Since the Premier thinks his historic increase is so great, I invite him to try living on it. Today, my colleagues and I are beginning a two-week advocacy effort, living on an approximate social assistance grocery budget of $95.21. We are undertaking this effort in solidarity with the thousands of social assistance recipients and community organizations that have been imploring this government for years to raise the rates.

Will the Premier and the Minister of Community and Social Services join us in this solidarity effort with social assistance recipients?

I’m happy to have the opportunity to rise today to speak on Bill 3, the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act. The title is a real misnomer, Speaker, since the bill doesn’t actually do anything to support the building of new homes, particularly homes that people can afford. But I’m always happy to talk about the need for affordable housing and what the government can and should be doing to make sure that everyone can find an affordable, adequate, high-quality place to call home.

But let me come back to this point, because first I want to talk about what this bill does do, which is to undermine local democracy. This bill and the government’s failure to actually consult mayors and municipal governments clearly show what little respect this government has for democracy and accountable government in general.

Let’s take Ottawa, for example. Ottawa is one of the two municipalities targeted by this bill, but no one in Ottawa wants this bill, no one in Ottawa asked for this bill, no one in Ottawa needs this bill and no one in Ottawa was consulted on this bill. Just last Wednesday, every single city councillor in Ottawa, and the mayor, voted unanimously against this bill. The government can’t even get one single city councillor from Ottawa to support this bill—not even one—and it’s not easy to get unanimity from the Ottawa city council these days. The government has made it absolutely clear that they want to push this bill through with no consultation with affected city councils and communities, and no compromise—just like they did with Bill 7, just like they did with the budget. There is a clear pattern of behaviour from this government regarding unpopular, unnecessary legislation that we’ve seen time and time again. They come up with a piece of legislation that no one asks for, don’t consult the people it might actually affect and then push it through the chamber with as little possible debate as they can get away with.

In response to the perfectly valid and reasonable objections of city council, the government predictably says, “Well, of course, city councillors don’t want this bill. They get in the way of developers building housing. We’re giving the mayor the power to fix this. We’re doing this so the mayor can have almost total executive control, work around city council and get more housing built.” But guess what, Speaker? The mayor doesn’t want the bill either. The person they’re arguing needs these powers to be able to build more housing isn’t just opposed to the legislation, but he says it makes no sense at all.

The mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson himself, said, “It’s really a stretch to try to think you’re giving more powers to the mayor, it’s going to magically create more housing units in the City of Ottawa—it’s just a little of a bizarre situation.”

He added that he doesn’t feel it is right to give the mayor of a city “extraordinary powers” at the expense of all other members of council.

Watson has also called it “a solution looking for a problem.”

Catherine McKenney, candidate for mayor of Ottawa and a very strong supporter of more affordable housing, said of these powers, “I’ve never supported strong-mayor model. It’s undemocratic. It takes away the democratic rights of residents who elect both a mayor and the councillors.... To be able to overrule any decision by council with only 33% of the vote essentially and it’s not what we need to move forward to make our city more affordable for everyone.

“What we need really is a strong-city model where actual cities have more power. Very little has been denied. Applications come to us and most have been accepted. I find it hard to understand how this will allow developers to push projects through any quicker.”

It’s not just the mayor, mayoral candidates and city councillors who oppose this legislation. The head of a federation of 70 Ottawa community groups representing residents across Ottawa has called on the provincial government to scrap its proposed Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, calling the bill “unwarranted and undemocratic,” and noting that it will do nothing to build more affordable housing.

Robert Brinker, the president of the Ottawa Federation of Citizens’ Associations, wrote to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing that the organization “opposes Bill 3 as unwarranted and injurious to our well-established democratic practices in Ottawa.” Brinker said, “While ‘building homes’ forms part of the bill’s title we see no provisions in this bill that would accomplish this.”

The Federation of Urban Neighbourhoods, which represents community associations across the province, said of this bill: “This legislation is unprecedented and marks a huge shift in governance of Ontario’s municipalities. Urban municipalities are governed by democratically elected city councils. The decisions of civic governments have been the collective responsibility of those elected city councils, not the singular responsibility of one member. While democracy isn’t always perfect, citizens of urban municipalities have generally been satisfied with their form of representative government.”

So there we have it, Speaker. City council doesn’t support this bill. The mayor doesn’t support it. Community associations don’t support it. It’s undemocratic, irrelevant to the needs of Ontarians. This bill does not build more housing.

But what’s not in dispute is the need for more affordable housing. What the mayor of Ottawa and city councillors and other stakeholders are pointing out is that the province already holds a lot of tools that they could use to expand affordable housing any time they want to. As Mayor Watson says, this government could provide more funding to support the development of housing and expand inclusionary zoning to cover the entire city. The government could be implementing real rent control and vacancy control to make sure that people aren’t squeezed out of the housing they already have.

But while the government could be doing all these things, they’re not. There’s nothing in this bill that actually expands the supply of affordable housing, nothing that takes steps to make sure people can afford the housing they’ve already got. Constituents in my riding are crying out for affordable housing, but this bill does nothing to help them.

I’d like to share a few stories with the government about what life is really like for my constituents when it comes to housing.

In June, two constituents in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean reached out to my office pleading for help. For their safety, they wish to remain anonymous. While they were at work, their landlord changed the locks. Because they had no protection under the Residential Tenancies Act, as they were boarders, not renters, the police were of no help. These constituents, one a former military service member with 12 years of service, became homeless overnight.

They had no options for affordable housing, and the Ottawa Community Housing wait-list has people waiting an average of eight years. And that’s just the average; many wait much longer. The lack of affordable housing has pushed them into a precarious living situation, as it does with many people across Ontario. These constituents told my office that they don’t have any other options for housing, and, because the government is making life so difficult for them, they have decided to leave Ontario. They said, “Every system is broken, and we don’t have enough working years remaining to justify staying.”

Homeless veterans on the streets of Ontario. These aren’t just numbers on a page or statistics; these are real human beings experiencing the consequences of this government’s decisions.

Jocelyn, a resident of Ottawa West–Nepean, is living with a brain tumour. She is in constant pain, dealing with headaches and fatigue which does not allow her to work. She applied for ODSP but was told she was ineligible because she didn’t fit the criteria. With no other options, Jocelyn turned to Ontario Works and was approved, but this meant she could no longer keep up with her rent payments. She applied for Ottawa Community Housing and was approved for the urgency list, but with the urgency list averaging a two-year wait, she had to find another living situation immediately. The only affordable option for Jocelyn was to live in a shared space with a roommate.

Jocelyn’s living situation left her in turmoil because her new roommate was abusive. Her only saving grace was her small 14-year-old dog who had been with her for this entire journey. Jocelyn exhausted every effort to find another affordable living situation, but the only option left was to move into a women’s shelter until she could find affordable housing.

Today, Jocelyn is living in a women’s shelter in the east end of Ottawa, but she was forced to separate from her dog, which is causing her a lot of anxiety. She was just approved for ODSP, but it is still not enough to pay for first and last months’ rent on an apartment. Instead, she is forced to wait at least another year until an affordable unit becomes available.

Another constituent in my riding, Eloise, had reached out to me with fears that her landlord is trying to evict her from her unit. She has lived in the same unit for 44 years and is seeing similar units become vacant and get listed at almost double what she pays.

Over the past several years, as she has become aware of this issue, she has witnessed a number of older tenants coerced into moving out, only to see their units re-rented at much higher rates. She fears that she is her landlord’s next target.

Recently, the landlord has been visiting her unannounced, requesting entry and searching for ways to file claims with the LTB against her based on the arrangement and upkeep of her unit. She has complied with every demand and has ensured that her unit is safe, yet the visits continue. She is finding that this is having a huge impact on her physical and mental well-being. Her doctor has even noted a significant decline in her health since this began, because of anxiety associated with harassment from her landlord.

At 68 years old, on a fixed income, she knows that if she is evicted from this unit her housing options will be incredibly limited, and if she applies for affordable housing, she will be 76 before she gets into a unit. At her age, an eight-year wait is too long.

So how is this bill going to make life any easier for the people in my riding? How is this bill going to help the homeless veteran? How is it going to help Jocelyn and Eloise? How is it going to help the many, many residents of Ottawa West–Nepean who are struggling to find affordable housing or to cover the costs of the housing they are desperately trying to retain right now?

Speaker, the government is not fooling anyone. This bill does not do anything to make life more affordable. It doesn’t build affordable housing. It doesn’t make our local government more accountable to residents who are in desperate need of affordable housing. In fact, it makes local democracy less accountable.

The solutions we need to the housing crisis don’t require a bill to centralize power in the hands of one all-powerful figure. We need to build more affordable housing and more co-op housing. There’s a crisis with a lack of genuinely affordable housing in our cities, towns and rural communities, especially for low- and limited-income households, racialized and Indigenous households, newcomers, people with disabilities and other marginalized communities.

Ottawa has a particular lack of affordable housing that is getting worse. Most of the affordable housing supply in Ottawa is rent-geared-to-income units within not-for-profit developments that are specifically built and operated to support affordability. We continue to have a very low vacancy rate for market-rate housing in the city, and very high rent. There are 500 families in hotel and motel rooms around the city right now. Some of them have been there for two years—two years with kids—waiting for affordable housing.

There are around 10,000 households alone on the centralized wait-list for social housing in Ottawa, with wait times for social housing often as long as eight years or more because the demand is so much greater than the supply. We need to increase the supply, with a special focus on increasing non-profit housing and the funding that non-profit housing organizations receive, not a bill that turns our mayors into all-powerful CEO figures who will somehow magically create housing units out of thin air through sheer force of will.

And when we’re talking about affordable housing, we also have to look at the income side of the equation, because how are you going to pay for housing if you don’t have the money to pay for it to begin with? This government has already thrown Ontarians with disabilities under the bus by legislating a paltry 5% rise in ODSP payments. Inflation this year alone is 8%, and that doesn’t take into account the fact that ODSP has been frozen for the last four years.

A person on ODSP gets $1,227 a month. A person on Ontario Works gets only $733 a month. The average one-bedroom apartment in Ottawa costs $1,100 a month. That leaves a person on ODSP with only $127 after rent. A person on Ontario Works doesn’t even get enough income to cover rent. So how are folks on social assistance going to afford one of the Premier’s new McMansions if they can’t even afford rent, let alone enough money left over for basics like food and heat?

The government also cancelled the increase to the minimum wage when they took office, putting minimum-wage workers years behind where they should be. That move cost a full-time minimum wage worker more than $5,000. That’s a lot of money that could have helped with rent. And now, when we have a cost-of-living crisis, the Premier is only increasing the minimum wage by 50 cents. That’s a 3.3% increase when inflation is 8%, so you can do the math on how far ahead workers will be. The government could start helping low-income households by progressively raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour and put more money in working people’s pockets, but they’re not going to do that, because it cuts their buddies’ profit margins.

Then we have the CUPE education workers, who provide such dedicated and necessary support to our kids, but half of them have to work two jobs just to make ends meet. They’ve taken an 11% real wage cut over the past decade. The government is driving them into poverty. On $39,000 a year, these educational workers are struggling to afford housing when costs are escalating rapidly. But instead of negotiating with them, the government is attacking them. Instead of hiring more educational assistants to support our kids, the government is pumping money into private tutoring and services outside of the school system.

We’re also seeing in real time the dramatically negative effects of Bill 124 with our nurses and health care heroes, but it’s the whole public service that has been feeling the pinch: real wages down, resources down, more private outsourcing, more profits for middlemen, and a two-tier system for public services where if you’re rich and wealthy, you can buy high-quality health care or private education for your children. But it’s middle-class and working-class families that are paying the price. It’s seniors and marginalized citizens who are feeling the pinch as they can’t afford to go private. They can’t even pay their rent when they’re forced into legislated poverty.

This government’s new slogan, created by their spin doctors, is that they get it done. Well, they’ve gotten a lot done. They’ve driven our health care system to the brink of collapse. They got that done. They’ve legislated those on ODSP and Ontario Works into poverty, so got that done too. They’ve devalued, disrespected and underpaid our health care heroes, causing them to leave their profession in droves. Anyone that’s trying to get care for themselves or a loved one in our province can see just how clearly they’ve got that done. They’ve pushed through Bill 7 without any public consultation or hearings so that they can tear families apart and send seniors and persons with disabilities far away from their loved ones and their communities. Well, mission accomplished, Speaker. They certainly got that done. And now they’re going to do it to our municipal government, too.

No new measures to address affordable housing, but mayors who can veto the democratic will of the people’s representatives: That’s quite an accomplishment. I urge this government to drop Bill 3, stop legislating those on low incomes into poverty, and use the tools you have available to build affordable housing provincially, instead of vandalizing our local democracy.

I know that the government frequently has trouble remembering that Ottawa is part of Ontario. When we had the unfortunate occupation of our city earlier this year, the Premier couldn’t even be bothered to come and see and assess the damage that people in Ottawa were experiencing. Nonetheless, I think when the entire city council of Ottawa condemns the bill, the mayor of Ottawa condemns the bill, the community associations of Ottawa condemn the bill, it’s quite clear that Ottawa does not, in fact, want this bill and does not, in fact, need this bill and that this bill will not, in fact, address the needs of Ottawa.

There are currently 10,000 families on the waiting list for affordable housing in Ottawa. There are currently 500 families living in motel rooms and hotel rooms around the city, including in the Travelodge in Ottawa West–Nepean, because there’s not enough affordable housing available. The average cost of rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Ottawa is $1,100, and yet the single rate for Ontario disability is $1,227 and the amount that a single person on Ontario Works gets is only $733. So I think from these numbers, it’s absolutely clear what the crisis is, and that is this government’s record.

What you are responsible for is what the rates of OW and ODSP have been for the past four years. What you are responsible for is the lack of rent control for the last four years. What you are responsible for is the lack of vacancy control for the last four years. So what you are responsible for is the housing and cost-of-living crisis for the past four years.