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 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?

It’s now time for questions.

Thank you very much. It’s great to actually be here. Before I kick off my speech, I just started thinking to myself, we all stand here on behalf of our constituents and we all do, I believe, a very good job. Regardless of what side of the ideology or the side of this assembly, everyone is here, I believe, for the right reason. But I got thinking to myself—and it would be interesting, if you all got to thinking to yourselves as well—when you deal with government, is it easy or is it difficult? The Minister of Labour just had a little laugh—because it isn’t easy. It’s never easy trying to figure it out. Regardless of if it’s a corporation, if it’s our kid’s high school or if it is with any level of government, it’s never easy. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to make it better and to streamline it.

My colleague who is the former crown attorney in Kitchener will often remind us that some of the things we think are super easy, an immediate crackdown on this—and she will say, “Well, you know, from the court’s perspective, I don’t know if this will work.”

So what I like about this piece of legislation, and especially when we talk about red tape reduction—for years, I always thought it was the most boring thing to debate, but it is one of the most important things for us to debate because we’re able to litigate here on the floor of the assembly what we see is working, not just as members but as citizens and as people who interface with our own government that we work within from day to day. I think that’s really important, and it’s great that we’re bringing forward yet another piece of legislation with respect to red tape reduction in order to make sure life is easier for the people of Ontario, including us and our families and our children. I often will think about that.

Now, why I like this piece of legislation is because I come from a high-growth community, and in order for us to continue to build—and yes, we’re talking about homes. In order for us to build homes and to keep up with the infrastructure requirements, we need to make it easier for municipalities to interface with the province, we need to make it easier for ministries to interface with one another, and we need to make it more simple for those companies who are doing the work that we’re asking them to do to keep up with the housing demand to get that done.

Of course, we’re a community of great agrarian roots. We have been a community that had been led by the farming industry and agriculture until we, over the past 20 years, have become more of an urban area inside the city of Ottawa. What does that mean? It means we need new schools. It means we need new roads, bridges and transportation. It means we even needed an interchange on Barnsdale at the 416, which I was excited was in the budget.

But it also means we need new hospitals. It means we’re bringing in new Canadians, people from different parts of Canada. Of course, with that, we need to interface with our local elected officials but, more importantly in some instances, the bureaucracies behind them.

So this red tape reduction bill is aimed at Ontario’s growth. It’s aimed at the growth happening in Ottawa. It’s aimed at the growth happening in my own community of Barrhaven. The goal is to protect important regulatory reforms that have been made over time for workers, for the environment and for the local communities that they impact. It’s designed to make life easier and more affordable, whether it is for the consumer or the producer.

We know that this piece of legislation, if passed, is going to save Ontarians 1.5 million hours of work, either on their home computer or at the office. It’s going to save us $1.5 billion. That’s why it’s important for us to litigate this, but it’s also important for us to discuss it with Ontarians so they know the changes that are coming that will serve the interests of them and their families.

It will become an important environmental investment for growth and job creation in the province of Ontario. As I said, it will create lots of safety measures that support both the economy and the hours people are putting into it. It’s about simplifying forms and creating processes that make sense to people. It’s eliminating unnecessary delays, and it’s going to make it, as I said, easier for us to work with governments.

We’re taking action on priority projects. There are so many things each and every day our ministers are out doing, our Premier is out doing. We’re calling it “getting it done.” In order for us to get it done, we have to make it easier to do it. That’s really exciting for me to see the projects that we’re working on are going to see reductions and eliminating delays and extra costs associated with dealing with government.

I think we can all agree that if we want to see highway projects like the 413 or the 174 or any other highway project in between get built, we want to make sure that the taxpayer is paying as little as possible in the grand scheme of things but also to make sure it gets built quickly in order to get them onto those said highways. I think it’s critical that in order for us to meet our competitive demands in this province and to attract investment, we continue to boost the needs and to be flexible while at the same time improving oversight and streamlining regulation.

Let’s be clear, sometimes when we’re dealing with a red tape reduction bill, we’re actually making oversight stronger. That might be a surprise to certain people but having been a minister myself, sometimes it is actually removing a layer that is hindering and not necessarily reporting up to the people it needs.

I see the Minister of Mines saying the same thing because he knows it’s very critical in order for him to be hands on, in order to get (a) the investment into mining extraction and at the same time making sure that he is working with the Minister of Indigenous Affairs and other community leaders to get those mines built in a proper way. I think that that is absolutely critical for us.

One other thing that I thought was interesting with this piece of legislation is something that I started working on, if you can believe it, in 1999, when I worked for John Baird. It was foreign-trained individuals coming into Canada as doctors and nurses, ready to actually support the health care system in the province of Ontario, yet, because government being government and working with the college of physicians being as it is, it was almost impossible to get these well-trained physicians and nurses into our system. This piece of legislation is going to make it easier to conduct that process and to register them quicker. That means more nurses and doctors in our health care system across the province of Ontario.

I can tell you, there’s not a member in here who hasn’t had that complaint, who hasn’t raised that complaint that there are not enough nurses and doctors in the province of Ontario. We agree. We’re working on it. I think we can all agree that we’re working on it, but I think we all can agree that if health care is concerned, we want any abled and trained individual that can do the job in the job. There shouldn’t be barriers to that. I think that’s one of the great things that are happening here.

I know the Minister of Labour is here. He’s very intent on paying attention to this debate, and he knows that in order to support his workers and the companies that want to employ his workers, we need digital transformation in order to support them.

I noticed that we’re going to be changing the systems in order to create a better environment for documents via email. That’s going to save people time, it’s going to save people money and it’s going to put people back to work. That’s what we really want in Ontario, is people who are working, especially in the fields that they desire, especially in health care, but also making sure that we’re saving them money.

I think that one of the other key areas, when I was a minister, that we focused on and we really cared about was trying to create wraparound services, trying to make sure that ministry A, ministry B and ministry C worked together. That does not necessarily happen all the time. Sometimes there is a siloed approach. Well, one of the things that this piece of legislation is doing is working to be more predictable and more transparent with the public as it pertains to the projects that they’re working on. I think that’s long overdue, and I congratulate the ministry here for putting that together.

Just finally, one thing that I care about that we should all care about, because I can’t tell you how many of you over the years have come to me about a festival that needed funding or an arts program that wanted funding or a sports organization that wanted funding—it’s the Transfer Payment Ontario system and that network, and it’s called TPON. We are right now going to be able to consolidate that for better service for not-for-profits and for charities. We all know that charities and not-for-profits are having a more difficult time finding volunteers. They’re having a more difficult time raising money. The government should not be in their way. The government needs to ensure that there is a better process for them, and we’re going to be doing that as a result of this legislation.

I’m very proud to stand here and be part of this debate. I know there are many questions, and people in this chamber will offer many different solutions to the variety of issues that they deal with in their different communities across the province, but I’m delighted that we’re talking about it because the reality is, we’re all here for the same reason, and it’s to make government better for the people that we all represent. We all have different views and values. That’s okay, as long as our number one goal is to make sure we get something across the finish line that is better for the people of this province.

I want to thank the member opposite for her comments. My question to her really is this: Recently, the former Ontario Liberal leader, Steven Del Duca stated, “Frankly, this housing affordability crisis began when I was still sitting at the provincial cabinet table. The first inklings, the first hints that we were going to have this challenge spiralling out of control began in 2016. That was eight years ago, and we were in a low-interest rate environment at that point in time, but the challenge was already beginning, and why? Because we have a fundamental supply problem.”

My question to the member opposite is quite simple. With a Liberal Party in power for 15 years, supported by the NDP, why did they sit on their hands and do nothing until we started this discussion in the last election?

I thank the member for St. Paul’s. This is what’s really happening out there when we’re talking about affordability.

I’m going to quickly talk about international students, who are living, literally—if you watch, I think, the Fifth Estate, there were five on the main floor and then six on the lower floor. In some cases, they actually rotate. They shift. So you share a room with someone else, and the person works nights and you work days. Literally, that’s what is happening because it’s so precarious when it comes to housing.

Now, imagine, if you didn’t have a home, all those basics that the members talked about. But one of the things that London has actually pointed out—very important; very smart—is that health care needs to be tied to housing, because if you don’t have housing, your health care also suffers, along with your economic ability to get a job or go to school. So health care and housing are two things that are so important in this province, and we’re not doing a great job if we don’t include housing that’s affordable for all.

However, when people are on social benefits or people are on fixed income like CPP, they may never be getting off social benefits. So as far as I’m concerned, over the years, governments should have always been in the business to be building housing that’s truly affordable and geared to income, because we wouldn’t have the homeless situation that we’re facing now. We wouldn’t have this kind of sharing a shift in a room to get a sleeping bed. It’s really happening.

I think what happens is that sometimes, when you’re not in that situation, you can’t see yourself in that position. We have to listen to the people who are telling us what’s really going on. Absolutely, I want my kids to afford a home. I want your kids, everybody’s kids, to afford a home. But I don’t want people sleeping on the street. I want shelters. I want affordable housing—when it comes, geared to income—and I want to make sure we have supportive housing for the most vulnerable in our society.

If you had an adult child with a developmental disability and you were 70 years old, you would want to make sure that your adult child had a place to be that was safe and was being looked after. That’s just a basic thing I think we all would want. So it needs to be fixed. Supportive housing needs to be fixed.

But I can tell you this: When I first got elected, one of the things that I presented, and that was over 12 years ago, was a bill asking the Liberal government at the time—and I would have done it with the Conservatives as well if you were in power at that point. It was to make sure that we actually funded housing stock that was already in place, which was rent-geared-to-income, and make sure it was still viable, because all of it was not being looked after. It was built 25 or 30 years ago and it was falling apart.

So that’s another piece in legislation. If we’re going to be building all this housing, we shouldn’t let the stock that we have now deteriorate. It needs to be maintained so that we can get ahead of the problem, and that’s part of the issue. We’ve got to stop worrying about the politics and we’ve got to get ahead of the problem.

Back then, people didn’t look to the future. They were so comfortable because interest rates were low and things were affordable. No one thought about how we keep this going. How do we mitigate affordability in our province?

Further questions?

Thank you very much for the debate, my colleague, and the questions from both sides. I just have a question: When we talk about housing, there is one portion of that, affordable housing, which is the government subsidizing to offer the people who don’t have a specific level of income. But when we talk about housing in general—we are in a crisis—we are talking about all kinds of houses. We are talking about middle-class houses. We are talking about condos. We are talking about townhomes. We are talking about all kinds of houses.

When we have houses, there will be more percentage of affordable houses of that amount. So can you tell me why are we getting into—if those people don’t have the income, this is not a housing issue; it’s a social issue. It needs covering from the government, but not in the housing bill.

Thank you to the member from London–Fanshawe for her very passionate debate this afternoon. I also have heard from parents who have adult children with developmental disabilities who are living in supportive housing, and we’re now seeing those homes being privatized. The pay, the fees, the way that’s being delivered is changing, and parents are terrified. They have worked their entire lives and advocated their entire lives to be able to get their children in this supportive housing, and are now seeing a government that has failed to provide the necessary funding to ensure that these homes can stay open.

So maybe the member could just expand on her thoughts when it comes to these families who are so desperate and being left completely out of all legislation.

It is now time for questions.