The Associate Minister of Housing.

The parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

My question is to the Premier, to the minister and to the government. The strong mayors bill does not actually mention housing or affordability anywhere in the bill besides in the misleading title. It doesn’t outlaw exclusionary zoning or address the cost of borrowing, labour shortages or disruptions to supply chains, which home builders are actually saying are the biggest barriers to delivering housing. The government bill does cite giving Ottawa and Toronto mayors significantly more powers to carry out so-called provincial priorities, but it goes into no disclosure about what those provincial priorities are.

My question to this government is: When the mayor’s vision conflicts with provincial priorities, which will prevail?

I’ve said many times in this House that there isn’t one thing the government can do. There’s no magical silver bullet when it comes to the housing supply crisis.

We committed to Ontarians in the election on June 2 that we would put a plan in place to build 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. We provided a lot of legislation that my associate minister and the parliamentary assistant talked about. Every time we present something in this House, whether it be More Homes, More Choice, More Homes for Everyone or second reading of the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, the opposition votes against.

Speaker, the question I would ask, through you, back to the member is: When is the opposition going to actually support the dream of home ownership for Ontarians? The only person who’s sitting over there this morning who even referenced the 1.5 million over 10 years is the member for London–Fanshawe, and I want to thank her for doing that in her member’s statement the first couple of days of the Legislature. So there’s at least one New Democrat who supports our plans to build 1.5 million homes.

My question is to Minister Clark. The government has been insistent that this bill is meant to aid the housing crisis by giving mayors of Toronto and Ottawa more power to fast-track construction and accelerate housing approvals, among other powers, and we all understand and realize how strong the housing crisis is and that we need to deal with it.

My question is, why title the bill “Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act,” if the text of the bill never once mentions housing and my proposed amendments to the bill that were related to housing were deemed out of scope and principle at committee? Are there actual tangible housing construction goals that this bill is meant to achieve and, if yes, how will we track and report back on these goals?

I listened intently to the debate on Bill 3, which is the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act. The government talked about more homes being built faster, more homes for more choices. How does all this legislation address the need for geared-to-income homes, for co-operative homes? Where is the government’s plan to contribute funding to building housing to help people on fixed incomes, like seniors and people who are on ODSP and OW, to remain in their homes—families who are working, low-income families?

The government’s plan to build 1.5 million homes in 10 years: What are the numbers that include geared-to-income, co-operative housing? Where are those numbers in your plan?

In Niagara, we are in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. Residents in St. Catharines are living in fear. They are seeing the near-futureness of being homeless here in St. Catharines.

But giving mayors in Toronto and Ottawa more powers is not a solution to the affordable housing crisis in Niagara. In the Strong Mayors, Buildings Homes Act, there is no mention of the word “home” in the bill except the title, nor do I see a bold action plan to address affordable housing within the changes of the Municipal Act.

Will your government put in the provincial priorities and include affordable housing within Bill 3?

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. The BC government just completed a report that looked at the effectiveness of its speculation and vacant homes tax, designed to make housing more affordable for people who intend to live in the homes they rent or buy. The tax has raised over $231 million in affordable housing and has added over 20,000 long-term rental units to the Vancouver area—20,000 units, all with the stroke of a pen.

Just like BC, Ontario has an issue with vacant homes as well. Minister, to quickly increase housing supply, can you bring in an effective provincial speculation and vacant homes tax?

My question is back to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing again: The city of Toronto passed Ontario’s first inclusionary zoning law back in 2021. Inclusionary zoning requires developers to set aside some affordable housing units in each development located near transit stops. It’s a very good way to build affordable housing in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Here’s the challenge: Toronto has approved 104 areas in the city where inclusionary zoning should apply, and has submitted these 104 requests to the ministry to approve. How many inclusionary zoning requests have you approved, Minister? Zero.

Minister, when are you going to allow the city to proceed with inclusionary zoning, so developers build more affordable housing?

Through you, Mr. Speaker: Thank you to the member opposite for that question. As the member well knows, this government actually acted on the non-resident speculation tax by increasing it from 15% to 20%, and made it province-wide, so that foreign speculators wouldn’t hurt people buying homes in this province.

Now, the member opposite also talks about the vacancy tax, and of course, the vacancy tax is in action right now. In fact, municipalities such as Toronto have the vacancy tax, and other municipalities have asked for the vacancy tax, and we have granted that.

But, Mr. Speaker, what the member opposite is really getting to is that we have a housing supply challenge in this province, and it’s this government that is committed to building 1.5 million houses over the next 10 years, something they didn’t do.

Speaker, our legislation that’s on the floor right now, Bill 3, builds upon our success. Our government has made a commitment over the last three years. We’ve spent $4.3 billion supporting our community housing sector and building more supportive housing.

I’ve said many, many times, Speaker, that there is not one silver bullet that is going to solve the housing supply crisis. Our government has put forward many pieces of legislation—More Homes, More Choice, our province’s first housing supply action plan, in 2019. We followed that up with More Homes for Everyone. Each time, Speaker—this is the craziness of the whole situation—every time I put a bill forward—

Interjections.

Interjections.

Actually, I’m so glad that the member opposite agreed that there is a housing supply crisis. This legislation, at its core, is very simple. We need to support efficient, local decision-making to help cut through the red tape so that we can build more homes.

Madam Speaker, through you: Why does the member trust that he can represent Ontarians but he cannot trust Ontarians to choose their own efficient local leaders?

Thank you to the member for the question. I will agree with the member that he is confused. That’s what I will agree to.

I realize that an hour is a long time to listen to a speech, but if he was listening at the part where I proposed solutions, I believe I rhymed off seven or eight things, which included inclusionary zoning, getting rid of exclusionary zoning, more social housing, more investment. There’s a long, long list of things, and we’ve talked about it ad nauseam in this place for years now.

I guess we’re confused as to why the government is not listening to us, because we propose real solutions. The folks we’ve spoken to at AMO and other cities have proposed solutions, but the government is just not coming forward with those.

The bill does nothing—it doesn’t even mention housing at all, much less affordable housing, and that’s one of the things that we’ve consistently brought up with the government. They talk about housing supply constantly, but the real problem is affordable housing for folks, especially now, when we see inflation up at 7%, 8%, and the government has actually lifted rent control, making life much more difficult for people.

The bill does nothing for housing in general and could make things even worse for people who are looking for affordable housing.

As a former councillor, I can tell you that the strongest councils are ones where the mayor and council work together, and they work to get to consensus. Where you can’t get to consensus, there is an element of democracy there that’s supported by professional staff who are hired in an independent, objective manner. That’s how good governance works—not by giving powers to one person to overturn the majority of people who were elected, and hiring their friends as CAOs and planners.

A lot of people fear that this legislation will actually make decisions less transparent and less democratic. As I just mentioned, a really good council is one where the mayor shows leadership, they communicate with their councillors, and they respect the will of the majority of their councillors and they bring them along.

I had a mayor who, if they had an idea, would call around to council between council meetings. That isn’t always the case. That process can actually help development decisions go through because, if you have a council that’s fractured, or you have a mayor who’s not respecting the will of a councillor who is representing their constituents, you don’t have that connection to the constituents and developers, and you’re not able to represent their concerns properly.

Thank you to our member for that eloquent one-hour lead on the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act.

The issue with this bill, as we’ve all discussed many times over, is that the bill doesn’t actually address real affordable housing and supporting folks in our communities who are struggling with affordable housing. I’m thinking of one constituent in St. Paul’s in particular who has been on the list for approximately a decade for affordable housing.

Does the strong-mayor bill address the issues of the need for, for instance, rent geared to income, supportive housing, transitional housing, affordable housing?

What if a strong mayor doesn’t believe in rent-geared-to-income units or doesn’t believe in creating real affordable housing?

How is that going to help my constituent on ODSP, who is also now considering medical assistance in dying instead because she can’t get housing?

I appreciated listening to the comments from the member from Niagara Centre, but I’m a little bit confused—because we know that we have seen more housing starts in the last year than in 35 years in the province of Ontario. The Associate Minister of Housing could correct me if I’m wrong, but we’ve actually seen more rental housing starts in the last year than we have seen in decades and decades. So I’m left confused, because the evidence is clear: If you want to stop rental housing construction starts, put in rent control. But it seems to me that the only idea that we’ve had from the member from Niagara Centre is rent control, which is demonstrably an absolute failure.

I was wondering if he could explain to the House why we’ve seen more housing starts and more rental starts in the last year than in decades, if our plan hasn’t worked, if our policies don’t work.

It’s always a pleasure to rise in this House, especially with the wonderful colleagues I have here around me.

We’re talking about an important dream come true for all of us: making sure we have home. A home is not just a place where you live. It is a place where you raise your family, you raise your career and give back to the community. And that’s what we’re doing today here: We are finding out how we can help and support our communities by giving them another tool to build more homes. That’s what we’re doing here: Bill 3, the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, 2022.

Before I go back to this and talk more about this, I just want to talk about my journey when I came in 2000 and we started living in Brampton. That was my first place that I rented, a basement, and when my wife and my son came on June 5, 2000, we wanted to give him more space. By this time, I had a job. We moved into an apartment building; we rented an apartment. But my wife continued to say, “We need to save together to buy our own first home.”

And that’s exactly what we did. In 2001, we bought our first house. I still remember; when the house was being built, we used to go every weekend just to see how high it had gone. That’s what we were seeing: our dreams coming together, of raising our son. That was the home that we actually bought and lived in, the first house.

If we talk about the day when I landed, which was in 2000, I remember the population of Brampton was about 225,000 people, and today it’s over—what—700,000, 800,000? In these last 20 years, we’ve seen Ontario’s population growth has accelerated. The province is set to grow by nearly two million people over the next decade. The people of Ontario are counting on all levels of government to work together and build homes so that they have a place to live and raise their family, to make their dreams come true.

Why has the population gone up? Well, there are many reasons. Immigration is the first one. We have seen increased immigration. We have seen a growing number of non-permanent residents, including international students, coming into this country. In the last five years, approximately 645,000 international students came here. Given that approximately 60% of them come to Ontario and about 60% of those come to the GTA—if you look at it that way, it’s about 180,000 international students who are coming, and they need a house as well. What happens is, many times they love to bring their family or their parents to visit, to see them and stay with them. That means they need a house, so it means we need more houses.

If we put these things together for Ontario, both international and interprovincial migration, just take a look at the year 2019: 153,000 immigrants settled in Ontario. That accounts for 45% of all immigrants to Canada. It is projected that almost 30,000 will make Ontario their home through interprovincial migration from the rest of Canada.

Madam Speaker, one thing else has happened in the last four years. Under the leadership of Premier Ford, we have seen Ontario becoming an economic engine and a lucrative destination—to settle down here.

I’ll give you an example. A great example was shared by Minister Vic Fedeli this morning. Site Selection, a leading international business publication, has named Ontario the winner for the 2022 Canadian Competitiveness Award; 10 of the 24 best locations to invest and their corresponding economic development are nowhere but here in Ontario, and we should be proud of that.

This is fantastic news. But what happens is, when we see economic growth happening, more and more investors want to come here, and within the province itself, those who invested here want to grow. And what happens? They need more people. When they need more people, they’re going to bring more people. When they bring more people, we need more houses.

Madam Speaker, I always talk about me as a first-generation immigrant. Immigrants are not just here to come here and live a life. They actually give back to the community. I want talk about a couple of examples here. I want to draw your attention to somebody I admire. His name is Ray Gupta. Ray is the CEO and chairman of Sunray Group. Ray immigrated to Canada and then founded this company in 2006. He actively supports Canadian immigration and continues to work with the local council to help the immigration and job efforts in Ontario. Ray Gupta is one of many examples of how the immigrant success story evolves from the initial struggle to eventually contributing back to the Canadian economy.

I just want to give another example. Immigrants arriving in Canada aim to achieve financial stability and join the workforce. However, they go the extra mile by giving back to their communities. A great example is Canadian Muslim Friends, an organization known across the board for their community work. Canadian Muslim Friends has organized several community events, such as an annual blood drive, a food drive, a toy drive and fundraising for both the SickKids hospital and the Trillium hospital. They conduct seminars on current issues that many immigrants can relate to. Canadian Muslim Friends continues to celebrate religious gatherings and Canada Day, encouraging members of all communities to join and strengthen our community bonds. That’s the Ontario spirit we have.

Let’s talk about Toronto, because Toronto and Ottawa are the two major regions that are being considered in this third reading of Bill 3. Toronto is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in North America. In 2018-19, its population grew by 131,000, accounting for 53% of provincial growth. Similarly, Ottawa had an 8.5% population growth in the National Capital Region over the last five years. Ottawa’s population also reached the one-million mark. The regions of Toronto and Ottawa both have experienced faster growth than the rest of the province.

Ontario’s population growth is evident; the housing market has not been able to match the demand. Ontario is facing a housing crisis, where potential homebuyers have been frozen out of the market.

I’ll give you an example: My heart actually broke when I got a call from one of my friends. There was an international student. He was sitting at his office, and then this friend of mine—his name is Pervaiz Akhtar—Pervaiz called me and he said, “There is somebody who is sitting in my office and he’s been kicked out of the shelter, and he has a paper—he said, ‘I have a paper to prove that I’m mentally stable.’” Madam Speaker, in these two lines there is so much. Somebody who sent their child here to educate themselves, to get to a better life, because we live in a heaven—and I look at these two lines. Somebody who is actually kicked out of a shelter, not just a house, and has to prove mental stability means he has gone through a lot in the past.

I had the opportunity to talk to the child. He went into a vicious cycle, wherein he didn’t have a job; by the time he could find a job, he didn’t have enough money to pay the rent and he was kicked out; when he was kicked out, he got into bad company; after the bad company, he got into a situation where he went the wrong way. In order for him to bring it back—I’m thankful to organizations like PCHS and Indus community centre for their hard work to bring him back into the system. But what happens is not everybody has the opportunity to go and meet these people. I don’t know how many of these situations there are which could have been avoided if we had enough housing supply in place, and that is what we are doing here.

We’re trying to give our municipalities another tool through the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act so that we can build these houses faster, and as we are building these houses faster, we’re reducing the red tape, we’re reducing the cost of building those houses, which in turn means less cost to those end users as well.

Madam Speaker, with the population of Ontario increasing rapidly, the time for action is now. The residents of Ontario are facing a shortage of homes. That is why our government is committed to building 1.5 million new homes over the next 10 years, as well as other key infrastructure like roads and transit. There is a high demand for housing, meaning an urgent need for immediate building and construction.

I just want to add to this, to my colleagues: It’s not just building the houses. In order to build the houses, we need the tools and the skill set to build those houses. That is why our ministry, the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development, is actually working along with these other ministers to make sure that we are supporting current and future skilled trade workers. We have over 350,000 jobs which are going unfilled.

Talking about first-generation immigrants, I want to share with you that 75% of our internationally educated immigrants are not working in the field in which they’re trained. Under the leadership of Premier Ford and Minister Monte McNaughton, the Minister for Labour, Training and Skills Development, we are providing an additional $83 million towards the Skills Development Fund to help support groundbreaking training projects that upskill workers and prepare job seekers for future work. Our government helped people receive training needed to fill the shortage of skilled workers in Ontario, and we’ll continue to do it.

Not only did these changes help get people work in their chosen field, they also helped speed up the registration process for our internationally trained professionals. To be more specific, the Working for Workers Act reduced the number of hoops a potential worker would need to jump through, allowing them to start working in their field as much as five years sooner than before the act was implemented. Newcomers are now given the pride of continuing their career and contributing their knowledge and experience to their new home, all the while knowing that their government is going to work with them.

We no longer have regulatory bodies putting unnecessary barriers in the way of new immigrants. This makes our province of Ontario the best place for newcomers to come and thrive. We thereby made it easier for people to settle here and find jobs in their fields. What we’ve done by doing this is we’ve attracted more people, and as we’ve attracted more people, we need more houses.

Madam Speaker, talking about skilled workers, we need skilled workers urgently to build these homes immediately. Skilled workers in our construction industries and health and safety industries are needed to build housing. I’m proud to say that our government, through the leadership of Premier Ford, is envisioning a long-term plan to make Ontario the best place to be. Over the next 10 years, over 100,000 jobs will be available in construction alone, and with this bill we will be able to build over 1.5 million homes. We are investing a historic $1.5 billion between 2020 and 2024 to help workers and job seekers start rewarding, well-paying and in-demand careers in the trades. Our government is making these investments because it is what our people and our province need today.

It is no secret that Ontario is in the middle of a housing crisis. Ontarians re-elected our government at a time when they’re facing a rising cost of living and a shortage of homes. I want to share with you—and I’m sure all my colleagues will agree—that when we were door-knocking, when we were going door to door and meeting our residents, loud and clear we heard from residents that they need this government to take action and take action now so that the housing crisis can be addressed.

And it’s not just people like me who actually have a house—no, it is the people who are newcomers to Canada who need a house. But then often people ask me, “Well, you’re already living in a house. How come this is a crisis for you?” So for those, I want to share that I have two children and they need freedom. They need to be independent, and they will need a house. It’s not that those living in a house don’t have to worry about the housing crisis, because it’s going to impact each one of us in one way or the other.

That is why the proposed Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act is crucial in allowing the largest-populated cities, Toronto and Ottawa, to have the ability in driving policy changes. Empowered mayors could better help the province and municipalities in working together on housing and other initiatives that are critical for their communities. It’s not just me who’s saying it. For example, Toronto Mayor John Tory said he wants “to make sure city hall is working more efficiently and effectively for Toronto residents and businesses and that we make it as easy as possible to get things done.”

It is something we need as we face record growth in the great province of Ontario. Our population is going to increase and the building of housing needs to begin and begin now. As our province continues to flourish as we do many, many investments—for example, we’re the province that is actually building 30,000 long-term beds. We are the province that is going to have four hours of home care and 86,000 child care spaces. We’re going to be building four subways, electric vehicle manufacturing, construction of highways, and everything we’re going to be doing is going to attract more people, and those people need housing again.

So as we’re doing this, there is even more pressure on our housing system. We need to cut red tape and speed up the local planning process by giving municipal leaders new tools and powers to help reduce timelines for development, standardize processes and address local barriers to increasing housing supply. It’s not me alone saying it. These are some of the quotes that community leaders and industry leaders have said, and I picked those quotes.

The new municipal powers will go a long way in addressing affordability, getting more shovels in the ground and incentivizing developers to come build in Ontario’s largest cities. In turn, as we build faster, as we build cheaper, those benefits are going to go to the end use of our residents.

The proposed legislation provides a solid foundation to ensure that mayors have tools to combat the systemic barriers that exist at the municipal level that prevent housing from being built. That is why we’re putting our trust in local leadership in Toronto and Ottawa and in the voters who will choose these new mayors next month by proposing to give these mayors more responsibility to help deliver on our shared provincial-municipal priorities. Our government believes in a strong-mayor system that would address the housing crisis in these cities.

Madam Speaker, we always talk about the consultation, and I think the biggest consultation is going back to our voters, our residents. People think this is a place of power; I call this a place of responsibility, because the power is with the people. It is the people who elect their elected officials, because they have the power. We just exercise the responsibility. They have that power again on October 24. They’re going to elect the mayor, who is going to deliver that.

I just want to highlight a few more examples of the support we have received. It is clear that we are not alone in this belief. The changes included here would, if passed, give the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa the ability to drive policy changes. It would give them the power to select municipal department heads and, perhaps most importantly, to bring forward budgets.

When we’re talking about this, we look at the C.D. Howe Institute. They found that restrictions and extra costs on building new housing are dramatically increasing the cost of housing projects. The institute found that these barriers can add up to $168,000 dollars or 22% to an average cost of a single detached home in Ontario.

Furthermore, the Ontario Association of Architects, taking a 100-unit condominium building in Toronto as an example, said it could cost up to $2,000 per month in addition to the consumers, which in turn means that if there is something which is being delayed by 10 months, that’s an extra $20,000 fee the end user would have to pay.

Madam Speaker, the examples are endless, but I want to conclude by saying that Rescon says we are underproducing housing by 12,000 units per year here in Ontario because of delays, and 12,000 housing units is not just 12,000 people; it is actually 12,000 families. It is the families of many of those new immigrants with young children who are preparing to rise and grow into life here.

The reality is that over one third of Ontario’s growth over the next decade is expected to happen in Toronto and Ottawa, and that is why we need to take action, and we need to take action now through Bill 3, the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act.

To conclude, Madam Speaker, because I only have one minute left: Our government’s target is to build 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years, and that is what we’re doing. We must explore new methods to help municipalities get homes built faster. As the population of Ontario continues to grow, housing needs to keep up. We need to consider all Ontarians and begin taking action now to help them one day have the dream of home ownership.

I urge each and every member on both sides: Let’s work together. Let’s deliver real long-term housing solutions in the next 10 years and let’s build our Ontario.

Thank you very much to the member for the question and for her participation in the committee and asking some really good questions to the delegations.

I think that the 1.5 million number is really a political number, obviously, that the government wants to throw around. We can come up with whatever number we want, but at the end of the day it’s what we’re willing to do to actually get meaningful results. And when we look at this bill, it’s not designed to get meaningful results, like some of the things that we have proposed and that the member has proposed, such as inclusionary zoning, such as targeting missing middle housing. There’s some effective ways we can do that through the planning process, but this legislation does none of it.

Look, the 1.5 million target and all of those targets that have to do with housing supply, they’re not focused on the supply that we actually need, which is affordable housing supply. You can build all kinds of—and in the election, we talked about building highways that no one needs leading to homes that no one can afford. That’s what I see as the policy of this government: a focus on homes that no one can afford.

I appreciate the opportunity to ask the question one more time briefly, because I’m still confused. We’ve seen more housing starts, more rental starts than in decades in the province of Ontario. If it’s not the More Homes, More Choice Act, if it’s not the More Homes for Everyone Act, I would ask the member to briefly explain what he thinks those new housing starts must be due to, if not from the policies of our government?

Thank you to the member from Niagara Centre for your solid and factual information. I was not confused by your speech, unlike others here.

Do you believe there should be an actual tracking system for this lofty goal of 1.5 million homes to be built in the next 10 years, and if so, what would you propose for a regular transparent and regular report back? And what types of housing should actually be built to help solve this housing crisis?

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and congratulations on your new role.

I want to thank the member for providing so much information, specifically about his own neighbourhood. I respect and understand that, as we suffer with the same issues in my own area of Thornhill. We know that more and more experts agree—and this is solid information—that supply and demand go hand in hand. The major driver of a housing crisis—it’s pretty simple: When there’s not much going around, the price goes up. Can the member please share with us and the House how this critical policy that you talked about will affect not only Ottawa and Toronto, but future locations?

I want to acknowledge that my colleague and member from—

You know, I said that earlier and I’m going to say it one more time: We are a House of responsibility. The power is with the people, and the people have exercised the power. You can actually see it around—how we started and where we are right now. So the people do exercise their power.

So what our government is doing, our government is making sure we’re putting the trust in those people, Ontarians, to elect the right local leaders. That’s why we are setting the bar higher for our mayors and making it easier to hold them accountable based on the decisions they make.

What are we doing through this bill? We are making sure that we are keeping the costs down and we are building 1.5 million homes to address the housing supply crisis, something—when we went door to door, we asked what they needed, and that’s what we heard. And that’s what we’re delivering today.

The question is: What do people need? As we all work together to make sure that Ontario is growing and growing and becoming an economic engine, people need shelter. People need houses, and that’s exactly what this bill is doing: making sure we are able to deliver those houses right here in Ontario.