I thank the member opposite for his contributions to this debate, although I’m very disappointed by the drive-by smears that have been happening in the speech. I don’t usually expect that to hear that from this member, who is a member I respect greatly. Maybe it’s the influence of the election; I don’t know.

There are two main reasons why Tory gets his agenda through in Toronto city hall. It’s because his staff works very hard behind the scenes and, frankly, he doesn’t bring forward things he’s going to fail on because that wouldn’t be good for him as a mayor.

Municipalities are creatures of the province. We’re trying to make municipalities work better, not to control them. We’re offering the mayor new powers.

I would ask the member opposite if he doesn’t think it’s important that the person who runs and offers a vision for the city of Toronto be able to get his points across and be able to achieve the vision that he ran on, which I think in the last election some 500,000 people voted for, and not be opposed indefinitely by people who are trying to veto any progress that this city can make.

I would refer you to Chris Selley’s article where he asked the city’s progressive faction to put on their dry Pull-Ups and try to engage on the issue.

Well, I’m quite happy that you ended talking about housing. We all agree that it doesn’t matter where you live in Ontario; there are many, many people facing difficulty finding housing. One part of this would be to have more affordable housing projects going up throughout Ontario, including in my own riding.

Could you tell me, after having read Bill 3, Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, how many times do they talk about homes in the act? Do they specifically talk about affordable housing in the act, and how we will make sure that the people who actually need housing get housing through this act? I haven’t been able to find it, but you usually read those things better than I do.

Further debate?

It’s certainly my pleasure to rise on this beautiful summer day to speak on Bill 3, the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, as introduced by our Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

As the Premier stated in his remarks this week at the AMO conference, Ontario unfortunately is in a housing crisis, full stop. I agree with the Premier, and the real answer to a housing crisis, to the problem we have, is really more supply. I think there’s a consensus on that. Ontario must build homes. We must build them faster than we have been building them. We need to do something different, and we need to keep the housing costs down when we’re doing the building so that people can afford those homes.

Mr. Speaker, I will speak plainly: Housing is an issue impacting all Ontarians, and the best way to solve it is to build. We will build Ontario, so all Ontarians have a place to call home. This was our commitment to the people of Ontario in the last election, and we’re going to get it done. With renewed vigour and an enhanced mandate, we’re using time in this chamber to put in place measures to fulfill our promise, and this government will ensure that housing gets built across the province of Ontario.

Attainable housing is important for everyone—seniors who are looking to downsize but cannot find a suitable home; a young Ontarian unable to step onto that first rung of the housing ladder; new immigrants looking for a place to start their life here; and families who cannot move up to a larger home to accommodate and raise their children. These are real people with real problems, housing problems, and they need real solutions. The homes they need will not all be the same, but we know they need more homes, and when the demand is so great, the solution has to include more supply.

Bill 3 introduces concrete measures to address these problems. The government’s housing task force made five key suggestions, and this bill focuses on two of them. The task force recommended ending exclusionary municipal rules that block or delay new housing, often adding significantly to its cost, and depoliticizing, as well, the housing approvals process. Simply put, there is too much politics in housing. I know it’s funny for a politician to say there’s too much politics, but there is too much politics in housing, and as a result of politics, entire projects are abandoned or diminished, as often happens. It certainly happens a lot in my city, the city of Toronto.

We cannot have desperately needed housing projects being stopped due to political considerations. The needs of a local candidate for city council or a local councillor should not be prioritized over the needs of the community they are meant to serve—the seniors, those young people, those new immigrants, those growing families I just mentioned. Simply put, when councillors prioritize saving parking lots over building homes, things need to change—and that is an example that happened in my riding recently.

Our housing crisis has real costs. In my home, in Toronto, the C.D. Howe Institute has calculated that delays for housing approvals add $168,000 to the cost of every single new detached home which is built—$168,000. It wasn’t that long ago—I’m not that old, I don’t think—when that amount could have paid for the cost of an entire home, and that’s just the cost of the delay. In Toronto, the median household income is about $85,000—or at least it was in 2020. So we can all do the math. The delay means that the average family will have to save all of their income for two full years to cover the cost of the delay. Well, that’s prohibitive and requires families to save for years and years on top of that to cover the cost of the actual home. This is ridiculous. These delays cost families significant, significant money, which adds unnecessary stress to their daily lives and prevents them from being able to do what they do, to live where they want to live, and to raise their families in the way that they would like.

When young Ontarians look at the price of homes, many give up on their dreams of home ownership. Some even look to move to jurisdictions where housing is more affordable, thereby depriving Ontario of their much-needed contributions to this economy. Remember, we have 375,000 jobs looking for people to fill them. So expediting and removing the political logjam adding so much to the price premiums on housing is a good first step in getting this housing crisis under control.

As I said, this is an issue that affects all Ontarians. It is also an issue that can be exacerbated at the local level. We were elected to solve this problem, and I am happy to speak in support of solutions to these important problems. Our government, of course, trusts Ontarians to elect the right local leaders. At the end of the day, it is a local issue as well as a provincial one. Unlike the suggestions from the members opposite, we do trust Ontarians to elect the right local leaders. The province sets the standards, but municipalities, especially in our largest cities, where most of the population is, have to act.

That’s why we’re setting the bar higher for mayors and making it easier to hold them accountable based on the decisions they make. After all, as the Premier has said, mayors are “accountable for everything. But they have the same single vote as a single councillor.” So how can they achieve their agenda? They’re one vote. They can try to be persuasive, but they don’t have a lot of power to make sure that they can achieve the agenda that they ran on, and that is an agenda that the people of Ontario—the people of Toronto, in this case—would like to hold them accountable for achieving.

If passed, Bill 3 would give the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa the tools they need to move forward on provincial priorities. It would give the mayors the tools they need to take action on behalf of their constituents to achieve the agenda that they ran on. People expect their leaders to take this crisis seriously. However, our current system often stymies implementation of the solutions Ontarians expect.

Ontario residents, our constituents, expect their leadership to get things done. They expect mayors to get things done. However, on this issue, without any reforms, progress has been entirely too slow. This is why our government is empowering mayors so they can do what their and our constituents expect and work on building more attainable housing.

Another tool that Bill 3 offers is that it will also allow mayors to select municipal department heads and deliver budgets. These new powers would help our municipal partners deliver on priorities the province shares with them, such as housing. Strong-mayor systems will empower municipal leaders to work more effectively with the province to reduce timelines for development, standardize processes and address local barriers to increasing the housing supply. These new powers will be especially relevant as the province works with its municipal partners to expand the footprint of our transit-oriented communities so that more people can live, work and play near the convenience of public transit. This is critical to build the kind of sustainable communities that I think we all want. This is why Toronto and Ottawa must go first. Over a third of all of the anticipated growth will happen in Toronto and Ottawa. With Toronto and Ottawa leading the way in growth, Toronto and Ottawa also need to lead the way in housing development and process reform.

Furthermore, the leadership in these cities has already shown a commitment to building sustainable communities, building transit, building amenities and, importantly, building homes. The province needs empowered partners. As the Premier likes to say, this crisis requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. That’s why it’s so heartening to know that the leadership of Toronto and Ottawa is willing to work with the province and this government to get shovels in the ground and get people into homes.

Our government is keeping costs down. It’s building 1.5 million homes over 10 years to help address the housing supply crisis. This crisis is locking generations of Ontario residents out of the housing market and locking others into housing that does not meet their current needs. Our government understands that we can only succeed in this by working with our partners. We know that empowered mayors will be better placed to collaborate with the province on housing and other initiatives that are critical to their communities. Our government trusts Ontarians to elect the right local leaders to prioritize their needs, like housing. As the population of Ontario grows, housing needs to keep up, and we need our municipal partners to help us make that happen. The government looks forward to working with our municipal partners as we tackle this crisis. People expect action on their priorities, and with this legislation, we are giving our municipal partners, the mayors, the opportunity to address the priorities.

The time for action on housing is now. It’s time to build Ontario, and the province and our municipal partners, Toronto and Ottawa, need to all work together to ensure housing is more attainable for all people.

Thank you to the member from Thunder Bay–Superior North for your question.

Obviously, our plan is to build more housing, as we’ve said—1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. Part of that will be rental housing. I think we’ve already made clear that some of our plans from earlier, our More Homes for Everyone Act and our housing supply action plan etc., have resulted in historic numbers of housing being built—the most in 30 years, both rental starts and housing starts. We believe that if we have more supply, the price of housing will come down and that there will be more available for more people. That’s why we’re looking at attainable housing. We think this is really important. It is the way that Japan, for example—Tokyo was able to address their expensive housing crisis and get prices to a more manageable level for their population.

And honestly, the other solutions that we’ve had in place over the last 30 years have not resulted in more housing for anyone, and it has become more expensive.

I do think that we have to look at history and what has happened. The policies that we’ve had over the last 30 years have resulted in housing prices going up and us not having a supply of available housing for anybody. We can see that this is what happens with those same policies in many other jurisdictions. In New York, for example, it’s the same result, but apparently—I have to agree with my friend—the opposition don’t seem to realize that. They don’t seem to like to look at the facts to find out. What I’m concerned about a lot is young people who just cannot find an affordable place to live, anywhere. We need to address this situation.

We’re giving the mayors tools. They don’t have to use them. They can choose not to use them. But they have tools. So it isn’t an assault on democracy. It’s an opportunity to make our municipal departments work better to build more housing, which people need.

As Ontarians face the rising cost of living and a shortage of homes, our government was re-elected with a strong mandate to help more Ontarians find a home that meets their needs and budget. That, of course, includes Indigenous Ontarians.

Our policies have delivered historic results in getting more housing built faster, and complement, really, our more than $4.3-billion investment over the past three years to grow and enhance community and supportive housing for vulnerable Ontarians and for Indigenous people. We’re working hard to make the housing available, in all the types of housing needed.

I was just speaking with the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services about the need for more supportive housing. It’s an important priority for a lot of people in our government.

We’re going to make sure that we build all kinds of housing for all the people who need it in Ontario.

The way that the bill helps improve supply is, it gives the mayor an opportunity to drive policy forward. Mayors—and I think Mayor Tory would agree—know that we need more housing in this city. But the mayor has one vote. He’s one vote amongst all of the city councillors, even though, if you think about it, about 500,000 people, as I indicated earlier, voted for the mayor, and only around 10,000 vote for most of the councillors—for some, as many as 30,000. We have 25 city councillors. So it’s very hard for the mayor to be able to get the agenda through. But I think it will help.

This is what I would like to say: The mayor takes the broader picture for the whole city. Who speaks for the city, when each individual councillor, of course, is speaking for their own area? I think it’s important to have that broader perspective for the city, to say, “These are the things that matter to our city. Let’s improve the city as a whole. Let’s look beyond our own little corner of the city and think broadly about what’s good for the city as a whole.”

I want to thank the member for Eglinton–Lawrence for her address today.

The opposition always talks about how we need to make it more affordable—that it’s too expensive, that people can’t afford it—yet they always support the things that lead to a $168,000 increase in the cost of building a home. It only stands to reason that some portion of that will fall to any rental property that is built in a building that is purposely built for rental—and particularly those at lower incomes. So they continue to do the things that actually add to the cost of building housing, whether it’s rental, whether it’s high-rise rental units or individual homes, and then they complain that people can’t afford to rent them.

I ask the member, when will the NDP and the Liberal opposition understand that all they continue to do is to add to the cost of a home? Be it free-standing, be it rental—it doesn’t matter what it is—them always standing in the way of trying to get the homes built only does one thing: It makes them more expensive—which is completely, again, what they claim to believe in.

The housing crisis is a mental health crisis. The housing crisis is a suicide crisis.

I know the government talks about “all Ontarians,” and I know that sometimes we are left out—as First Nations, as Indigenous people—in the policy approaches of this government. They talk about real people.

If you’re not going to invest in Indigenous, First Nations housing, what is your plan, on-reserve, to address the housing crisis in our communities?

Thank you, my colleague from Eglinton–Lawrence, for your presentation on giving more powers to the mayors.

Sometimes the mayor and council can’t even make a decision on a zoning application or building application, and sometimes they have to fight with the bureaucracy and red-tapeism at city hall. This legislation will give a little bit of power to the mayor to move a little bit more projects—small developments in terms of zoning applications, building permits, not only the official plan amendment. They had to go through too much red tape.

My question to the member: How would these proposed changes affect our housing supply? We talk about supply and demand based on the market economy. How will this proposed legislation at least help to increase the supply?

Questions?

I want to congratulate the member on her re-election and for her submission and speech today.

She said, for instance, the mayor of Toronto has 500,000 votes. But councillors receive cumulatively, across the city, the same number of votes, essentially, as the mayor does. People vote for councillors and expect them to have the paramountcy on local issues, the understanding of local issues. When you’re in a city of millions, you don’t expect a response from a mayor when something goes wrong.

So what is it about this government? Why do they want to weaken local councillors in their ability to make decisions when the mayors of municipalities already have overwhelming powers to be able to get their agendas across?

Thank you to my friend the member opposite from Humber River–Black Creek. It’s an important question.

I think you said yourself that what the mayor has is stature, as the mayor, to try to influence folks, but the mayor doesn’t have a lot of powers per se.

At least in your speech, you talked about his stature being influential etc. I think that isn’t sufficient, in a big city the size of Toronto and a big city the size of Ottawa, to realize the vision the mayor has run on and which people would like to hold them accountable for. The mayor has not got the tools to be able to achieve those results for the city.

I think that people running for council—yes, they are also democratically elected to represent their area, but the mayor is the one person on city council who has to look at what is good for the entire city. I think that part is so important that we need to give the mayor more tools to realize a broader vision and to make a better city.

I’m certainly looking forward to passing this legislation and having the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa be able to avail themselves of more powers to achieve their vision to make better cities here in Ontario.

Further debate?

This is the first time I’ve had had the opportunity to stand and speak freely since my re-election, so I’d like to take the time to thank the constituents of Hamilton Mountain for giving me the opportunity to, once again, serve your interests here in the people’s House, the Ontario Legislature, and the many people who helped on my campaign, ensuring my re-election. I’m eternally grateful to all of those people who truly put their sweat, blood and tears on the line, talking to the people of Hamilton Mountain, and making sure that I had the ability to stand here and to represent them. Thank you.

Speaker, speaking of being out and knocking on doors and talking to constituents, the number one issue that I heard, for sure, was affordability; it was the cost of housing. It was, “Where are my kids going to live? Where are my grandchildren going to live?”

Young people not being able to afford to buy a home, people not being able to afford to pay the rent in places that they were staying, renovictions happening on a regular basis so that landlords could bump up the rent—those are the types of things that we can control.

Good legislation could be brought forward to this House to help those matters, to stop the renovictions, to make sure that there is real rent control in place so that they cannot flip a home or an apartment into the hundreds of dollars, pushing people onto the streets, pushing people into the unscrupulous, awful conditions that we’re hearing on a regular basis.

There was an article in the Spectator, I believe it was two days ago, talking about McMaster students not being able to afford to eat. They were struggling just to be able to find a place to live. One quote from a young person talked about having a room the size of a closet that was just big enough for a single bed, at an enormous cost to that young person, and the maybe $50 a week that they were going to have to be able to eat for that week. I’m quite sure that when we’re sending our young people to university, and we’re looking at them to be the next leaders in our communities, to be the next doctors, to be the next lawyers, to be the next engineers—why are we doing that to them, with such a struggle? They can’t afford the housing, they can’t afford to eat, they’re barely getting by, and we’re expecting them to be the next leaders of our communities.

When we talk about housing, we should be talking about the issues that actually could be addressed. This bill that has been put forward, Bill 3, which was an absolute priority for this government—we have a major health care crisis happening in our province, and the number one bill that this government brings forward is powers to give the strong-mayors powers. The title says “Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act,” but if you look through this bill, which I just did as we were sitting here talking—I’ve looked through it and cannot find the word “housing” at all, except in the title. That is not how we address the housing crisis in this province. This should not be the priority for this government coming back into the 43rd Parliament. This is not the message that I know the members across heard while they were knocking on doors—if they knocked on doors, if they talked to their constituents. This is not the message that was sent back to this Legislature. We’re not even quite sure why this is the first bill being brought back.

My colleagues who have spent time at AMO the last few days come back with the messages that the mayors they talked to—nobody wants this. Nobody wants these super powers.

Quite frankly, as I read through it and try to understand what this bill is doing, it seems quite dangerous. It seems so dangerous to give one person the power of hiring and firing the executive people like the city managers, the directors of departments. Who are those people going to be beholden to? What kind of answers and solutions do you expect out of those people if they’re beholden to a single mayor? To me, that does not make any sense whatsoever. And then to put it under the cloud of affordable housing, of ensuring that you’re fixing a housing crisis, something that people are so desperate for—they’re so desperate for help in housing, and you provide a bill that gives one person super powers.

How is it that this is the first act of business from this government in the 43rd Parliament? Is it coincidental that one of the first acts of this same Premier in 2018 was to change the Municipal Elections Act then, in the middle of an election? What is it that this Premier—what’s it going to take for him to give up on the past, on his past life at the city of Toronto and all of his hurt feelings for himself and his family during that time? What’s it going to take for him to stop imposing his power over our Municipal Elections Act during an election? That’s the question. That’s the question that people of this province want to know. They want to know why this is a priority when we have a health care crisis. They want to know why this government is talking about housing, when that’s a pure crisis, but the only thing that they’re doing is talking about it. They’re putting nothing in legislation to actually correct the issue of housing. Nothing. Do builders have issues? Are there problems with the Planning Act? Absolutely. There is no denying that. But giving mayors powers of hiring and firing over their executives—that doesn’t fix the Planning Act. Nothing in there fixes the Planning Act.

Is there stuff in here that helps encourage council to do better by the Planning Act, to do better by ensuring that we have multi-residential homes, that we have rent control? Is there anything to support a council to do those things? No, there is not. What this bill actually does is take power away from councillors, who know their area the best and who were elected by their communities, to the beholding of one person who has all the power. That’s not how we fix the housing crisis in this province—and I’m sure all of you know that, but that seems to be the case anyway.

I want to share—one of my constituents sent a voice mail, and my office transcribed it. He says, “This is horrible and forgoes democratic principles. It is terrible. It should be illegal.” He doesn’t know what I can do but “hopes that the opposition is strongly against this.”

He goes on to say, “We should not even elect a city council if the mayor has so much power.” This is what’s coming back from our average constituents. I have no idea who this gentleman is, but he felt empowered enough to make sure that I understood that his feeling on this was that it’s wrong.

People’s priorities in our communities, as you all know, if you knocked on a door, are health care and affordability. It wasn’t about mayors’ powers. There was nothing talked about that included the mayors’ powers. And quite frankly, none of you talked about the mayors’ powers either during the campaign, nor did the Premier while he was running. Nobody talked about this. This was a surprise legislation after the campaign. Nowhere during the campaign did it talk about the strong-mayor powers to ensure that this would be the number one issue coming back to the Legislature in the 43rd Parliament.

My question is really—a bit of a confusion that I’m sensing here in the members opposite. The member referred to the 42nd Parliament; we started off with a bill at that point in time that reduced the size of Toronto city council. I’m not sure if anybody can help me, but I don’t think the sky fell when that bill passed. In fact, as far as I remember, it seems like things actually worked out a lot better.

Now we’re proposing another measure to deal with a crisis that is out there. We need the million and a half homes we want to build in Ontario over the next eight to 10 years. We need a lot of housing right across the country, and we are really, really struggling with being able to find that housing, so we’re trying to [inaudible] a measure here to try to remedy that situation, and all I hear is “no.” All I hear is complaining from the opposition.

Now, we went into this last election, and the opposition party has been reduced to the teeny, tiny little caucus that we see before us today. I’m just wondering if the member opposite will ever learn to say yes. That’s my question, Mr. Speaker.

I’d like to thank the member from Hamilton Mountain for her comments. Like the member from Hamilton Mountain, I heard a lot on the doorsteps about the need for affordable housing. I heard it from families of all types and sizes, whether they owned their own home or they were renting. Another thing I’ve heard a lot about was tenants who risked being evicted from the housing that they had, because their landlord was trying to push them out, knowing that the landlord could jack up the rent to whatever they wanted for the next tenant.

What I did not hear anything about from any of my constituents—I did not hear it from my Conservative opponent, either—was a demand for any additional powers for the mayor. Even the mayor of Ottawa said he’s not interested in additional powers. So I’m wondering if the member can comment on whether it would have been a better option for the government to in fact introduce real rent control and vacancy control to address the housing crisis, rather than giving mayoral powers nobody is asking for.

Questions?

It should have been health care, and it should have been housing for real—real issues to fix housing, real issues to ensure that those same students I just talked about are not sleeping in closets with a single bed and less than $50 a week to eat. I’m sure none of your kids are doing that. Let’s make sure other kids in this province have the opportunity too.

Interjections.

His priorities are backwards. We should be talking about health care. We should be talking about real solutions to housing. We should be talking about affordability. There are so many things that we could be talking about instead of increasing the power of a couple of mayors, which aren’t even going to cover the whole entire province. How are they going to deal with regional chairs? How are they going to deal with those unelected folks who are appointed to these positions? I guess we’re going to have to wait until we see the regulations to actually understand fully the impact that this legislation is going to have on the people of this province.

So he’s looking for more power. This is all this is about. There is nothing in here that benefits the people of this province. The only thing this bill does is benefit the Premier.

The rental market is a big enough problem. We have people who are literally piling up into rooms to be able to have a roof over their heads. We have tents that are building up and building up and building up, because people do not have affordable housing. That could have been the first measure that came before this House—making sure that we were dealing with the renovictions, that we were dealing with rent stabilization, rent control. Instead, this government has removed any protections that there were in front, and then their first course of action is to provide the strong-mayors bill, which is nothing—I’m curious, actually. I would hope that maybe with the next question that comes forward, the member could take the time to tell me that their constituents specifically asked for this bill over health care and housing.

I want to thank the member for her submission today. I want to draw a parallel to what this bill would be like if this was the province. I would like all people to consider this fact: The Premier of Ontario, arguably the most powerful person in Ontario, has one vote in this chamber—a single vote, no veto power—and yet despite this, through appointments and through the power that he has over his own government, he’s able to win every single vote in this chamber. He doesn’t require these other additions to his power; he’s able to do it in all the same ways that mayors do it to win all their votes in their own municipalities. Now, super powers are being given to mayors only if they fall in line with what the Premier of this province wants, who already gets everything he wants.

Do you see any concerns, given the priorities this government has shown to give these powers to mayors who are not even asking for it?

Last week, the Toronto Star columnist Martin Regg Cohn wrote in support of Bill 3. He wrote that the Premier “got it right with” our stronger mayors plan:

“A weak mayor system keeps Toronto weak..... municipal amalgamation, paired with mayoral emasculation, equals political gridlock.

“By restoring balance to the equation, Ontario can help Toronto balance its budgets, sparing us the” usual fiscal crisis on council.

I want to give the member an opportunity to comment on the article that Martin Regg Cohn wrote.