Thank you, Speaker. It only took a few minutes to read the bill because there’s not a lot in it. I listened intently to the government speakers yesterday, who wandered all over the political map for a couple of hours. I’ll leave it to the Speaker to determine whether I’m on topic when I discuss issues of why the government is not addressing housing in this bill.

I’ll be talking about the things that the government should be addressing, and one of those things, obviously, was brought up just last week, when the official opposition leader tabled the greenbelt restoration act. It would be great in this bill if the government took the opportunity to do what they promised to do and repealed the greenbelt legislation. The bill that we proposed, which the government could have put in this bill, repealed the Conservatives’ 2022—

Let me talk about someone who’s looking for affordable housing in my riding. I trust that will be acceptable to the Speaker, and maybe make him a little more comfortable for a few minutes and not quite as agitated. I’m going to talk about Tim Gibson, someone from my riding who’s having a really hard time finding affordable housing. The Premier recently stated of the government’s housing policy, “It’s not a little bit better; it’s not 10% better; it’s a thousand times better on all fronts. It’s a thousand times better” since the government took office. That’s the Premier’s words. So while the government continues to stumble from one bad idea to another, people across Ontario still do not have access to affordable housing.

Tim Gibson from my riding in Niagara Centre—60 years old. He lives in Niagara Regional Housing, and he’s lived there for 15 years. He’s on ODSP. He gets $700 a month because of the rent-geared-to-income housing. He went to the Hope Centre food bank recently. I’ve met with food banks in my riding recently; they’re having a real hard time all across Ontario. People from Feed Ontario were here last session telling all members of the Legislature—and I hope many of them took advantage of the opportunity to visit them for their reception—what a difficult time they’re having as this government’s policies fail and people have to choose between rent and food.

He went to the Hope Centre food bank, and all they had left was two cans of spaghetti sauce. So he got a $50 gift card from St. Vincent de Paul society. He was telling me this the other day. He left the grocery store with five items, including a bag of potatoes, a package of hamburger, a package of chicken, a dozen eggs and a tub of margarine. That’s all $50 got him. He wants to speak to the Premier directly to raise his concerns. He knows he’s lucky to have rent geared to income—that’s what he told me—but the housing complex he lives in is tired, and repairs are slow to come, if at all. He worries the place will be shut down for bylaw infractions. Where would all those people go? Even though he’s housed, he worries about being homeless.

Speaker, we hear hundreds of stories from people in my riding and across Ontario on the brink of homelessness. We have food banks that have told us people who used to donate are now the ones who are receiving food, and yet the Premier has the nerve to say things are a thousand times better than ever before.

Tim Gibson, the man I just referenced, wanted to speak to the Premier, so I gave him the Premier’s number. I know the Premier says he likes to give his phone number out, so I hope he speaks to Tim.

Another example: In an article published just the other day in the St. Catharines Standard, titled “‘Perfect Storm of Obstacles’ Impacts Food Programs,” Jessica Stephenson, who is the Niagara Nutrition Partners program manager in Niagara, said, “It’s unprecedented times at the moment. We’re currently experiencing a perfect storm of obstacles that impact how we run our programs. We’re just trying to meet that increase in student population to make sure that all students have access to a healthy meal at all times....

“Niagara Nutrition Partners receives funding from the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services but the provincial money—it has remained stagnant since 2014 despite inflation and rising population—only covers a portion of the cost, leaving gaps it works to fill through groups such as United Way, helping put ‘buffers in place,’ so” schools can provide meals year-long. Again, Speaker, this Premier thinks that things are a thousand times better on all fronts.

Housing affordability in Niagara: I hope the government House leader doesn’t mind me talking about housing affordability—

In Niagara, we’re seeing people spend upwards of 60% of their take-home income on housing alone. According to Niagara Association of Realtors, the average price of homes sold in August 2023 was $688,754. A modest one-bedroom in Welland, for example, is going for $1,400 a month. A basement one-bedroom apartment in Port Colborne is $1,300. How does someone like Tim, who I mentioned, afford to buy groceries and at the same time pay rent when they’re only getting $700 or $800 a month?

Rents have risen across Ontario over the past 20 years, particularly since 2011. Shortly after this government was elected, they eliminated rent control on new units. There’s no legal limit set on how much landlords can charge in rent for new builds that are occupied for the first time after November of 2018.

We all agree that we need to build more homes, but we keep pointing out that you can’t just look at supply. You have to look at demand. The title of the bill is about housing affordability, but this government refuses to look at the price of homes, at the demand for affordable homes in Ontario. This government seems to keep feeding the demands of speculators while ignoring the demands of Ontarians who just want an affordable place to live.

This government has ignored the advice of its own experts and its own Housing Affordability Task Force by not ending exclusionary zoning. The government is failing to enable missing-middle housing to make it easier for people of all incomes, ages, family sizes and abilities to access affordable housing options in the neighbourhoods and communities they need to live in.

For Niagara Regional Housing, the wait-list for an affordable unit in Thorold, where I live, is eight years. In Welland, you’re waiting from four to eight years; in St. Catharines, eight to 15 years. In Niagara Falls, you could be looking at anywhere from five to 20 years for an affordable housing unit.

We have been calling for a strong public sector role to deliver new affordable and non-market housing that the for-profit sector can’t or won’t deliver. This government has relied almost entirely on the private market to deliver new housing. Their main tools have been deregulation, tax cuts and sacrificing more farmland and natural heritage to urban development. This approach, Speaker, has clearly failed.

Simply putting forward a bill that changes the definition of “affordability,” although it’s an improvement and we appreciate it, will do nothing to build new homes. There are so many more things this government should be doing. Instead, they’ve focused on delivering benefits to well-connected landowners and donors while sacrificing farmland instead of focusing on delivering housing that’s actually affordable and meets the needs of regular Ontarians.

Part of this bill is doing what this government does best, which is shifting cost and responsibility from developers onto municipalities, so we have to talk about municipalities and how they will be affected. There’s still much more the government should be doing to spur the construction of new non-market homes, especially homes that are affordable for low-income households. While we support incentives like development charge exemptions to encourage the construction of purpose-built rental housing, especially affordable homes, the province should be covering these costs, not cash-strapped municipalities that are already struggling after over 25 years of provincial downloads and cuts.

The Ford government shows no indication it intends to keep its promise to make municipalities whole for Bill 23 revenue losses. When I asked about this, the Premier said, and I remember this very vividly from question period, “Municipalities love spending money.... We don’t have an income problem at the city halls across the province; we have a spending problem. That’s the issue.”

Once again, as they’re doing in this bill, they’re shifting responsibility and costs from the province to municipalities. Again, we have another bill that fails to fulfill the government’s promise to make municipalities whole after the financial ruin they caused with Bill 23. There’s nothing to make up for the municipal deficits which will result in service cuts and higher property taxes. AMO has calculated that cities are seeing a $5-billion revenue shortfall from Bill 23. Changing the definition of affordability is not going to address that problem.

The city of Pickering is raising taxes by 2.44% due to Bill 23. Coupled with the region of Durham’s increase of 2.87%, Pickering taxpayers will be paying an additional 5.3% on their bill. The major challenge was the lack of development charges coming into the city as a result of Bill 23, which was the More Homes Built Faster Act.

In Niagara, “the legislation reduces or freezes development charges, the fees municipalities collect from developers and rely on for growth-related services such as roads and infrastructure.

“If the provincial government doesn’t offer some form of compensation,” regional chair Jim “Bradley has said the region would annually have to raise property taxes 11% to cover an estimated $122 million in lost revenue.”

A report by the city of St. Catharines stated, “The proposed reduced fees will shift the financial burden onto existing taxpayers instead of growth paying for growth. This will put significant stress on the city’s budget and planning to accommodate for the lost revenue required for the city’s capital projects.... Further financial risk will be taken by the city due to the downloading of responsibilities, additional studies, programs, staffing and the increased need for long-term debt.”

Although I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to address it today, Speaker, municipalities, on top of this financial stress, are facing the anxiety presented by this government’s tinkering with governance. It’s interesting that one of the first things the government House leader did in taking over the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing was to put the brakes on that, but it would be nice for municipalities if they didn’t have to deal with further confusion and had some idea of how the government plans to deal with those regional governance reviews.

“In Brampton, city council received a staff report in November estimating revenue losses equalling as much as an 80% property tax increase.” And all of these increases, Speaker, are under the guise of helping to create housing in Ontario.

In Guelph, “staff are also recommending eliminating the annual $500,000 transfer to the city’s affordable housing reserve fund to help offset the impacts ... from Bill 23....” So there’s an example directly impacting a city’s affordable housing reserve fund.

In Waterloo, they’ve said that the draft budget contains a proposed tax increase of 5.35% that would add about $75 to the average property tax bill. However, over the next five years, the city stands to lose between $23 million and $31 million in development charges—fees paid by developers to municipalities to offset the cost of new facilities and services.

Waterloo also said, “Between the impacts of record inflation in 2022 and the implementation of Bill 23, local municipalities are projecting significant tax increases.

“Regional government is looking at a hike of ... 9.8%, adding $147 to the average property tax bill.”

“The township of North Dumfries is projecting a 4.8% property tax hike for 2023” as a result of this government’s housing policy on regional governments “in large part due to the expected impacts” from the More Homes Built Faster Act.

Huron-Perth: “Without additional funding from the province to offset this loss of revenue, municipalities will have little option but to put these costs back on the taxpayer. Adding more costs to existing property owners will increase their costs and could negatively impact current homeowners, who may already be struggling with rising interest rates, to keep their current housing affordable.”

In Markham, they’ve said, “City staff members presented a report on the various impacts of the proposed Bill 23 legislative changes. The most alarming revelation was that the changes in Bill 23 could cost the city $136 million in annual revenue, requiring an increase of 50% to 80% on property taxes to maintain existing service levels, equalling an estimated $600 to $1,000 per year to the average homeowner.”

Now, this bill would have been a perfect opportunity, Speaker, for the government to keep their promise to make municipalities whole.

Brampton city council has joined other municipalities in voicing serious concerns over the economic impacts of the provincial government’s Bill 23. The bill is equivalent to an 80% property tax increase over the next 10 years. To put it simply, that bill, Bill 23, shifted a significant financial cost from developers onto already struggling municipalities and that cost would be handed down, obviously, to folks who are struggling to find a home to own or rent.

Now, we’ve talked a little about things that could have been in this bill, and one of the things I’ve heard, actually, from the new minister, the government House leader, when he took over the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing after the scandals through the summer, was that they may be taking up an NDP idea, which is a “use it or lose it” clause for developers.

Folks will remember that this government, in its efforts to blame municipalities for everything that goes wrong in the housing market, put very strict rules on municipalities about the time that it takes to move approvals through municipal planning departments—not a bad thing to require municipalities to do things in a reasonable period of time, but they failed to do the same thing with developers.

So, it was great to hear the minister, when he was attempting to change channels after the scandal, take up a good NDP idea which is to bring in a “use it or lose it” clause for developers. There’s a housing development in Port Colborne, in my riding, that was approved in the 1980s and has yet to break ground. AMO and the big city mayors have all pointed out that there are 1.25 million homes in the approval pipeline that are not being built. The government could have taken advantage of this opportunity, after already speaking about it in the media, to make that part of this bill, but they chose not to. I hope that they move forward and do that in the very near future.

During question period I asked the previous Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing if this government would “stop blaming municipalities, do what is fair and implement a sunset clause of approvals so that developers and builders must build housing in a reasonable period of time after they’ve been approved.” We have yet to hear a commitment from the government, as I’ve mentioned. I hope we hear that soon.

The NDP has put forward amendments in committee to Bill 23. They were rejected unfortunately by this government, and I hope they’re changing their tune now. Our amendment stated, “Section 41 ... (15.4) Subject to and in accordance with the regulations, a municipality may, by bylaw, impose penalties on the owner of the land for failure to substantially commence development within a timely manner after the plans and drawings have been approved under this section.”

Planners, Mr. Speaker, say that if the province could incentivize developers to build what it is already approved, they would be 85% of the way to their goal. Now, we can argue about whether that’s exaggerated—I’m sure the government would say it is—but let’s say it was only 50%. Let’s say by implementing something like this, we could get 50% to our goal, why would the government not move forward to this if it wasn’t because they are afraid of the pushback from their developer friends?

In a CBC article, the chair of the Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario, Thom Hunt, said, “If the province could incentivize developers to build what is already approved by municipalities, they’d be 85% of the way toward their goal, well ahead of their target. I think the report starts to tell the story that the housing supply challenge isn’t really a land supply or development approval problem.... The bigger problem is, probably, how do you compel a developer to build? How do you increase the rate of construction?”

Unfortunately, we have here another housing bill that fails to include a sunset clause to incentivize developers. Despite the government not taking action, some municipalities are already moving ahead with this plan, because they know that it would work.

In April 2022, Aurora mayor Tom Mrakas stated, “Aurora town council unanimously approved a motion ... to add a sunset clause to all future site-specific zoning bylaw amendments. What this means is that if a development applicant does not satisfy the time frame requirements and obtain a building permit, the development approvals will be revoked and the zoning of the property will return to its original state.”

The statement goes on to say, “With this planning mechanism in place, Aurora can be better positioned to foster appropriate development that will meet the needs of current and future residents when they need it.”

Here’s a simple yet effective mechanism this government could implement today. They could have put it in this bill. Instead, since coming to power they’ve wasted everyone’s time with things like strong-mayor powers, regional reviews and flip-flops on selling the greenbelt. It’s great to hear the new Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing speaking to the media and indicating he may move forward with an NDP idea, and I hope, certainly, that we see that happen. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in this bill.

Things that we would have loved to see in this bill, Speaker:

—implementing real rent control—we’ve talked about that;

—building truly affordable housing, including non-profit, public, co-op and supportive housing;

—cracking down on greedy land speculation;

—establishing inclusionary zoning to build homes within existing neighbourhoods near transit and other key infrastructure; and

—getting the federal and provincial governments back in the business of building homes that people can actually afford.

When the government says that the official opposition, the NDP, are always saying no, that they don’t have solutions, that’s not true. We’ve proposed solutions continually and we have some solutions that could be implemented right away. It would have been really easy to include some of this stuff—especially the sunset clause that I referred to—in this bill, but the government is not trying to solve the housing crisis; they’re trying to handle a scandal.

AMO released a response to Bill 134, the Affordable Homes and Good Jobs Act. They put out a press release: “At its meeting on September 29, the AMO board considered the recent request made by” the minister “to mayors across Ontario regarding their views on the recommendations of the Housing Affordability Task Force.”

Remember, Speaker, this was the task force that said, “You don’t need to build on the greenbelt. We have enough land within urban boundaries. We don’t need to force urban boundaries to expand. We don’t need MZOs. We have the land we need.”

AMO says, “The minister has requested that all heads of council respond to the request by October 16 or risk financial penalties for their municipality. AMO had previously requested that the ministry extend the deadline to allow mayors to consult with councils; however, the request was not granted.”

So here’s AMO saying, “Look, our members have received your request. We want some time so the mayors can talk to their councils,” and the minister said, “No, no, I’m not going to give you that time.” They can waste all the time they want, but they’re not going to give municipalities time for mayors to even speak to their councils.

“AMO states that at a sector level, municipalities conditionally support all task force recommendations with a few exceptions, provided that the government puts in place”—and here is what AMO wants. It’s not pie in the sky, nothing unreasonable. Here’s what they want:

“—a fair and sustainable funding framework to support infrastructure and growth, that is not unduly subsidized by existing property taxpayers”—we talked about that already;

“—a comprehensive, sequenced implementation plan that gives both developers and municipalities certainty regarding costs and rules to support effective long-term decision-making”—doesn’t sound unreasonable to me;

“—an accountability framework that accurately recognizes the roles and responsibilities of different housing partners and does not hold municipalities accountable for the actions of developers or provincial ministries. Mechanisms must be included to ensure that public investments are tied to outcomes in the public interest;

“—a core focus on non-market housing”—that’s something we’ve talked about for a long time—“which was not within the mandate of the housing affordability task force. A robust non-market housing sector is a critical part of a well-functioning overall housing system and needs to be prioritized by governments”—they’re saying government needs to get back in the game;

“—a public policy review by the Ontario Public Service verifying that each recommendation is feasible, likely to result in increased housing supply and/or affordability and is in the public interest.”

It’s amazing that we don’t have that already.

So the letter identifies top recommendations from the task force for prioritization, as well as three recommendations that AMO objects to on principle.

“AMO has previously stated that the government has chosen its own path in addressing the housing crisis”—that’s AMO, representing 144 municipalities across Ontario. The government haven’t listened to us. They’ve chosen their own path “in addressing the housing crisis in Ontario, despite the advice of municipalities, and will be accountable for its outcomes. AMO has also stated that municipalities will do everything within their power to help the province to achieve its housing targets and outcomes. The AMO board believes that the response outlined in the letter is reflective of this approach.”

So they’re saying, “The government hasn’t listened to us. They’ve gone their own way. But we still want to work with you.” There’s time to change direction. Municipalities want to work with the government, but they can’t blame municipalities for every problem that exists with the affordable housing crisis. They have to work with municipalities, and they have to listen when municipalities come to them.

Bill 63, which the NDP supported, is being renamed Supporting Manufacturing in St. Thomas Act. I want to emphasize, in closing, some of the things I said when originally speaking to Bill 63. As you all know, the opposition supported this bill, and we have to give credit not only to municipal, provincial and federal governments, but, as we pointed out, to unions as well, who went through very difficult times with thousands of their members losing jobs. They went to the bargaining table. So I think we have to give some credit where credit is due to unions like Unifor and the Steelworkers and others who have gone to the bargaining table and worked with the government. This was obviously something that was led by the federal government and with the industry to try to create the conditions to bring some of these jobs back. And this is one area where we all came together in this House and supported that EV battery factory, which will bring back some of the many manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the past.

St. Thomas was one of those areas in Ontario that was devastated when we lost manufacturing jobs, especially in the 1990s. According to Statistics Canada, from the early 2000s to the mid-2010s, the number of employees in manufacturing fell by roughly half a million in Canada, and we’ve seen the long-lasting impact of that first-hand in Niagara. For example, the St. Catharines General Motors plant, at one time, was up to 11,000 or 12,000 manufacturing jobs; now they’re down to a couple of thousand. So it’s great to see the possibility of some of those jobs coming back, and the official opposition was happy to support a bill that helped to make that happen.

To conclude, we will be supporting Bill 134, Affordable Homes and Good Jobs Act. However, this government has been in power for over five years, and we’ve yet to see a comprehensive, transparent housing plan based on facts and evidence. The government continues lurching from one random decision to another, one scandal to another, with no consistency in their direction or their motives. While this government continues to waste everyone’s time, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., as I mentioned, lowered their projections on how many homes will be constructed in Ontario.

People need affordable places to live, but this government’s failed policies are not delivering the housing people urgently need. In fact, they’re making everything worse. People no longer trust this government to fix the housing crisis. Given the size and urgency of the housing crisis, these measures in this bill are meagre measures that won’t do all that much to make life easier for people. Redefining affordable housing by tying it to a person’s income and not the market is an improvement, but this government is still letting developers off the hook from paying their fair share for services that people need, including parks, transit and affordable housing.

As a result of government inaction, more and more folks are struggling to pay their bills and keep a roof over their head, like Tim Gibson, who I mentioned, from my riding. It’s never been more expensive to rent or own a home after five years of Conservative government. We’ve been calling for the government to tackle the housing crisis from every angle to make it easier to buy or rent a place to call home. That includes real rent control. It includes clamping down on speculation and getting the province back into the business of building homes you can actually afford. We will continue to do that work, Speaker.