crisis. In fact, the members opposite have long advocated for many of the policies that this government has implemented. In the NDP housing plan released in 2021, the opposition put forward proposals to expand on protections for renters and homebuyers, then we put in new protections for tenants through Bill 184—and the opposition voted no. The opposition proposed to encourage basement apartments and granny flats. That was addressed in the housing supply action plan. They voted no.

Will the members opposite stop saying no just for the sake of saying no and finally join us in delivering the critically needed solutions they themselves have called for?