This question is for the Premier. Early last year, the government’s own hand-picked Housing Affordability Task Force made 55 recommendations to encourage new housing supply. The task force said that a shortage of land was not the cause of the housing crisis. They recommended, in fact, that the greenbelt and farmland be protected.

Instead, the Premier and his government went ahead anyway and they tried to make their friends richer. Now they’re being investigated by the RCMP.

To the Premier: Why did his government rig the system to benefit a select few insiders instead of the people of Ontario?

Government House leader and Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Supplementary question?

The Premier.

Interjections.

The final supplementary.

Speaker, this government’s greenbelt grab, their MZOs, their urban boundary changes: They’re not about building housing at all. One of the task force’s recommendations was to allow four-storey multiplex housing in every neighbourhood. The NDP tried to add this into the government’s most recent housing bill and the government said no. In fact, the member for Perth–Wellington said the government was doing just enough—enough. Doing enough to address the housing crisis? Doing enough while housing starts across the province are going down and not up?

Back to the Premier: When will he start putting people’s needs ahead of his own backroom deals?

The Premier has wasted over a year enriching his friends, throwing the planning system into chaos and making it harder to build the homes that Ontarians actually need, in the neighbourhoods where they want to live. Back to the Premier: How many homes would have been built by now if he hadn’t put shady backroom deals first?

Speaker, expert after expert has shown that we need to build at least 1.5 million new homes. The Ontario NDP supports this goal, but so far the government has relied entirely on half measures. Their whole housing plan is predicated on backroom deals, and now they’re under an RCMP criminal investigation. According to the government’s own figures, housing starts in Ontario—as I said—are projected to go down, not up. Clearly this government’s plan is not working, so back to the Premier: Will he get his government out of the backrooms and off the massage tables and start building the homes our province actually needs?

So back to the Premier: Will he support the NDP’s solution to build the non-market housing that our province so desperately needs?

Interjections.

Interjections.

Housing is a human right, just like health care and education and retirement security. If the private sector won’t build enough homes that are affordable for everyone who needs one, then the public sector must step up. It is clear this government’s plan isn’t working, Speaker. Those of us on this side of the House, we want to make sure every Ontarian has a good home they can actually afford.

Interjections.

Interjections.

Last night—I usually don’t watch the news—I was flicking the channels, and Mister Green was on the show saying we need more housing. In Guelph, they have the lowest—

Anyway, I’m glad that you’ve agreed to vote for our infrastructure and housing plan, Highway 7, Highway 413. It’s going to benefit the people from Guelph.

My question is for the Premier. This government has wasted years failing to address the housing crisis. Breaking all the rules, so a handful of wealthy well-connected insiders can cash in paving over farmland. Greenbelt, boundary expansions, MZOs: It’s past time to start building homes that ordinary people can afford in the communities they want to live in, on land already approved for development.

To do this, local governments will need money for sewer and water lines, streets and transit operations in order to service new homes, but this government took that money away and residents are now facing big property tax hikes and delayed home building, making the affordability crisis worse.

Will the government make people and municipalities whole by closing the financial gap they created?

Last week, Guelph city council approved a major housing project for students. Guelph has passed rules for multiplexes. Guelph is ready to build. Here’s the challenge municipalities including Guelph face: The government took $1.5 billion away from municipalities. Municipalities need that money for sewer lines, water lines, to build the infrastructure needed for new homes. I want those new homes to have sewer and water lines. They won’t be built if it doesn’t happen.

The government a year ago said they would make municipalities whole. They have failed to deliver that. Will they commit to it today, Speaker?

I move that, in the opinion of this House, the government of Ontario should establish and fund a new public agency called Homes Ontario to finance and build 250,000 new affordable and non-market homes on public land over 10 years, to be operated and/or constructed by public, non-profit or co-op housing providers.

If we look towards the history, government was once an integral part of building the vital housing that we need. Following World War II, a crown corporation known as Wartime Housing Ltd. successfully built and managed thousands of units for returning veterans. It was the right thing to do, Speaker. Canada built 1.5 million of these homes for heroes between 1943 and 1960 on government land for moderate-income households. This is equivalent to six million homes today.

Between 1973 and 1994, Canada built or acquired around 16,000 units, 16,000 non-profit or co-operative homes, every year—Speaker, 16,000 every single year. Since the mid-1990s, though, federal and provincial governments’ housing policies have moved away from this and towards the private, for-profit market to deliver the new housing that people need.

This government and governments prior have created a housing crisis. Both private developers and non-profit providers have noted that without access to free land, creating new rental housing is increasingly difficult due to high development costs, and creating that truly affordable housing is next to impossible. Thus, the private sector hasn’t built the types of housing that people truly require. They haven’t built enough affordable housing, supportive housing or purpose-built rental housing to meet Ontario’s housing needs. This is the government’s responsibility.

In terms of the motion itself, establishing a new public agency, Homes Ontario, to finance and build 250,000 new affordable and non-market homes would ensure an adequate supply of rental homes meeting the needs of low- to moderate-income families, and it would be at all stages of life, from couples to young families to seniors. These homes would be operated by public, non-profit or co-op housing providers and permanently protected from the speculation and financialization of the private market.

Nobody needs to say it again, but we are in a housing crisis, Speaker, and we’re not going to get out unless we have big ideas. On this side of the House, we’re proposing a massive expansion of new homes for Ontario by undoing decades of bad policy and getting the government back in the business of building housing.

The backroom deals and rampant land speculation this government has been partaking in are setting Ontario back. Housing starts are going down. We are going in the wrong direction. So here with the Ontario NDP, we are calling for a new approach with Homes Ontario, where public land and resources are unlocked for the creation of new homes that people can actually afford.

Everyone in Ontario has a right to safe and affordable housing, to live in the community they want to live in. If we look towards the foundational and fundamental principles of housing itself, we know that without housing, little else matters. Housing is even more than shelter. When we help low-income households access the housing they need, we’re doing more than putting a roof over people’s heads. We’re building a foundation for broader social and economic success for so many families.

The Canadian Paediatric Society has warned that living in housing need can negatively affect all aspects of child and youth physical, mental, developmental and social health. By depriving children of a quiet place to study, to read and to do homework, crowded living conditions compromise their educational success. When insecure housing leads to those frequent moves, children’s readiness for school and the continuity of their education and academic performance are hurt, with long-term consequences for future employment and earnings. Teachers are saying to students, “Read. Do your homework. Concentrate.” How can that happen when there is that instability for housing? It’s impossible, Speaker.

A CMHC-funded study, a survey of Habitat for Humanity families, found that participants reported across-the-board improvements for their children’s well-being and school performance since obtaining their homes. Good housing doesn’t take the place of other ingredients for success, but it demonstrably does provide the stability from which to leverage for better outcomes. Its absence makes it that much harder for vulnerable Canadians to get ahead.

I ask my colleagues on the government side of the House to picture the people of Ontario. When I’m out in my community, I meet young families who want to grow but don’t have the space. I meet brilliant young people who are living out of their parents’ basements with no path out of it. I talk to young people who are looking to pursue their post-secondary education or graduate studies, but their future is impacted by the place that they can afford, not the program of study they want to go into or the educational institution that they want to pursue. I think of all the seniors who are in places that don’t suit their needs, that, quite frankly, might be dangerous, but are trapped.

Speaker, we need to ask ourselves, why does this kind of housing matter? Housing doesn’t just keep us safe and warm; it gives us a sense of mental, physical and financial stability that cannot be understated. Stable housing changes everything. When people have stable housing, they can raise a family. They can retire. They can have something to leave behind. Secure housing impacts families for generations. A good place to call home is a source of dignity with benefits that radiate out to a family, a community and an incredible place like Ontario in a great country like ours.

If we look towards the economic development benefits, housing also matters at a microeconomic level: to individual families and households. But this government seems to fail to understand that it also matters at the macroeconomic level: to our broader economic and financial stability. When people are in suitable housing and are not spending tremendous amounts on that housing, that money is spent within their communities. It has tremendous community benefits.

Too often, we see the reliance on the for-profit market. We see these real estate investment trusts. Where does that money go, Speaker? Largely, it leaves Ontario. It leaves Canada.

A strong housing sector supports an incredibly robust economy. It creates jobs in the construction and renovation sector, and generates spinoff benefits in related industries. The construction industry alone contributed 7.7% to Ontario’s GDP in 2021. Public development supports the generation of good, reliable jobs for the people of Ontario. Developing just one affordable housing unit generates two new jobs. These residential construction jobs are overwhelmingly local and support the economies we want to build. Housing security and housing markets play an important role in supporting social and economic stability, but this depends on ensuring housing affordability and ensuring stable, secure housing—both rental and ownership.

The government has a responsibility. We know that we’re in a crisis. What we require is a wartime effort. This government has an opportunity here today to vote for a motion where they would get back into the business of creating truly affordable housing for the people of Ontario—not sitting in the back seat, not waiting for somebody else to do the heavy lifting, but doing it themselves.

To a government that has been mired in terrible scandals, whether it was the greenbelt grab or the expansion of cities’ urban boundaries—this is an opportunity for you. This is an opportunity for you to vote for something that will create a lasting legacy for the people of Ontario.

Think back to that post-World War II era, when all of those homes were built—this government could do the same; this government should do the same. There are benefits to this in a huge way.

So to all those young families who are hoping to grow; to all the young adults who are living in their parents’ basements; to all of the parents of those young adults who want to see their child succeed; to all of the young professionals who are choosing where to pursue their dream, where to pursue employment; to the young people who are pursuing post-secondary education and choosing their institution based on the financial aspects; but also to all the seniors who are downsizing, and the empty nesters: We here on the Ontario NDP side of this House—we hear you. We see you. We understand that this government has a role. We understand that this government has a responsibility. We know that this government can get back into the business of building housing.

I think, as well, to what happened in the mid-1990s, when many of these programs were cut. I look back to 1995, when the Ontario government implemented a number of disastrous housing policies. They decreased the availability of affordable rental housing. They cut legal protections for tenants. They cut social assistance rates, including shelter allowances, by 21.6%. And if that wasn’t bad enough, 17,000 units of co-op and non-profit housing that were under development were also scrapped.

To this government: You have an opportunity to create. You have an opportunity to build. You have an opportunity to listen to the voices of all of the people across Ontario who are saying that the private market is not doing enough.

Also, on this side of the House—I don’t want to criticize the private market. They have an incredible role. They do great work, but they have also said that they can’t do it alone. It is an expectation and it is a burden that this government is simply shifting their responsibility for. You can’t expect that a for-profit industry is going to create the types of housing that people need. That is the government’s responsibility. That is the government’s lookout.

Listen to the people of Ontario. Listen to what people need. Listen to people across the housing spectrum. Get back into the business of housing, and make sure that people can build a safe life, have a safe future, and pass that future prosperity on for generations to come. You can do it with Homes Ontario, and you can do it today.

Please vote for my motion.

We are experiencing a major affordability crisis, and a big part of it is the housing crisis. We have a record number of people who are unhoused and sleeping on our streets. We are seeing record evictions.

We’re seeing rising mortgage payments. We’re hearing of terms like “negative amortization period,” which I had never heard before—where payments don’t even cover the interest portion, and the remaining unpaid interest is added to the principal amount owing. Imagine that: making payments but owing more. We’re also seeing longer amortization periods—90 years. Imagine that: a lifetime of paying for your home, only to end up not owning it.

We are seeing generations of people feeling like their dream of owning a home is just that: a dream.

We need to build more housing. The Conservative government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force has said we need 1.5 million homes in the next 10 years. Speaker, I want to be very clear: The housing crisis we’re facing right now is both a supply crisis and an affordability crisis. I have always said that the affordable housing crisis is of such a massive scale that if we’re truly going to address the crisis in a meaningful way, the response must be of a similar scale. The scale of the response must meet the scale of the problem.

We need to build more housing, but we also need to build different kinds of housing, because people’s housing needs are different. After World War II, there was a huge need for affordable housing in Canada, especially as veterans were returning home and the population was growing, and then there was the realization that the private market alone was not going to build the kind of housing that was needed for people who were of low and moderate incomes, because it wasn’t profitable. That’s why the CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., was created with a mandate to improve housing access for everyone.

Shamefully, the federal government—both under Conservatives and Liberals—abandoned that responsibility, and in Ontario, the Harris government abandoned that responsibility. In the 15 years of Liberal government since, they did not reverse course. This is among the many Harris policies that the Liberals maintained.

And here’s the thing: Private developers have said that they alone cannot solve the housing crisis, and yet the Ford Conservative government is leaving it only to private developers to meet the demand and the need. What the NDP is proposing through this motion is that governments resume their responsibility of building non-market, deeply affordable housing based on people’s needs—housing that the market won’t build. We can do that by establishing a new public agency, Homes Ontario. Let’s get it done.

Thank you—with all housing providers, whether that is co-op, non-profit, and, yes, the private sector. I know, when we all work together with our communities, we can achieve great things, because this is the province of Ontario—and I still believe in the Canadian and Ontario dream.

I’m pleased to rise on behalf of the residents of Ottawa West–Nepean to speak in favour of this excellent motion tabled by the member for London North Centre calling for the government to create and fund a public housing agency called Homes Ontario to finance and build 250,000 new affordable and non-market homes on public land over 10 years.

We are in a housing crisis, one that the government’s actions have only been making worse. While they’ve been focused on enriching wealthy land speculators, housing starts were down 18% in the first half of this year in Ottawa. In fact, we saw the lowest number of freehold housing starts in 25 years this year.

The government’s reliance on private developers and market incentives is just not getting the job done, Speaker, and it’s the people of Ontario who are paying the price. Rent is up 11% again this year. A one-bedroom apartment is now going for $2,055 in Ottawa. I hear daily from constituents who cannot find an affordable place to live, and so, so many stories of tenants whose landlords are squeezing them with above-guideline rent increases or trying to force them out so that they can jack up the rent on the next tenant. In one of the most egregious cases, Speaker, an apartment with high turnover because the landlord is refusing to address safety concerns saw rent go from $1,400 a month to $1,900 a month to $2,600 a month, all in the space of six months, earlier this year. This is not sustainable. The people of Ontario cannot afford this.

That’s not even to speak about the many people who have been priced out of our housing market entirely. Ottawa has 535 permanent shelter beds, Speaker, and yet that’s not nearly enough to meet the need. We have people living in hotels and temporary shelters, in some cases for years. We have people sleeping rough in our streets and our parks.

A big crisis requires a big idea to fix, Speaker. It’s time that we start marshalling all the resources that we have at hand to get the government back into the business of building homes and supporting deeply affordable housing, to use public land for homes, not for profit. If access to a home in Ontario depends entirely on someone making a profit, then many people will simply never get a home that meets their needs. So to the government: Please stop focusing on the profits of a few wealthy developers who are friends with your Premier and get to work making sure that everyone in Ontario has an affordable place to call home.

I want to thank the member, our NDP member, for bringing forward this motion to create and fund a public housing agency called Homes Ontario to finance and build 250,000 affordable and non-market homes on public land over 10 years.

It’s really important to recognize that in many municipalities in my region of northwestern Ontario—I warrant this applies in eastern Ontario as well—it is not profitable to build housing. It’s extremely expensive to build housing because of the distances. You might be able to build in Thunder Bay, but you cannot build in the communities along the north shore, nor can you afford to build in the communities on Highway 11, because the cost of transporting the materials, of bringing in the workers, is so high it’s prohibitive, and they’re not getting housing. That’s merely a thing of ignorance, I think, that’s not there, that’s not recognized, that it’s not going to happen without support.

Now, we’re supposed to have a Building Faster Fund, and a portion of that fund was supposed to be allocated to single- and lower-tier municipalities that have not been assigned a housing target, including small rural and northern communities, in order to address their unique needs following municipal consultations. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting. Where is that fund? How much is it going to be? What’s the criteria? What are the deadlines? Municipalities are desperately waiting for that.

But in the meantime, Ontario has announced the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund. And guess what? No increases: It was reduced in 2020. It’s at the same amount now. But interestingly, eight years ago, the Conservative government was complaining about how unfair it was that this fund had been cut. So not only did they not increase it, they cut it, and then it’s at the same amount, and it’s simply not enough for municipalities to do anything. They just cannot do the work that they want to do. I have municipalities coming to me saying they want to build housing for seniors, supportive housing. There is no money for that. If they could, they could move seniors into those supportive places. There would be more housing available in the communities. They know jobs are coming to those communities; there’s nowhere to put them. There’s nowhere to put health care professionals. We’ve been hearing this for a very long time.

I just want to refer to something that apparently puts the fear of God into members on the other side of the floor, and that is to talk about co-operatives. Some 45 years—

Interjection.

Some 45 years ago in Thunder Bay, a need was recognized for affordable housing. Decent affordable housing was in short supply. As they noted, this was the case in 2002. Guess what? It’s still the case in 2023. This has been incredibly successful. It is still beautiful. This is 45 years ago. There’s a five-year waiting list to get into this co-op. We have a second co-op in the neighbourhood. People love living there. They have real communities. It’s a successful model. Frankly I’m surprised that people on the other side of the House have no concept of how successful those models can be.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

It’s a pleasure to always debate housing in this House because we have a housing crisis. I just want to say to those who are watching and to my colleagues on all sides of the House, solving this crisis is going to require the private sector to be engaged in market housing to build the homes we need, and it’s going to require the government to partner with non-profit and co-op housing to build deeply affordable homes.

When we were most successful in Canada in building homes that people could actually afford to own and rent, we had a mix of for-profit and non-profit market and non-market actors engaged in the housing market. Market supply—that’s why I put forward bills to end exclusionary zoning and to make it easier for builders to build homes that people can actually afford in the communities they want to live in, on land already approved for development.

Speaker, we also have to acknowledge that, up until 1995, about 20,000 homes a year in Canada were non-profit, co-op and social housing—deeply affordable homes. That’s exactly why 93% of the deeply affordable rental homes in this province were built before 1995.

Now, the federal government got out of housing in 1995, and the provincial government got out of housing in 1995. The crisis has been getting worse ever since, and now we’re at a breaking point. A new report has shown that we would need a drop in housing prices of more than $500,000 on average for the average millennial to afford a home. It takes 22 years for the typical young person to be able to save enough money for a down payment to buy a home. To afford rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto on minimum wage, you would have to work 80 hours a week. I look at my own riding, in Guelph. The average one-bedroom apartment now is well over $2,000. And so the market is going to solve a lot of our challenges, but it’s not going to solve all of them.

While I don’t know if the numbers add up of what’s been proposed here—but I can tell you, the sentiment of having government re-engaged in non-profit, co-op and social housing is absolutely vital if we’re truly going to build enough deeply affordable homes for people.

And I also want to say that supporting co-op housing is about putting a roof over somebody’s head, but it’s more than that; it’s about building community. It’s about having democratic control over the place where you live. I’d love it. Fife Road co-op in my riding every year invites me to their holiday parties and their summer barbecues, where it’s an opportunity to build an inclusive community of people who are struggling to be able to find an affordable place to call home, who have an affordable place to call home because back before 1995, government was involved in helping build deeply affordable housing.

So it’s going to take non-market and non-profit solutions. The government is going to have to be involved in supporting non-profit co-op and, I would add, permanent supporting housing, with wraparound mental health, addictions, employment and other supports for people, because some people have acute needs. They’re going to need not only a roof on their head, but they’re also going to need those supports on-site to help them maintain their housing. And we will save money, because it will actually take pressure off our health care system. One of the largest drivers, one of the biggest reasons poverty costs our province $33 billion a year, is because the intersection of homelessness, mental health, addictions and poverty puts so much pressure on our health care system.

Finally, Speaker, I want to say that when we build these homes, we have to make sure these homes are energy-efficient, not only to help address the climate crisis but to also help address people’s bills each and every month to heat and cool their homes. I want to tell you about a project that I’m working with in my riding with Habitat for Humanity that will build 70 affordable homes for people with an array of solar panels on them that will save them $62,000 a year in utility costs. We can do this if we have the will to do it.