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?

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 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.

Your constituent who was a PSW—I applaud them for doing the work. I know during the pandemic it was quite difficult. I have a cousin who is a PSW, and my gosh, they just stood up there every single day and did the work that they were required to do. I find it very disheartening that at a time where she has a bit more flexibility in not working in such dangerous conditions, that she feels that—she’s not unsafe, but that she is insecure because she doesn’t have a place that she can afford.

I’ve got to admit here, and I think we all do, that the prices, whether it’s home ownership or rental, have skyrocketed. But the answer to that is not more red tape, and with respect, I think we’ll have a philosophical disagreement here. The answer to that is more supply, and that’s what this legislation is attempting to do. It’s not going to be done overnight, but we do need to increase the supply of housing and renter facilities across the entire province, apartment buildings across the province, in order to meet that demand. That’s the only way it’s going to come down.

What an excellent presentation from the member from Nepean. I thank her for her public service.

I’d like the member, though—Speaker, through you—to tell us more about the Building Faster Fund and what the government is doing to encourage municipalities like her riding and surrounding ridings to address the housing supply crisis.

I thank the government member for her speech. It’s always a pleasure to work with her in this chamber.

Yesterday, I met with a constituent who was a PSW, and she was very concerned. She had just retired as a PSW, and she said that she is very, very afraid of her future as a renter, as a tenant.

All of the initiatives that the government tables here always have to do with the purchase of individual homes, but they’re not willing to take action in terms of rental. Now, I know what the response is going to be, that they’ve had many rental housing starts, but it’s a chicken-or-an-egg thing, because with rents at $2,500 to $3,000, yes, there’s an interest in building more units, but that’s actually the problem. Why are this government’s initiatives when it comes to housing not willing to visit rent control? Because people like this PSW just don’t have a future to wait for when it comes to their housing.

I would like to thank the member from Nepean for her presentation.

One thing that we have noticed when we take a look at Bill 185 is that there seems to be a lack of mention of Ontario’s heritage assets. Architectural Conservancy Ontario has noted within all their meetings with government members, as well as opposition members, that 36,000 properties are currently at risk and that Ontario is the only province without a grant program to encourage the conservation of buildings of significant heritage value. They have called for the government to increase the existing Ontario heritage property tax relief program. It is useful, but it has limited impact on developers.

I wanted to know if the member from Nepean had any comments about heritage properties and what the government should be doing in order to make sure that we are preserving those wonderful properties that we have in the province of Ontario.

But I did want to specifically note with the member that there are 36,000 properties that are at risk because of this government’s actions, and that all of these 36,000 properties will currently lose the meagre protections they have on January 1, 2025, unless this government acts.

Does the member have any advice as to how they will be advocating to make sure that these properties will be protected in the province of Ontario?

Are you calling him a senior?

Further questions?

Thank you to the member for Nepean. I really enjoyed her dialogue today and her perspective is interesting, unique and she’s experienced. She has lived it.

Our government is delivering on a commitment to cut red tape, to really do it, but businesses in my riding, like Bradt’s Butcher Block in Leamington and Abraham Orthodontics in Chatham-Kent–Leamington, are under extreme pressure from a competitive global market, just like businesses in Nepean. And the outlook, economically, is fragile around the world.

So can the member please explain what’s being done to help our businesses remain competitive?