This is the first time, actually, I’ve risen to speak in this Parliament. I want to thank the people of Peterborough–Kawartha for giving me the honour, again, to be their voice, as I have been for the last four years.

One of the challenges that Ontario faces is a growing population over the next 10 years. We’re expected to add more than 2.5 million people, and we have seen over the last two decades really, a lack of housing that has been built and challenges in doing it. There have been a number of changes that have been made by different governments throughout the years to try to address this. And every time a change is made, it seems that someone finds a way to weaponize one of those changes to make it possible to delay.

I’m going to talk specifically about some of the challenges in Peterborough. I’m very close to what happens in Peterborough, coming from the riding there. I don’t necessarily experience the challenges that you see in Toronto or that you see in Ottawa, and the strong-mayors legislation is specifically for these two cities to make some adjustments. But I think that if you take a look at, historically, what my community has been, my community has always been seen as a microcosm of everything that’s happening in Canada.

For more than 40 years, we were a test market for everything. When a company wanted a new product, when they were going to introduce something new, they would introduce it in Peterborough as one of the test markets, because we had that mix of individuals. We had blue-collar workers. We had manufacturing. We had knowledge base. We have a college, a university. We have a great, diverse population. We have a strong arts community—

We’re also the centre of the lacrosse universe in Peterborough as well. And, as everyone knows, I refer to it as God’s country, so how could it be bad? But I digress.

Whenever something was being introduced, it was being introduced in Peterborough, and they took a look at what our market would do and how successful something would be. I think if you take a look at what has happened in Peterborough over the last number of years, it represents what has happened all across Ontario.

In June 2018, when I was first elected, the average home price was $314,000. Last month, it was $760,000. We have a shortage of housing. In 2019, in the city of Peterborough, only five single-family home building permits were issued. The population in Peterborough proper, the city itself, has grown by almost 4,500 people in four years, yet we’ve had just a shade over 1,200 new residences added, whether that be a house, condo, apartment—only 1,200. Our vacancy rate is 1%. Rental rates have increased significantly because we don’t have the inventory. Housing prices have increased significantly because we don’t have the inventory.

Kate Kidd, the former president of the Peterborough–Kawartha area realtors—her term just ended in July—said to me about a year ago that we need an inventory of 1,400 to 1,500 houses for sale at any given time to make sure that we have enough inventory. We had less than 100 this past January. In February, we were averaging about 127 listings. Right now if you go to realtor.ca, there’s a little over 400. We’re still significantly lower than what we should have to have the proper inventory.

There are lot of pressures that have been put on my community, in particular. Yes, I am talking about Peterborough, but Peterborough is that microcosm of everything else that’s going on in Ontario. When the 407 opened all the way to Highway 115, a great addition to the transportation network, what it meant was—those individuals who were being priced out in the GTA, who could not find a home in the GTA—it was easy for them to commute from Peterborough, and we’ve had a number of people come in. There was a time when it made perfect sense to do that.

My colleague from Oakville, who was my seatmate early on in the last session, had talked about home prices in Oakville. Actually, prior to being elected, the house beside me sold to somebody from Oakville. At the time, they had sold a two-bedroom home with a 30-foot lot in Oakville for $1.2 million. They moved to Peterborough. At the time—this is prior to 2018—they bought a five-bedroom home with two bathrooms on a 65-by-130-foot lot that backed on to environmentally protected green space. I’m painting a beautiful picture of it. Who wouldn’t want to live with wildlife right behind your home in the city? They paid $418,000 for it.

So we saw an influx, when the 407 opened, of individuals who were able to sell their property in the GTA for a very large sum—and it’s gone up in the GTA—and move to Peterborough for a significantly lower price and have more home, a better lot and a higher quality of life. That raised the price in Peterborough to what it is today, $760,000 for the average home in Peterborough, whereas just over four years ago it was just a shade over $300,000—$314,000. That’s a massive jump.

Why am I focusing on that? Peterborough city council has made a number of what I would say are poor decisions around housing. I’ll go back to 2019: five single-family residential home permits issued—five, that’s it. More than 4,000 people moved into the community, 1,200 homes, apartments or condos is all that we’ve added, and the previous council used some of the tools to delay, to not make decisions.

In my old neighbourhood, just around the corner from where my house was, a developer had a piece of property. Originally he wanted to have a single level of commercial and two storeys above that of residential. He was not able to find someone to move into the commercial property because there weren’t enough people in that general vicinity to make it worthwhile for commercial activity to happen. There weren’t enough people. It wasn’t convenient enough for a professional office like a dentist, a lawyer. There weren’t enough people in the area to put in a retail outlet, a convenience store or a small grocery store, just because of the nature of where it was. But it’s not far from Trent University. It’s a walkable distance to Trent University, and there’s actually a walking trail that goes right to Trent.

That was blocked by council because the developer wanted to change it to a six-storey apartment building, and council said no because of some pushback—not because it didn’t meet the requirements of the community, not because the transportation study wasn’t effective, not because there wasn’t the demand—they were afraid they were going to offend someone and they were going to lose votes. And when you have councils that are doing those types of things, then you’re not serving the needs of your community. That developer took the city to LPAT and won, because the city chose not to send someone to the LPAT hearing to oppose it.

On Sherbrooke Street, another development: 164 homes, 164 apartments to be put in. A few city councillors lobbied to say no to it because they had some pushback from some other individuals in the area. On Lansdowne Street, two developments: The developer originally wanted 14 storeys, came down to 10, and the city came back and said, “No, six is all you could do.” They couldn’t build them then and actually make it work. The city was taken to LPAT by the developer on all of those, and the developers have won. And in each case, the city chose not to have a delegation come because they knew they were going to lose. They were doing it for political reasons, not for the right reasons.

And that’s happening in a community like Peterborough. As I said earlier on in my speech, Peterborough is the microcosm for everything that happens across Ontario. If you want to see what’s going to happen in this province, look at Peterborough, because it will be emulated or replicated in other areas. The cost of housing has gone sky high and councils have continually made decisions to block development—not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they’re concerned about gaining votes or losing votes.

What we have to do is take a look at what is in the best interest of the entire community, what’s in the best interest of the city. We have 2.5 million people coming into Ontario over the next 10 years. We set a record last year in housing starts of just over 100,000—100,000 units built last year, the most that we’ve had in more than 30 years. That will not get us to 2.5 million over 10 years. It will not get us enough bedrooms for the people who are going to be coming into this province. It won’t. And it was a record year.

The problem is we have councils who are saying no to development. “No, we don’t want a house over there.” “No, we don’t want this.” “No, we don’t want that.” And what I find interesting about it and almost hypocritical—

I have heard about empowered mayors, but I’ve also heard about disempowered councillors and disempowered communities who will be losing substantial access to their voice at council. There’s also nothing to say that any family will be able to afford any single one of these homes, because there is nothing in the bill that addresses this.

So how does the bill, or how does your government, intend to address accessibility and affordability?

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?

When we look at the legislation, you understand that our checks and balances are very important for our democratic system, but the complexity of problems has increased. I think if we look back to 100 years ago, the issues surrounding those people and those who came before us would seem complicated as well, but the level of complexity that we’re dealing with nowadays is increasing, and so time matters. I said that before. By streamlining this process and making sure that the checks and balances are there with the mayor and the council, we can get more shovels into the ground.

I just want to comment because it’s been a bit misleading. It’s making it sound like the councillors have no control in this at all, and that just isn’t the case. This includes robust safeguards and an important role for municipal councillors. We know councillors have a critical job representing the interests of their constituents, which is why this legislation gives council the ability to override vetoes with the support of two thirds of council members. This is an important check and balance.

In any case, if you understand supply and demand, these are basic economic principles, and as my colleague on this side mentioned, it is supply and demand, and if we cannot create an environment where homes are affordable because the supply exists, it won’t matter how much we give people; the supply still won’t be there.

The supply must be created. Time matters. That’s why the process that we go through at the municipal level to approve developments, to get shovels in the ground—as my colleague across the hall just mentioned, it is absolutely critical that the supply be there, that we’re training people to be—