I have two universities in my riding: Ontario Tech and another, Trent Durham. The need for more student housing is very clear every time I go on campus, and after the introduction of our bill, I wasn’t surprised to see a quote from the Council of Ontario Universities. I’m going to read it into the record, Speaker, with your permission:

“Exempting universities from provisions in the Planning Act and removing zoning barriers will help expedite the development and construction of much-needed campus housing projects”—and that’s the truth—“as well as help ensure student success.”

Universities like Ontario Tech and Trent Durham are asking us to support these important measures; our bill does that. Can the member opposite from Ottawa South—and he has universities as well—tell us if they can answer the call and vote for this important legislation and help students succeed?

It’s a privilege to stand on the behalf of the fine people from St. Paul’s to speak on this bill with regard to building more housing. Affordable housing is what we’d hope it’s building.

I’d like to ask the member if they feel, from their interpretation of this bill, that it’s actually going to create the real, deep affordable housing that we need in our communities today.

I’d also like to ask the member to reflect on whether or not rent control is something that comes up at the doorstep, day after day, when they’re knocking or on the phone. It’s certainly something that comes up in St. Paul’s.

I’d also like to ask whether or not this bill addresses demovictions and illegal evictions, which are a couple of other things that folks in St. Paul’s are quite disappointed about and are looking to this Conservative government to provide answers, leadership, accountability, so they can feel safe and secure in their homes and not have to worry about being pushed out of St. Paul’s or any other community in Ontario.

I’ll just ask on the bonusing part of it because the member is passionate about that. This House actually approved bonusing measures with respect to the Volkswagen deal, the St. Thomas deal, which was unanimously supported by the House.

What the legislation, of course, contemplates is putting that same type of measure into the authority of the cabinet. It does not give the municipalities the right to automatically bonus. It gives municipalities the right to come to cabinet and seek approval to provide that bonusing, in much the same way it was handled with St. Thomas.

So I’m wondering, with that explanation, if the member would be more inclined to supporting that part of the bill.

That gives me more comfort. There’s no question about that. I just feel that it’s a slippery slope. I guess we’re going to find out how it works out with Volkswagen. This whole idea—and even when we were in government—of picking winners and losers, it’s a mug’s game, right? Sometimes you come up short. You spin the wheel.

So that gives me more comfort. I still think that there’s risk in there. There will be a lot of pressure inside cabinet to do this, and you may get a lot more requests than you think because they’re going to start to play that against us. More and more corporations are coming for our money—taxpayers’ money—and we have to be very wary about that.

On rent control, here’s the reality: On anything built after 2018, or with an eviction or somebody leaving, rents are out of control, so there has to be some sort of throttle, and there’s none.

I’ll give you a story—I think I’ve told this story here before. I called my pharmacist to get a prescription and talked to a woman who I’ve known for 30 years. She’s in tears on the phone, saying, “I don’t know where I’m going to live. My landlord is raising my rent, and I can’t afford to live there. I’ve lived there for a long time.” Now, that’s a different issue altogether, but that also involves the Landlord and Tenant Board. She can’t wait a year.

It didn’t cut red tape for tenants in any way, shape or form. It didn’t help them. It didn’t help them with affordability, and the member is perfectly right.

I think it’s fair for me to think that the government might do that. Maybe that’s not the intention of the minister, but I could see it being the intention of the government at some point to say, “Guys, you don’t have a problem. We gave you this power; use it. Make some money. Get some income.” That’s the way I see it, and I thank the member for his question.

I’d like to thank the member from Beaches–East York for her presentation. I think it’s important in this discussion, whenever we’re discussing landlords, that we differentiate between those small landlords, those families who look after their tenants in a kind way. They’re responsive, they treat them like a member of the family and they are fair, as opposed to those corporate, faceless landlords who really try to gouge people.

I believe it was the former Liberal government that brought in vacancy decontrol, which really incentivized these corporate landlords to kick good, long-term tenants out because they knew they could jack up the rent to whatever the market could withstand, and that this Conservative government has really continued that system of exploitation.

To the member from Beaches–East York: Do you have any thoughts about vacancy control?

Thank you very much to the member from London North Centre. I was not here at that time. As you know, I came in in June 2022. I’m happy to consider anything I can to keep people housed—from an equity point of view, from an affordability point of view. We were just evicted from our constituency office. It’s different than a home, but my whole team has experienced what that feels like now and have a lot more empathy in that situation.

But I’m really perplexed that the government isn’t looking at bold and brave measures, as they have been told by their housing task force, as has been mentioned in this House a million times. Our own backyard is looking at provincial lands.

Many cities like New York, Manhattan, they don’t have downtown surface parking lots because they put the parking underneath and they build housing on those. So we are not looking at—I’m looking at the Minister of Housing over there, when he’s going to sign off on the MTSAs, things like that. There are many tools in the tool box we could be—

Thank you.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Response? I recognize the member for Ottawa Centre.

Here’s the thing I think we need to remember: People are getting gouged for their rent because there are no controls. It’s been six years since that housing was built, and the reality is, it’s too much for them—

I’m proud to rise this afternoon to speak on Bill 185, the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act, introduced by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. I want to thank him and his team, including the associate minister and the parliamentary assistants from Perth–Wellington and Etobicoke–Lakeshore, for all their work on this bill, which will help us towards our goal to build 1.5 million homes by 2031, including 120,000 in Mississauga.

Speaker, the former Liberal government doubled the number of provincial regulations, from 200,000 to 383,000. They added over 10,000 new regulations every year. That is an average of 30 new regulations every single day for 15 years. In 2018, our government inherited the largest red tape burden in Canada. Stakeholders like the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario warned that red tape was complicating the development process, leading to more delays, higher costs and less affordable housing.

As the other members have said, former Liberal leader Steven Del Duca admitted the housing crisis began eight years ago, under the former Liberal government. But the steps in Bill 185, combined with other actions we have already taken, are expected to save people and businesses $1.2 billion and over 1.5 million hours each year. I’d like to speak about just a few of these this afternoon, beginning with schedule 12, which would amend the Planning Act to help reduce the cost of new homes.

As the minister said, we’re committed to working in partnership with municipalities, not micromanaging or taking a “Queen’s Park knows best” approach. But we also have to recognize, as the Housing Affordability Task Force did, that some municipal leaders will always give in to NIMBY pressures to resist new housing. And no municipal leader in Ontario has resisted new housing more than former mayor Bonnie Crombie. From 2016 to 2021, the population of the GTA grew by about 270,000 people, or 5%, but in Mississauga, we lost about 1,000 people each year under Mayor Crombie.

Eric Lombardi from More Neighbours Toronto said that her record was absolutely ridiculous.

As Oliver Moore wrote in the Globe and Mail, Mississauga was “shrinking because of deliberate municipal policies.”

Earlier this year, Steve Cornwell at the Mississauga News wrote that in 2023, Bonnie Crombie’s last full year as mayor, Mississauga city council approved seven development applications, including 2,000 residential units, but they rejected at least 13 applications, which included about 17,000 units. In other words, under the leadership of Bonnie Crombie, Mississauga rejected about 90% of the housing units proposed last year. As a result, Mississauga hit only 39% of their target and failed to qualify for provincial funding through the Building Faster Fund.

Some of the developments the city rejected include new buildings near the Port Credit GO station, the future Port Credit LRT station and the Mississauga transit bus terminal. One of these was a proposal for a 17-storey building with 148 units of purpose-built rentals just a few hundred metres away from three transit lines, including higher-order transit. The local councillor said this proposal was “the most offensive.” And Speaker, Bonnie Crombie agreed with this. She said it would add “way too much density,” and she asked the builder to come back with a proposal that would “fit.” The city planned for an area of a maximum of three storeys. Again, this is just south of a major interregional transit hub. Nearby, the city rejected a proposal for another 11-storey building with 42 units because, again, it was over three storeys and it included only 37 parking spaces where the city wanted 80.

So, Speaker, again, I want to thank the minister and his team for schedule 12, which would amend section 16 of the Planning Act to eliminate parking requirements for development near transit.

Home builders and homebuyers should be able to decide for themselves based on the market and how much parking is needed in major transit station areas. Minimum parking requirements don’t take into account the personal choice of residents who might prefer to take transit and not own a car, especially right next door to the Hurontario LRT, a MiWay bus terminal and the Port Credit GO station.

I want to take a moment here to thank the Premier and the Minister of Transportation for their announcement yesterday on the historic expansion of GO Transit service on the Lakeshore line and Milton line. ONxpress is planning to run up to 18 trains per hour on the Lakeshore West line. That’s an average of one train every three minutes. It’s no wonder why some residents might not want to pay an extra $100,000 for a parking spot. And Ontarians should be free to make their own choices. This is what Bill 185 would allow, and it could save up to $50 million for a 500-unit development in some municipalities and make it easier to build and to buy new homes near transit. This was recommendation 12(c) of the Housing Affordability Task Force, which Bonnie Crombie opposed as mayor and now supports. In fact, she said that she now supports all recommendations, but as mayor, she supported only 30% of them.

Speaker, I’ll give you another example: schedule 12 of Bill 185, which would amend section 35 of the Planning Act to eliminate municipal restrictions, like limits on the number of bedrooms allowed, to help add new homes, including basement apartments and laneway homes.

But some of the changes in Bill 185 also reflect the advice of the municipal partners, including Mississauga. In particular, I’m glad to see changes to sections 41 and 70 of the Planning Act, which would introduce a new use-it-or-lose-it policy. As the parliamentary assistant said, seven municipalities have reported that work on over 70,000 planned housing units has not been used over the last two years. The changes of schedule 12 will help us get shovels in the ground faster on developments that are ready to proceed.

Speaker, I want to take a moment to talk about schedule 7, which would refocus the Peel Region Transition Board on building homes and making local government more effective, including the transforming of services like land use planning and regional roads from Peel region to lower-tier municipalities. As the minister said, we originally thought dissolution was the best approach, but it’s now clear it would have cost us more taxes in the city of Mississauga. That’s why we are going back to the Peel region.

Speaker, Bonnie Crombie might be okay with that, but it will not help the people of Mississauga. It will increase their taxes.

I want to note that the government is also proposing to update the provincial planning statement to encourage density around transit and through the redevelopment of plazas and shopping malls. Some members will recall that a year ago, a local NIMBY group presented a video at the Mississauga PDC meeting that suggested plaza redevelopment would attract sex traffickers as tenants and become an actual threat to children. Speaker, Bonnie Crombie said that that was a wonderful video.

I want to urge everyone to read our proposal. It is available online at the Environmental Registry. Your submissions have to be in by May 12.

Once again, I just want to thank the minister and his team for this bill today.

I wanted to thank my colleague from Mississauga–Lakeshore for his presentation.

When I talk to some of my constituents about what is proposed in this legislation, they have questions about what to expect in this legislation, because it’s an expansive legislative piece. It covers a lot of areas, land use planning in particular. I know my colleague has a lot of experience in this particular area.

But my question, through you, Speaker, is this: Why is the government consulting and updating the provincial planning statement, and what are the key changes that my constituents and others can expect to see?

I’d like to thank my friend from Mississauga–Lakeshore for the presentation. I have a question that was given to me by Architectural Conservancy Ontario. In particular, they’ve noted that, because of this government’s legislation, 36,000 heritage properties will be at risk. They’ll actually lose their status and protection on January 1, 2025. I wanted to know if the member has any thoughts about the protection of heritage-designated properties and what this government is going to do to help protect their status.

I understand that in Bill 185, the government’s bill around building more homes, developers are no longer required to build parking in a development near transit. I can understand theoretically where that would be a decent thing. In fact, we didn’t necessarily mind that feature of Bill 185.

But listening to some constituents yesterday—or was it yesterday or the day before? When the housing critic, the MPP for University–Rosedale, hosted a bit of a conversation to get feedback from constituents and community members on this bill, we heard folks who said that there may be an ableist lens in that part of the bill. A lot of tenants, a lot of folks who live in apartments, even if they’re near transit, need a PSW to come to their home, and there is no parking, or they need a vehicle in order to get groceries, or they need a vehicle so that family can visit when they come over.

I’m wondering, will there be any minimum at all of parking for these new developments to ensure that folks who need those with cars to support them can have that?

It is now time for questions.

It is now time for further debate.

I want to thank the member for that question. I look at my area of Port Credit and Mississauga–Lakeshore. We have the Clarkson GO train station; we have the Port Credit GO station. Projects have been refused because they weren’t building enough parking for those buildings. By removing that, that will let the market dictate.

Especially today, when we look at people trying to buy homes in our community, you can save $50,000 to $100,000 for a parking spot. We can help these young families buy into these communities and be able to take transit.

If we believe in protecting the environment, like we say we do, getting cars off the road would be your prime issue here. So that’s what we’re trying to do, get more vehicles off the road and get them into transit. That’s why we’re spending $71 billion into transit to get people into transit right across Ontario.

I look at my own riding of Mississauga–Lakeshore. We had the Lakeview Generating Station. It’s 177 acres of land. It was a brownfield—

To be honest, to the member: I saved the Credit River bridge, which was a heritage bridge. We’ve twinned the bridge right now. And I’ll tell you the truth: You do not see the heritage bridge anymore because there’s a bridge in front of it. So, we have to keep heritage, I agree—

I am proud to stand here on behalf of my constituents of London–Fanshawe and give some stories about what they’re facing when it comes to housing in the London–Fanshawe riding. I’m sure everyone has stories, but I want to bring life to the bill, about how affordability in housing is affecting the people that I represent.

Under this bill, there is not a real commitment to affordability. When that’s not in the bill, things like, for an example, when people are living in an apartment, they’re renting an apartment—I have a lot of tenants who are facing relentless pressures from their landlords to move. That could be motivated by many things. Corporate landlords may want that person to move so they can increase the rent. And there is no rent control in this bill.

But landlords are seemingly willing to file whatever it takes under the Landlord and Tenant Board. I’ve seen those tactics. They’ve done tactics such as false non-payment of rent claims against Gerry, who is one of my constituents. Or they’re trying to evict people on fixed incomes because sometimes they’re late; they don’t always get the payment right on time, and that would be John’s situation. And then there’s claims about behaviour, and that’s Laura. Back years ago, landlords, corporate landlords, were a little more willing to tolerate and work with tenants, but now, with this housing market and how they can just kick anyone out and increase rents, they’re attacking and really putting the most vulnerable tenants at risk.

When these tenants have to move out of these buildings because they can rent for a higher cost, what happens to them? Our office is linked to an organization, and they send us, every month, affordable places for people to rent. But do you know what that list entails, what’s called affordable? It’s always rooms to rent. There are not affordable rental units out there, so if you’re living in a place, you’re forced to find a room somewhere.

In one of the ads that we get—and these are on Kijiji, and we can’t guarantee any of the information because we don’t know what the landlord is like, what the safety concerns are and the quality of accommodations, quite frankly. But one of the ads is about sharing a bedroom. So you can have a single room, or you can share a bedroom with someone. Now, I don’t know the set-up. If there’s maybe double, single beds—I don’t know. But how is it that we’ve come to this point that people, when they’re kicked out of their rental units—and sometimes it’s legitimate and sometimes it’s not, but in this case, these corporate landlords, I know for a fact that these people are being harassed, quite frankly. Their option is to share a room with someone to try to make ends meet, because the lowest room that I found in a single in this ad was $600 and the highest was $900. So it’s not a good situation out there when it comes to affordability, when it comes to housing.

Quite frankly, the Landlord and Tenant Board is broken. There are wait-lists for getting hearings over a year. The corporate landlords can absorb those finances—you know, if someone stops paying rent. But the small landlord, who has perhaps another unit in their home and someone stops paying, and then their mortgage comes due and their interest rates go up, they can’t wait a year. So you’re really putting people who are trying to invest perhaps in their retirement, trying to make ends meet—because maybe they got a job, they’re trying to supplement their retirement fund. But here we are really hamstringing them, because the Landlord and Tenant Board isn’t streamlined to deal with small landlords, when there is truly a situation they need to get out of.

It’s the same thing with corporations, right? They need to have the streamline for tenants who are being pushed out by corporate landlords, and so that they get their fair share in court.

Part of the problem as well when we’re talking about the Landlord and Tenant Board—and there are no solutions in here about rentals. We’re creating rentals. Under Bill 23, the government wants to build triplexes, but under this bill, people have to attend hearings now on Zoom. If you can imagine being on Zoom if you have a hearing issue or a visual, if you’re wearing glasses, if you’re not technically inclined—and even trying to get legal aid. Legal aid in London–Fanshawe—I don’t know about everywhere else in this province, but it is overwhelmed, and the people who need it the most can’t access those services.

So here we are with this bill, which isn’t addressing true affordability. There’s nothing about affordability in there. It’s talking about building houses—and no one is arguing that we need to build homes, affordable homes—but affordability isn’t in this bill.

The other part that’s not in the bill is homelessness. My colleague and I did a tour of a homeless shelter, one of them in London, Ark Aid Street Mission. They were making a really compelling case that having a home isn’t always just about owning and renting. People need shelter, and not just during the winter months when the weather is intolerable. It’s all year. They told us that as of May 31, the city will fund zero day-or-night drop-in spaces in our city unless there’s interim funding from the provincial and the federal government.

They’re saying that what happens is, if they have to shut down the facility, they have to lay off 100 employees. Those employees don’t stick around for the next season, when the weather is intolerable and they have to open up the shelter beds again. It causes all kinds of red tape, so to speak. We need to keep our shelters open 365 days a year, all throughout this province, until we get the housing crisis under control, where people can actually afford homes to transition to.

Not everybody has a job. Many people are on fixed incomes, and we need to make sure that they’re not on the street. These are solutions that we need to be building into our housing plan.

The other piece of that is supportive housing. I have constituents, the Rodgers family—I’ve talked about them many times in this Legislature. They have two adult sons that have developmental issues, and they’re in their late thirties, early forties. The parents, however, are in their mid-sixties, pushing 70. One of their sons finally was placed, and they had to wait like 35 years to get some supportive housing for one of their sons. They still have one son that they’re pushing and trying so hard, whether it’s Participation House, whether it’s Community Living, to try to get their son placed in a supportive home.

And that’s not in here. I think we need to rethink the kind of definitions about housing. Absolutely, home ownership and rental needs to be in there. Affordable homes geared to income need to be in here. Co-operative homes, co-ops, need to be in here and supportive housing, like Community Living. We need to integrate them into our housing plan, so that the Rodgers family—the parents that are aging—can have some peace and comfort, knowing that both their sons are in homes that are safe and they’re getting quality services, quality care. But this is not what’s happening in the province of Ontario, and I think we forget this.

As much as there are some good things in this bill, like development charges are being somewhat clawed back—that’s a good thing—like building minimum parking spaces when they’re building apartment buildings—but as the member from St. Paul’s pointed out, and I think the member debating at the time didn’t quite understand what the information she was relaying was, we need minimal parking for people who need their vehicles because they have disabilities. If you need to have someone come or you’re a PSW and you need to go to that person’s apartment and you have a vehicle, you need a place to park. It just makes it easier to access the client. If you’re somebody who has a mobile device like a scooter or wheelchair—yes, it’s great to build those public transit hubs and have apartments there, but they might need their vehicle to get around. That was the point that the member from St. Paul’s was making.

I think we need, again—maybe in committee is when the discussion will happen, when we can make sure that we tailor these bills. There have been many bills we’ve had to reverse. Because of poor judgment on the government’s side, we’ve had to reverse those things. It’s good that they’re reversing them, but there’s so much more that I think we need to do when it comes to housing.

This housing piece is needed, absolutely: multiplexes, high-rises, single-family homes, a mix of it all. But we have to include, for the most vulnerable, shelters, geared-to-income housing, co-operative complexes and supportive housing for our most vulnerable citizens in this province of Ontario.

I hope that in committee, we will get a plan to actually incorporate and integrate those things, because we don’t want to leave those people behind. We don’t want to leave people like that behind because it just creates more havoc.

After 20 years of municipal experience, one of the things that my municipal government, and I know a number of other municipal governments, had approached this body about was fixing the Line Fences Act. After all these years, we are finally getting to fixing the Line Fences Act, dealing with that outdated, burdensome piece of legislation.

Can the member opposite please explain why the previous Liberal and NDP government didn’t do any of that, and if they are going to actually object to modernizing this and prevent improving the tools that the municipalities need to continue their services?

I’m really glad the member brought that up, because there’s always property disputes everywhere, especially, I think, in rural and northern Ontario, where these issues really don’t make good neighbours and they clog up the court system. Yes, putting that language forthwith—I’m going to pat the government on the back for that, but that’s not really—this Line Fences Act absolutely will affect certain people in our province, that they’re going to find relief on that, but you don’t live in fences; you live in houses. You build fences maybe on your front lawn—it just depends.

That’s fine, but we don’t live in fences. We need to really focus on, as I was talking about, the most vulnerable population to incorporate into these bills that we bring forward on how to address housing.

Yes, I’m glad you guys caught that and you’re fixing it.

Thank you to the member from London–Fanshawe for an excellent presentation on Bill 185 about the government’s building new homes.

I’m still stuck on that piece around a person looking on Kijiji to rent a bed in a room—multiple folks, strangers, living together because they cannot afford a one-bedroom or even a bedroom, theoretically.

To the member for London–Fanshawe: Can you express to me how important it is, how important housing is, to someone’s ability to find work, attend school, have a fulsome life? Can you express in this Legislature if you think any one of us as elected MPPs would be able to do this job if we were bunking in a 200-square-foot room or less with a stranger, possibly not even with access to our own toilet seat?