I was going to start my debate off one way, but I think in fairness, seeing as the member just spoke about Bob Rae—who has been a Liberal for 47 years of his life, I just wanted to say—but you didn’t mention anything about the Premier of Ontario, Mike Harris. I’m going to look at the Speaker because she knows exactly what I’m talking about.

During when he was in power, they closed schools. They closed 26 hospitals. And you know what else he did? You remember this because you were a reporter. They laid off 6,000 nurses—no mention of that by that member over there. It was a surprise. Then, it even went further.

I’m looking at the Speaker because that’s what I’m supposed to do, talk through the Speaker. I knew her before she became a big shot here in the Legislature and an MPP, and she’s sitting as the Speaker. You know what? During that Harris time, do you know what we had? We had rallies in 11 cities in Ontario: London, Windsor, Niagara. But you know the best one was when they were wrapping it up. Do you know who led it? It was led by the NDP and what? The unions. The unions and the NDP, just like that, just like we are today.

Interjections.

But you know what happened? I want to look at the Speaker when I say this, because there’s a reason why I’m looking at you. The last one was in Hamilton. I’m not going to talk out of school here, but I think the Speaker gives me permission to say she was in Hamilton. She was a really good reporter with the paper in Hamilton. Some 110,000 people were at that rally—110,000. Do you remember that? And why were they there? Because they were attacking our schools. They were attacking our hospitals. They were attacking workers. As a matter of fact, it was under Harris. I remember this.

I’ll tell you a quick story. This is a true story. I wasn’t an MPP back then; I was just a president of a local union. It was Mike Harris who cut social assistance to people and told them, “Well, what you can do is you can have bologna sandwiches.” Do you remember that? Well, do you know what I did as president of the local union, because I’m a nice guy? At that time—I’m a good friend of his now; I don’t mind saying it now—the MPP was Bart Maves, who I ran against twice in Niagara; I beat him both times. I was kind enough to him. I took him a box of bologna sandwiches and I put them in his downtown office. I remember doing that, and he was so mad at me for years—true story. So when you bring up about what Rae did or what somebody else did, you have to look at your own house.

And I want to say to my Conservative friends: I look over there and there’s only a few over there—as a matter of fact, I don’t think there’s anybody there, maybe one that I see, who was there for the 15 years that you were the official opposition. Remember that? You guys don’t talk about that—never—and what you guys voted down. But I’ll get off that. I wasn’t going to talk about that, but seeing he raised it, that kind of opened up the door for me.

And I want to say for the Speaker, thank you for participating in those rallies, because you made a difference, and you know that.

I’m going to start to talk about a couple of other things I just heard about: 85,000 people here in Toronto are on a wait-list for affordable housing. That’s a little surprising, that; although when I go down to the Blue Jays games, which I love to do—because I don’t drink or smoke or anything, I’ve got to have some entertainment. I like to go to the Blue Jays game, or I go to a Leafs game. You see the people who are homeless, who are on the streets of Toronto. Well, here’s the reason why: 85,000 can’t afford to pay their rent or to have a home.

I don’t know how long my leaders here are going to give me to speak, but some of the reasons are that you brought in a bill in 2019—and I’m not going to disagree with you; there have been corporations that have built high-rises for rental. And guess what? We just found out, just the other day, that to get a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto in a high-rise that’s owned by these corporations, it’s between $3,200 and $4,000. Think about that.

So when we come here and my leader brings a motion forward and talks about what we have to do so people can have a home to live in—I have a daughter who lives in my house. I’m sure some of you guys may have that same situation. I love my daughter; she can live in my house as long as she wants. But that’s an issue. But it’s because of 2019 and not putting controls on the rent. That’s what has caused some of our crisis.

And then—how much time have I got, Monique? Help me out here.

I want to make sure that I talk about the greenbelt, because I want to be clear—and I have been clear in this House. I stand up here, and I’ll say it over and over again: I agree that we need $1.5-million homes. I agree with that. Our party—

Interjection: Whoa, whoa.

I always thought COVID would smarten everybody up. Remember when COVID hit? We didn’t have masks. We didn’t have PPE. We didn’t have anything. We had to rely on the Americans or China or wherever you could get it from. I always said, “Why aren’t we making sure that we can get that here?” Well, it’s the same thing with prime farmland: 319 acres lost every single day. One of our members down here says it all the time, from up north. He talks about that all the time. Why do we allow that to happen? So we agree you should be building 1.5 million homes; we don’t agree it should be done on the greenbelt, and we certainly don’t believe that we should be losing prime farmland.

I just want to talk real quick on my own riding, because this is important, because I believe it’s in your riding and it’s in your riding. I even think it’s in the housing minister’s riding, and even my good friend there over in the corner. I think it’s in your riding too. But in my riding, our stock of affordable housing is horrible. It’s absolutely horrible. In Niagara, the wait times almost seem like they’re fake. You wouldn’t even believe it if you said it: 20 years. Think about this: In Fort Erie, the wait time for affordable housing is 20 years.

And then, you look at the Falls, where we all talk about tourism and it’s a great place to come. Come on down to the Falls anytime you want. You guys come and visit. You never invite me to go out for a sandwich or anything when you guys come to the Falls. You should. I’d love to go with you and show you the Falls, show you the wine industry. It’s a great place. It’s 21 years in Niagara Falls—that’s how long the wait time is for affordable housing.

In Niagara-on-the-Lake, another great place—I know some of you guys have been down to Niagara-on-the-Lake. You love the wine. You love the Shaw Festival. You love Queen Street. You love everything about it. It’s 16 years in Niagara-on-the-Lake for affordable housing.

And I’ll talk real quick because I’ve got to wrap this up. I’ve got lots more to say. I wish I had an hour because the most important thing, I believe, is the environment—protecting our environment when it comes to our water and our air quality. But there’s nothing more important than housing, and I can tell you, I have four employees, they’re all unionized. We are the only party—when he talks about unions, I challenge him to show me the union that they belong to, their staff.

My staff belongs to a union. They get paid fair wages with fair benefits and with a pension. I don’t even have a pension here, just for the record, and you know what? They’re even struggling to buy a home when they’re making that kind of money.

We’re doing something wrong in the province when our kids and our grandkids can’t afford to buy a home, can’t afford to pay their rent, and they’re living in our basements or part of our homes. It’s wrong. We’ve got to do better in the province of Ontario, and I believe this motion helps resolve that issue. Thank you very much for listening to me, Speaker.

Further debate?

Two minutes.

Further debate?

I appreciate the opportunity to join the debate this afternoon on opposition day motion number 4. I want to thank the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the Associate Minister of Housing and the parliamentary assistant from Perth–Wellington for all their work to help our partners build more homes, including Bill 185, which I spoke about just last week.

Together with the investments we’re making in infrastructure, like water, sewage and roads, including $1.8 billion in the 2024 budget, Ontario is on track to build at least 1.5 million homes by 2031, including 120,000 in Mississauga.

As the minister said, over the last three years Ontario has had the most housing starts in the last 30 years. Under the former Liberal government there was an average of fewer than 68,000 housing starts each year. Since our government was elected in 2018, there has been an average of 87,000 starts. That is an increase of about 20,000 homes in a year.

Last year, our goal was 110,000 new homes. Ontario created over 109,000—99% of our target. But, of course, we all recognize that more needs to be done. The NDP motion today proposes legislating fourplexes, restoring rent control, implementing vacancy decontrol and a substantial increase in the number of non-market homes. Speaker, I’d like to touch on a few of these points today.

Firstly, Speaker, as the minister said, fourplexes are already legal. In fact, fourplexes are already allowed as of right, without any extra approvals, in the city of Mississauga. Many members have seen the video of Bonnie Crombie fearmongering about the Housing Affordability Task Force and showing fourplexes as giant orange boxes in residential neighbourhoods. But, Speaker, in the end, Mayor Crombie used her strong-mayor powers that this government provided in Bill 3 to allow fourplexes as of right. Fourplexes are also available as of right in Toronto and over 20 cities across the province, with a total population of about eight million people—roughly half the population of this province.

Speaker, listening to the debate about fourplexes here in Queen’s Park, or in Ottawa, we might think this is the solution to the housing crisis, but the fact is, less than 70 fourplexes were built in Toronto last year, and in many other cities like Vaughan or Richmond Hill, not even one was built. That’s why Toronto city councillor, Gord Perks, a former NDP candidate—and certainly not a supporter of this government—said that fourplexes will never create affordable housing and the government should focus their efforts on areas that actually do.

Speaker, I agree with this. As the minister said, our municipal partners have told us that housing-enabling infrastructure is what they need most. That’s why our 2024 budget includes a new billion-dollar Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program and $825 million for the Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund. We made this announcement in Lakeview at the Arthur Kennedy water treatment plant, where an expansion will support tens of thousands of new homes along Mississauga’s waterfront, including Brightwater and the new Lakeview Village. The infrastructure funding is giving municipalities the support they need to get shovels in the ground to build the housing that Ontario needs. As the minister said, we’re committed to working in partnership with municipalities, not micromanaging or taking a top-down, “Queen’s Park knows best” approach.

Next, Speaker, the NDP motion asks the government to restore rent control on new units built since 2018. The minister already said this, but I want to reiterate: It was the NDP government of Bob Rae that ended rent control for new purpose-built rental homes back in 1992, when the Leader of the Opposition was an NDP staff member. At the time, there was a shortage of rental housing, and Dave Cooke, who was the NDP Minister of Housing, said that this change “will provide for some additional flexibility for the private sector and will result in new rental units ... being built across the province.” Again, Speaker, this was the NDP Minister of Housing on June 24, 1991. This wasn’t a loophole; it was a deliberate policy. And though the Mike Harris government extended the policy in 1997, it was deliberate NDP policy.

So, just to be clear, in 43 elections, over 157 years, Ontario has voted for only one NDP government, in 1990, and this one NDP government also created exemptions for rent control for exactly the same reason we’re doing today: to encourage the construction of new purpose-built rental homes. And this is exactly what the policy is doing, together with other changes like the HST exemption and reducing development charges in Bill 23.

Last year, there were about 19,000 purpose-built rental housing starts in Ontario, the most in the history of this province, up from 15,000 in 2022, an increase of over 27%. At the same time, the vast majority of rental units remain under rent control, and the government has held the 2024 rent increase guideline to 2.5%, which is below inflation and the lowest in Canada—even lower than the 3.5% increase allowed under the NDP government in British Columbia.

Next, Speaker, the NDP motion says the government has failed to implement vacancy decontrol, but this policy was implemented almost 30 years ago. In fairness, the NDP housing plan says they would scrap, not implement, vacancy decontrol, which is maybe what the Leader of the Opposition meant to say.

Lastly, Speaker, the NDP motion calls for a substantial increase in the number of non-market houses. I certainly agree that there’s a role for non-market housing. We’re making the largest investment in the homelessness program in the history of Ontario, including $700 million each year for homeless shelters, supportive housing and other programs.

In my community of Mississauga–Lakeshore, we’re supporting the expansion of Armagh House for victims of domestic violence and abuse, and we’re investing $24 million to help build 219 affordable homes in Lakeview, including 68 units at Indwell’s Lakeshore Lofts for people with disabilities.

But the NDP housing plan calls for 250,000 non-market units. As my friend from Essex said, if we assume the cost is $500,000 each, this would cost the province about $125 billion, over 60% of the entire provincial budget. And that’s for only 250,000 homes, when we need 1.5 million homes. Non-market housing is an important part of the housing mix, but some of my friends in the NDP take it so far and argue it’s the solution to the housing crisis.

Speaker, I mentioned Bob Rae earlier. Ontario’s one NDP Premier wrote that he left the party in 2002 because they opposed the Third Way and they “sat on their hands” when people like Tony Blair praised the advantages of free markets.

In my community, Lakeview Village Partners are building 1,600 affordable units at no cost to taxpayers. I know Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie is still livid about this, and she’s promising local ratepayer groups that she would cut the number of affordable units in half, but I hope the NDP will join us and support this important project in Lakeview.

Speaker, again, I want to thank the minister and all members for being here this afternoon for the debate on opposition day motion number 4.

Further debate?

I’m so pleased to join in the debate on the official opposition’s motion today. I think that all of us in this House understand that without stable housing, without a strategy to address the precariousness of housing, we will not reach our potential. This is what housing provides to people in Ontario.

I’m going to go through a couple of stats here because it’s important for the government to have their eyes wide open on this situation on housing and homelessness. In fact, this government has refocused their energy on addressing homelessness, and homelessness is a crisis. Homelessness are encampments.

We just met, the leader and I, on Friday with the social development centre, and they described what they’re seeing in encampments as criminal purgatory. It’s where people are not seen; they are not heard; they are the great unwashed. We do not want to acknowledge their humanity.

The normalization of these encampments is a very dark point for us in Canada and in Ontario. We all should agree that people should not be living in tents in the winter on a corner, in a park. It’s almost like this government is content, if you will, that they’re there and they’re not over here. We had a really honest and emotional conversation about the loss of dignity for people in this province. We have to talk about “these people” because they are our people; they are our citizens. They should not be treated like second-class citizens in the province of Ontario.

Now, the government, though, has really been playing a little bit of a shell game with the money on housing, I have to say. We have proposed some solutions here. One of them—it was really interesting. It’s always interesting how many times a member on that side can say, “Bonnie Crombie, queen of the carbon tax.” They’re very consistent in that regard. But I have to say, what’s happening with the commentary around fourplexes—now, the government should remember that it was less than two years ago that they made threeplexes a right of way, not right of way but right of—what is it?

It was less than two years ago that this government made threeplexes as of right. Now it’s the fourplex—this is the line in the sand, right? This is the line in the sand where this government has said, “Oh, forget it.” What do you do with a Premier who says that we can’t have these eight-storey fourplexes? What do you do with that, Madam Speaker? Because this is what the Premier has said, “We can’t have four-storey, six-storey or eight-story fourplexes.” Everybody in this House should fully understand that fourplexes are either two storeys, sometimes they’re three storeys, but for some reason this government has said, “Nope, we’re drawing the line in the sand. The threeplexes are as good as you’re going to get, Ontario.” Maybe they aren’t the whole solution, but they are definitely part of the solution, and we need all of these tools to address the homelessness and housing crisis in Ontario.

It’s important, if you track the money—and I’m the finance critic, so I like to do so. In 2018-19, Ontario spent a total of $1.1 billion on its housing programs. The breakdown is really interesting: $397 million was on homelessness, $693 million was on community housing and $7.8 million on Indigenous housing. My good friend from Kiiwetinoong, this is a familiar story that you’ve heard before. In 2024, the province was planning on spending $1.4 billion, but $707 million on homelessness and only $215 million on community housing. And $422 million was from the National Housing Strategy with the federal government, who are obviously in a point of tension right now with this provincial government, because they want to bypass the provincial government and get money right into those communities.

I will say, they are putting some pressure on this government. Why would you not come together in the face of this housing crisis when money is on the table? We need the resources in the community. This ideological game is such a dangerous place in politics, in my view.

Just to recap, the government has lowered spending on community housing by 70%. For the love of humanity, how do you solve a housing crisis by reducing the funding on community housing? How do you do that? It seems like you’re content to see those encampments. You’re content to spend some more money on the crisis of that moment but not the solution of the moment. This is so short-sighted. To be fair, it’s exactly what the Liberals did.

Timmins Mayor Michelle Boileau states that in northern Ontario, local towns “have seen an increase to homelessness prevention dollars while either seeing status quo or most recently a decrease to community housing funding.”

It is an exercise in futility to acknowledge that homelessness is a crisis, that those problems are complex and require strategic investment, strategic resources and talent and yet not have the solution around community housing, which is supportive housing.

Tim Richter from the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness said that “when Ontario is spending less on housing, they’re going to end up spending more on homelessness....”

This is exactly what’s happening in Ontario right now. It defies all logic for a government that says that 1.5 million homes need to be built. Right now, the homes that are being built, as my colleague from Niagara has pointed out, are unaffordable homes. It is not the solution. The financialization of our housing sector is killing this province. It absolutely is.

I’ll just summarize by saying that in Waterloo region, the number of people who are experiencing chronic homelessness has grown by 129%, but this is going to triple in 2028. This is a community, quite honestly, that does have wealth. We have a very strong religious and social fabric in our region that has really been trying to lift people up, but that net has holes in it. It is frayed; it is tired. There’s no mending it. We need a new strategy.

That is why the official opposition has brought forward some recommendations here to the government. It sounds like they’re not open to the suggestions; you’re not open to the learning part of this. But I have to tell you, when we met with The Working Centre, Joe and Stephanie Mancini, this past Friday, they have described what’s happening to people who are the most vulnerable in Ontario as beyond cruel.

We need to solve the housing crisis. Please contemplate other options, because your plan, the PC plan, is not working.

I’m honoured to stand today to discuss one of the more important problems currently facing people in every community across Ontario: access to housing. Our government understands that people across Ontario need a wide range of housing options at various price points to best reflect their needs at every stage in life. Industry experts, economists, home builders, and countless financial and market professionals have offered solutions about what can and must be done to solve this problem. Our government is listening and we’re taking action. We know that government bureaucracy doesn’t build homes, which is why our government is choosing to reduce red tape and create the environment for our community home builders to increase Ontario’s housing supply.

When examining the roots of the situation we’re facing in Ontario with respect to housing, similarities can be drawn across many jurisdictions—across Canadian provinces, American states and even globally, as many countries are struggling with similar challenges. Ontario is certainly not immune from global forces.

I have heard from people in my riding and have listened to media pundits discuss the factors exacerbating the housing crises affecting communities across Ontario, Canada and North America. Rising building costs remain a challenge for builders. Interest rates on mortgages remain a major challenge for potential homebuyers and for people renewing their mortgages. One common denominator I’ve heard directly from home builders, from existing and prospective homebuyers and from renters remains a lack of housing supply.

With a little luck, at any time of day you can tune in to Newstalk 1010 here in Toronto, or AM 800 back in my hometown of Chatham-Kent–Leamington, and probably hear a live radio personality and their guests discuss this very situation at various times throughout any day. I’d agree with some of them that the current housing dilemma involves a constellation of deep and complex factors involving local and global market conditions, population growth, current lending rates and the consequences from policy decisions made many years ago that resulted in diminished supply relative to our population growth, especially the net growth experienced here in Ontario because of years of sustained and positive immigration levels.

The main issue driving this prolonged period of record immigration was that communities weren’t building homes at the same rate equal to the families and individuals who needed all forms of housing. Home builders have long identified challenges with slow, arduous local planning processes, outdated rules and the NIMBYism that unnecessarily delayed important projects that can contribute to the very housing solutions Ontario has been seeking.

To continue to grow our economy and fill the wide range of available jobs now and in the future, we need to attract and retain these hard-working, entrepreneurial, industrious, skilled and motivated people who want to build a life for themselves and their families here in Ontario. To this point, Ontario stands apart from the broader cross-section of other jurisdictions experiencing similar housing pressures. The reason? Since 2018, Ontario has cultivated a climate and nurtured the conditions to attract record investments and create unprecedented opportunities for now and for the future.

In spite of these pressures, setbacks and delays the world experienced during the pandemic, Ontario’s economy recovered quickly. Led by Premier Ford, it’s on a course to lead all jurisdictions across North America in terms of investment in the next generation of meaningful, well-paying jobs.

In response to this housing supply crisis, our government has adopted an all-of-government approach to tackle this very difficult situation, emphasizing collaboration between both municipal and federal levels of government to facilitate the environment needed for community builders to construct homes more efficiently. With a goal of building 1.5 million homes by 2031, it requires partnership with Ontario’s elected mayors and councillors, because municipalities know their communities best. They understand where it makes sense to build and where it just makes sense not to.

Under the leadership of this Premier, we’re working together in supporting municipalities by giving them the tools they need to build more homes faster and tackle the affordability crisis that’s pricing too many people, especially young families and newcomers, out of the dream of home ownership.

We have set ambitious housing targets and we’re holding municipalities accountable while rewarding them for successes with our $1.2-billion Building Faster Fund, designed to help municipalities pay for critical housing and community-related enabling infrastructure needed to accommodate growth, such as site servicing and building new roads. The Building Faster Fund includes $120 million that’s being reserved for small, rural and northern municipalities, to help build housing-enabling infrastructure and prioritize projects that speed up the increase of housing supply.

In partnership with municipalities, Ontario will continue to work hard to unlock housing opportunities and support growing communities. The province continues to call on our federal government to pay its fair share and help fund housing-enabling infrastructure investments and support vibrant, growing communities.

Municipal infrastructure is vital to fostering Ontario’s economic prosperity and enhancing quality of life. The crucial funding will power municipalities to sustain the province’s expansion by maintaining essential systems, like water and sewer networks, and facilitating connectivity to roads and bridges.

My riding of Chatham-Kent–Leamington is expansive. It follows the shores of beautiful Lake Erie. Chatham-Kent is home to the Thames campus of St. Clair College. It is still largely rural and made up of several smaller municipalities, like the former city of Chatham, Comber, Tilbury, Wheatley, Blenheim, Merlin, Ridgetown and Highgate, all amalgamated to form the current municipality.

Just consider the network of legacy infrastructure in a community like Chatham-Kent: several different water and waste water treatment plants, hundreds of kilometres of underground pipe and an extensive network of municipal roads. Chatham-Kent possesses one of the highest concentrations of bridges and drains anywhere in the province, with watersheds that include Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie and the Thames River.

Nevertheless, Chatham-Kent identified an opportunity to seize the moment to attract families and grow. Despite targeting to build 81 new homes last year, Chatham-Kent broke ground on 522 new housing units.

Interjection.

I thank you.

For their efforts, the municipality received $440,000 to contribute to much-needed infrastructure for exceeding its 2023 provincial housing target. The Associate Minister of Housing was on hand to present one of the very first cheques from the Building Faster Fund to our mayor, Mayor Darrin Canniff, to council and to our team.

Chatham-Kent home builders are getting homes built. Local officials in Chatham-Kent can choose when and where fourplexes work for their community. Mayor and council are continuing to streamline processes. This NDP motion seeks to remove the ability of our local leaders to make decisions about their own home communities.

Furthermore, elements of this motion are misleading. Fourplexes do not need to be legalized. Several cities have them already, including right here in Toronto. Communities like Chatham-Kent are getting a wide range of homes built, and as such, I think it’s best to let people in Chatham-Kent and elsewhere make their own decisions. We don’t need an ineffective policy forced upon them by the member from Davenport.

Let’s talk of Leamington, my home community. Leamington is one of Canada’s southernmost communities, nestled along the shores of Lake Erie in Essex county. Its temperate climate makes it attractive for retirees and its close proximity to the US uniquely positions it as an ideal destination for automotive investment, food processing and advanced businesses to support the area’s traditional field and orchard crops, along with the highest concentration of greenhouses anywhere in North America. This industry employs thousands of local and international agricultural workers. These ideal conditions continue to attract investment, but further highlight the need for a wide range of diverse housing to accommodate a growing and vibrant population.

Recent work by our municipal officials concluded that strategic investments in water and waste water infrastructure alone could unlock the potential for 8,000 new homes in a community of roughly 30,000 people. Housing-enabling water infrastructure, like that proposed by this government for projects like water, water treatment, waste water and road building, remains a top priority, with the potential to double the population of this little town in less than two decades.

The case study to unlock the potential in Leamington is precisely what our Premier has heard from areas across Ontario. This is why we’re investing $1.8 billion in new housing-enabling infrastructure, so communities like mine can get shovels in the ground and build the 1.5 million homes we need by 2031.

The funding includes $1 billion for new municipal housing infrastructure and $625 million more for housing-enabling water systems funds. The new $1-billion Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program will support core infrastructure projects that help enable housing for growing and developing communities, for roads and water infrastructure. We’ve heard it loud and clear, and we’re taking action.

Ontario is quadrupling its investment from $200 million to over $825 million over three years to expand housing-enabling water systems. This will help municipalities repair, rehabilitate and expand drinking water, waste water and stormwater infrastructure to build more homes now.

By growing our investments, we’re helping create an environment that’s conducive to building housing and having our sectors across Ontario thrive. Our substantial investments in this infrastructure are the pathway we need to bolster home construction while concurrently easing regulatory constraints and burdens on developers. The dual approach aims to stimulate a diverse array of housing options, ultimately augmenting the housing supply and to achieve market stability.

Members in this Legislature who want to truly support housing must work together to create good policy to allow home builders to build a wide range of homes across Ontario. I strongly recommend that members keep doing what’s working and get away from things and policies and motions like this that do not.

Further debate?

Interjections.

I’m very pleased to rise on this NDP motion today calling on the government to support deeply affordable and not-for-profit housing in Ontario because people in Ontario are desperate. We have a very serious housing crisis, and I am really seeing it in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean. Unfortunately, the budget and the government’s recent housing bill contain nothing to address affordable housing, even though that’s what my constituents most desperately need.

According to rentals.ca, the average rent in Ottawa for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,038 in March. That’s a year-over-year increase of 9.1%. Just to put this in context, if you are a minimum wage worker working 40 hours a week in Ontario, your rent is taking up 75% of your income, and you have only that other 25% to spend on groceries—which are also increasing—and every other expense that you have. If you are on ODSP, that rent is 155% of your income. If you are on Ontario Works, it is 278% of your income.

So when I door-knock in apartment buildings in Ottawa West–Nepean, the number one thing people are telling me is that they cannot afford to pay their rent and buy groceries and pay all of their other bills. In fact, I spoke to someone recently who said rent takes up all of his income, and he is depending on this legacy his parents left him, which he’s spending now every single month just to be able to buy food and stay out of the food bank.

My constituents can’t afford what they have, but they also can’t afford to move because the rents are going up so quickly. Just to give you an example, I had some constituents who came to me because of a situation in a CLV apartment in Britannia where another tenant was harassing people, so there was quick turnover in this unit. In the space of six months with three tenants, the rent went from $1,400 a month to $1,900 a month to $2,600 a month. That is a $1,200 a month increase in the space of six months.

The problem is that when we are allowing landlords to jack up the rents like this, it creates an incentive for landlords to get tenants out. I’ve had a constituent, Judy, who has had two illegal evictions, being told that the landlord was going to move in so she had to move out. This happened in 2019, when she was paying $1,500 a month. The landlord turned around and rented the unit for $500 a month more, rather than moving in. This year, it happened again: She was paying $1,750 a month in rent, and the landlord turned around and rented it out for $450 a month more. So Judy has two Landlord and Tenant Board applications to protest these unfair evictions, which aren’t progressing at all because the Landlord and Tenant Board is broken, and she is now paying $1,915 a month, which is a 27% increase in her rent, all because of the illegal actions of these landlords.

We’re also seeing landlords use above-guideline rent increases to put pressure on tenants to move out. In fact, ACORN just obtained data for the last five years through a freedom-of-information request which was reported on by the CBC, which shows that 20 companies in Ontario were responsible for over half of the AGI requests in Ontario in just the first eight months of 2022. They actually have all the data going back to 2017 on AGI applications to the Landlord and Tenant Board, and they show that in Ottawa West–Nepean, in that time period, there were 128 AGI applications, which accounted for 3% of all the AGI applications during that time period, even though my riding does not have 3% of all the residences in Ontario.

We’re seeing the same names appear on that list over and over again. It is the large corporate landlords like Minto and Homestead and Accora. At eight properties in my riding, the landlord applied for an AGI every single year during that time period that they could, and I’m hearing from constituents that these AGIs are being approved even when they’re being submitted for minor repairs—like, they put some paint in the hallway, and now an AGI is approved. Meanwhile, at other buildings, major repairs aren’t getting done even though the AGI is being approved by the landlord.

I’ve heard from Rosa in Ottawa West–Nepean, whose rent went up 5.5% this year. She told me, “I simply can’t afford this. Things were tight before but now I feel stricken with fear of what will happen. I work very hard every day and I feel stuck in a bad situation.” She concluded, “To be blunt, I’m desperate.”

These corporate landlords are not using AGIs in order to pay for these renovations and repairs. They are using them to maximize profits and to push tenants out. That is an important reason why we need to enable and empower not-for-profit and community home building and not-for-profit landlords within our rental market in Ontario, so that the actual goal is to deliver affordable housing to people and not to maximize dividends for shareholders.

We have great community housing and not-for-profit home builders in Ottawa, like Ottawa Community Housing, Nepean community housing and the Ottawa Community Land Trust. They are ready and willing to do the work—they are doing good work already—but they need support from this government in order to provide that kind of housing for even more people.

There are 10,000 people on the centralized wait-list for affordable housing in Ottawa, and I spoke to one constituent who has been on that wait-list for 12 years. She has given up hope that she is ever going to get an affordable home in Ottawa.

This motion calls on the government of Ontario to get back into the business of building affordable housing by swiftly and substantially increasing the supply of affordable and non-market homes. The NDP has put forward a proposal which calls on the government to provide the funding for these not-for-profit and community landlords to build this housing and make it affordable. If we don’t invest in the not-for-profit part of our market, we are never going to be able to provide affordable housing at this spectrum of the market where people need deeply affordable housing—in fact, we’re never going to see affordable housing at all because, in the last six years, the government has only had 1,184 affordable homes built. That’s just not going to cut it when we’ve got 10,000 people on the wait-list for affordable housing in Ottawa alone.

So I’m deeply disappointed to hear that the government members are speaking about not supporting this motion, that they don’t seem to understand the scale and the depth of the crisis in Ontario, that they don’t understand what is needed to address it and make sure that people actually have an affordable place to live and get to feed their families as well. And so I hope that the government members will reconsider and support this motion this afternoon.

Thank you, colleagues. Hopefully I’ll get a bit more applause than that by the end of the speech, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

It’s an honour to rise today, on behalf of Ontarians and Canadians, certainly millennials, new Canadians, and also seniors that are simply priced out of the market and that’s even if they can find somewhere to live. The housing supply crisis is a problem that has been decades in the making, and it’s been something that our government has been tasked with fixing since we got elected, and certainly something I’ve been tasked with tackling since I got elected in 2022.

I want to give some context to the members across about our housing need. You know, in the mid-1980s, the average home in the GTA was $102,000. You fast-forward that, with inflation, everything around, and in today’s dollars it’s around $286,000. That same home, as a GTA average is actually over a million dollars now, including in my community in Brampton, which is a community that used to have people come live in Brampton because they couldn’t find an affordable home—or to find an affordable home. Now, they can’t even afford to live in Brampton.

What we’ve seen with this government—there’s no government in history that has done more to build homes, certainly not the previous Liberal government for 15 years, which was backed by the NDP, certainly not the NDP government under Bob Rae.

I want to talk a little bit about what we’ve done, not just in Brampton but also all across Ontario, where we’ve done things like remove maximum heights in major transit station areas around transit—the idea that you can build big towers, build lots of density when people can get on transit to get to work. I think it makes a lot of sense.

We’ve looked at sensible solutions around expanding urban settlement areas so that, if there are places where we can’t build homes yet, let’s think of what we can do to build homes in that place. That’s something that members opposite from the Liberals and the NDP have consistently voted against every single time.

You know, some of the things that we’ve done include reducing taxes on rentals, so we’ve reduced the HST on purpose-built rentals, we’ve eliminated that entirely with the help of the federal government.

We also got rid of development charges on non-profit affordable housing, and we’ve reduced it on rental housing as well. And that’s the approach of our government, led by our Premier. That’s the approach that our government has taken to address the housing crisis, and we’ve seen, in the last three years, more homes built over the last three years than we’ve seen in decades across Ontario.

Our plan is to build 1.5 million homes across the province by 2031, and our plan to build the homes Ontarians need is working, but we also recognize that there is more that needs to be done. That’s why we’re working with municipalities and partners to reduce the roadblocks, cut red tape and get Ontario building.

Ongoing economic headwinds and high interest rates are affecting home building across the country. Ontario’s not immune to that, which is why we’re taking action to cut red tape, support municipalities and build more housing faster, improving the quality of life and creating strong communities for everyone from students to families to people in need. We’re helping our partners to build more housing so that residents can finally get a home that they can afford and realize that Canadian dream.

In order to reach our goal of building at least 1.5 million homes by 2031, we’re focused on removing red tape in the process of home building. Something that we’ve heard consistently time and time and again is the cost of delays, where every month a delay on a project can add, you know, $4,000—almost $4,000—on the cost of a unit. And that was a few years ago, so with inflation it’s probably higher, quite frankly, now, than it was then.

If you look at that over 12 months of delay, that’s a lot of money. That’s almost $40,000 just on one unit—that one year of delay can cost on a unit. So reducing red tape is important. We want to build capacity and certainty around municipal planning approvals and we’re making investments in housing-enabling infrastructure.

I’ll note we just tabled a budget. Our finance minister tabled a budget with $1.8 billion for housing-enabling infrastructure: one of the funds around water, $825 million; and another billion dollars that we’ll be rolling out. And members opposite voted against that, that same budget. They voted against housing-enabling infrastructure, which we know, and we’ve heard from municipalities, is going to help us get shovels in the ground to get homes built.

They talk about fourplexes as of right. I would ask, under NDP or Liberal governments, or the Liberal governments that they propped up, where was the zoning that was permissible for fourplexes as of right? Because under this government we’ve seen Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener, St. Catharines and Burlington all pass laws to make fourplexes as of right across their municipalities. We did that by working with municipalities, not by forcing them to take these policies forward.

One of the places that passed a law like this is actually Mississauga where we had the queen of the carbon tax, Bonnie Crombie, as the former mayor. Actually, at a time when Ontario was growing—we’re seeing hundreds of thousands of people coming into the province every year—and, frankly, Mississauga being a place that actually has the biggest airport in Ontario, Pearson airport, they actually managed to shrink their population, not grow their population at a time when everybody else was growing their population and we need all municipalities to do their part. We need them all to step up.

This anti-development approach has not only consequences on the population in the area, it has consequences across the province. Look at highways. Every major city has a bypass highway, and then when Brampton—we’ve grown; we’ve doubled over the last two decades in population—finally gets a government ready to build our bypass highway, Highway 413, everybody gets the torches and pitchforks out, and the downtown Toronto environmental activists start to say, “Oh, no, we have a problem. It’s okay to build highways elsewhere in Ontario, just not for Brampton—just not for you.”

We saw that from the leader of the Liberals during her time as mayor of Mississauga when it felt like she actually spent, it felt like, more time opposing a highway which would benefit the residents of Brampton than actually building homes in her own community to support the growth that her population was seeing.

Now I was very happy that we have a different approach in Brampton. We’ve been growing. Brampton’s a very shovel-ready city, and we saw that with the recent Building Faster Fund and the work that we did towards our housing target, $25.5 million—very happy that we had the minister there, the Premier there and my Brampton caucus colleagues all there to support that fund, and we’re looking forward to not only doing what we did this year, but we’re going to smash those targets next year, so hopefully an even bigger cheque from the minister when that gets done.

We need to listen to local communities who want to have their voices heard, but we need to set incentivized structures in place to make sure that municipalities are doing their part. We’ve listened to municipalities on some of the changes that we made around use-it-or-lose-it clauses etc., but we’ve also incentivized them to move in the right direction by setting housing targets.

This is something that was scoffed at when we were first looking at it by the opposition who thought that municipalities would never sign on to our housing targets. Look at where we are now, where almost every single major big municipality not only signed on to the targets, but most of them actually made significant progress at hitting them. Many of them even exceeded those housing targets.

This is an approach that works. It’s unfortunate we hear from the opposition—they talk about the need for non-profit housing. Why did you vote against removing development charges on non-profit housing? Okay. When we moved to have three units as of right in homes, legalizing nanny suites and that kind of thing, why did you vote against it then? When we removed height restrictions around major transit station areas—again, something that makes sense—why did you vote against it then?

It’s an opposition that has opposed housing at every step, and it seems like consistently from the members across that what we hear is, “We need the government to set up an agency, and we need more bureaucracy. If we just put more power in the hands of government, then everything will be okay.” We don’t agree with that on the PC side. We need more power in the hands of citizens, more power in the hands of residents, more power in the hands of industry to actually build the homes, get our market going and get some homes that my generation can afford.

It’s frustrating being a millennial, and people say millennials, oh, you know—you’ve got to realize millennials, some of us are 40. I’m not, but we’re not just kids anymore. We’re a big generation and we’re in our prime earning years. Simply put, my generation just can’t afford to get into the housing market. It’s not through lack of trying.

You hear—what was it—the mayor of Calgary said that people don’t want to own homes. Did you guys hear this? I don’t want to blast another—but we hear some of this rhetoric; she’s not the only one who’s made this rhetoric, that people want to rent.

I just want to be clear, Madam Speaker: My generation doesn’t want to rent. We have to rent—if we can afford the rent. We want to be homeowners. We want to own homes and we want to move our lives forward.

Frankly, nothing in this motion that I see from the NDP helps that and supports that, but everything that I’ve seen from the PC plan and our government’s plan is getting us in the right direction, and that plan is working. We’re going to continue to do what we can to promote development, to not only create jobs but to make sure that we’re building homes that people who are working those jobs can afford.

With the time I have left, I want to talk a little bit about the record of the Liberal leader. This is something that—you know, we hear a lot of talk from the Liberals now. They’re awfully quiet when we mention support of the carbon tax. They don’t want to take a stance on the carbon tax, but they seem to talk a lot about housing lately.

I just want to reiterate that, under their leader’s leadership, Mississauga is the only major city in Ontario to recently shrink in population. You know, under the Liberal leader’s leadership, Mississauga said no to thousands of homes for her community. While we were pushing to build up near transit and reforming zoning to create more gentle density, Bonnie Crombie, the leader of the Liberal Party, called a 17-storey, 148-unit rental development “way too much density.” Like, she’s campaigning to be the Premier of the province—I just want to, you know—just for context. When she was in leadership as the mayor of Mississauga—again, where these quotes come from—she also called a proposed 12-storey, 195-unit development “an abomination.”

And under Bonnie Crombie’s leadership—again, campaigning to be the Premier of the province, wants to be in charge of Ontario. When she was in charge of Mississauga, under her leadership, Mississauga said no to a 4,690-unit development because of sun shadow issues.

That’s not real leadership. That’s not the leadership that we need here in Ontario. We need a government that gets it done for people, not only building homes but building highways, long-term care, transit infrastructure, hospitals, to really get the job done and really get our province back to a good place. So we know that the people of Mississauga certainly deserve better than Bonnie Crombie, but I would also say that Ontario deserves better than Bonnie Crombie.

With the time that I have, I want to take some time to thank the minister as well, not only for the $25.5-million Building Faster Fund for Brampton but also for the 30% increase for the Homelessness Prevention Program that we got in Peel region last year. That money is really helping, really supporting. My colleague from Mississauga–Lakeshore talked about the fund going to Armagh House and other organizations. I mean, that’s a massive help. It’s big for our community and very, very helpful.

So, I’ll wrap it up by asking my colleagues across to rethink their motion and take a second look at our housing plan and what we’ve been doing. I know they voted against it. I know they voted against cutting taxes on rental housing. They voted against eliminating taxes for non-profit housing for Habitat for Humanity and awesome organizations like that. I know they voted against those things, but it’s not too late. They can support us in our plan to build homes. They can support us in our plan to build Highway 413 and to build 50 new hospital capital projects across Ontario.

It is not too late; we’ve still got two years before the election. I certainly hope that our colleagues change their mind, but frankly, when you look at this motion and the content of it, for all the reasons that I’ve talked about, Speaker, I won’t be supporting it and I encourage all my colleagues not to support it as well.

It’s my honour to rise today in support of our opposition day motion. You know, for the government, they often are talking about the current housing crisis in which we are living, which we are experiencing. The first and most obvious answer would be what, Speaker? If there aren’t enough homes, what do we do? We build them. Instead of leaving this up to other people and all these different roundabout ways, the most simple answer is to get shovels in the ground and to build.

I was honoured to table this legislation late last year, and I’m proud that, despite the Conservatives not wanting to get their hands dirty and not wanting to get shovels in the ground and voted it down, we are undaunted. The official opposition will raise the voices of people across this province. The affordability crisis must be addressed in a meaningful way. What is foundational, what is fundamental, what is most often the largest expense in our lives? It’s housing.

While this government blunders ahead and tiptoes clumsily backwards, the Ontario NDP is focused on solutions, and part of that is a commitment to affordable housing. We need a wartime effort to address this housing crisis. We need all hands on deck. We need to capitalize on the strengths and abilities of our community partners such as experts in the field like co-ops, municipal partners and social housing providers.

I recently had the opportunity to congratulate Homes Unlimited London in my riding on 50 years of incorporation. Carmen Sprovieri and Cathy Park were there. It was an amazing event. It was a beautiful and poignant evening. But here is a not-for-profit organization that is phenomenal. They have industry partners. They’re doers. They have industry leaders. They know how to navigate systems. They can easily leverage their own expertise as well as that of others just to get the job done. I sat with Bob and Margo Hahn and Gord and Maria Hardcastle and we had a phenomenal conversation. But it was amazing to see that those are the kinds of organizations that this government could depend upon that could help create that affordable housing.

Recently, in my riding, Richard Sifton of Sifton Properties, with the Anglican Diocese of Huron, are now taking Homes Unlimited into downtown London. There’s going to be at 195 Dufferin Ave., which is going to be 94 residential units—80 one-bedroom and 14 two-bedroom units. It’s going to cost $20 million, and Sifton is donating the building and is going to oversee the reconstruction. It’s a beautiful plan.

But this is exactly what the government could do. Not-for-profits can split a nickel five ways from centre. Co-ops have been in the business of creating and maintaining that housing stock that is vitally necessary to address the affordability crisis that is happening across our province. Yet, this government would talk about recommendations from Scotiabank as being communist. They would talk about how the government creating housing would ruin the free market.

Here on this side, the official opposition speaks to folks who are in the creation of private, for-profit housing. They do not want the responsibility of creating all the affordable housing that Ontario needs. That is not their mandate, Speaker. They are in the business of providing shareholder return. They want to make sure there is a return on investment for all of their people and, quite frankly, there isn’t a great return on investment in the creation of truly affordable housing and long-term affordable housing.

So this government in their reliance—their ideological, their fixed mindset, where they can’t seem to get it through their ears that we need to have the government incent and assist co-ops, municipal partners and non-profits to create that housing. Instead, they have this myopic vision that for-profit is the only way to go. They’re really letting Ontarians down.

We see other disastrous initiatives from this government including the removal of rent control on buildings first occupied after November 2018. During an affordability crisis, what does this government do for affordability? They poured gasoline on the fire. They’ve created a system of exploitation which has destroyed many lives.

I talk to seniors all the time who have been in buildings for decades. They have paid for the apartment building in which they live, and they are afraid, to this day, each and every single day, that that building is going to be sold to a new owner who will want to get them out so they can jack the rent up to whatever the market can withstand. It’s a legacy of the Liberal government, who shot holes in the boat of affordability in terms of renters, bringing in vacancy decontrol.

This government could follow and could implement NDP legislation to protect renters. They could pass this opposition day motion today to create more affordable housing, to stabilize the system, making sure people have a safe place to call home. Yet, I wonder if they will choose to, or if they will continue to act as partisan puppets for their for-profit friends. Time will tell, and we will see today.

Housing is foundational, housing is fundamental, housing is a human right and housing is health care. I hope this government will understand the importance of housing. They say a lot of words. Let’s see some action today.

Further debate?

It’s a pleasure to rise today to speak to the opposition day motion and talk about what I’m hearing in my community, and I wouldn’t necessarily call them “puppets”—to my colleagues here.

I know our government believes that the number one cause of rental unaffordability in Ontario is the lack of supply, Speaker. To improve rental affordability, we need to increase the number of rental units. To do this, our government introduced an exemption to the rent increase guidelines for units first occupied after November 2018. Since this policy was introduced, Ontario has seen the highest number of purpose-built rental starts ever—the highest ever in our history as a province.

At the same time, we have held the 2024 rent increase guidelines at 2.5%, well below the inflation rate of 5.9%, which was last year, and the lowest in the country, I will say, Speaker. I’ll say again: It is the lowest rental increase guideline in the country, lower than the NDP government in BC, lower than any other Liberal or provincial Conservative government in this country.

The rental policy is such as this, Speaker: This helps protect the vast majority of tenants from significant rent increases. Our balanced approach supports the construction of more rental housing, ultimately leading to more affordable rents while also ensuring the vast majority of rental units remain under rent control.

As the members of this House will know, last fall we were pleased to see that the federal government finally accepted our recommendations and advice on removing the HST on purpose-built rentals. This has led to a record start in the purpose-built rentals for a second year in a row. In 2023, we saw the highest level of purpose-built rental housing starts in Ontario’s history. As I’ve mentioned, at nearly 19,000, that is topping the record of 15,000 the year before in 2022. I know many in this place look forward to seeing us break that record again this year—this at the same time, as I mentioned, that we’re ensuring the vast majority of tenants are under rent control still.

Speaker, this is obviously not the first time in Ontario’s history there has been an exemption for rent control to encourage the construction of more rental units. In fact, it was the last NDP government under Premier Rae that introduced the exemption for rent control for all buildings built after 1991.

In budget 2023, our government invested an additional $19 million to increase the capacity of the Ontario Land Tribunal and of the Landlord and Tenant Board to resolve cases faster, address significant backlogs, support a more efficient dispute resolution and increase the housing supply and opportunity. The LTB is currently focused on reducing its backlog to reduce wait times for both tenants and landlords. Implementing a rent registry, as the member from Kitchener Centre has suggested in the past, would delay these starts, Speaker, and we will not do that. Again, we are focused on getting more homes built and maintaining a balance in that approach.

We have tabled Bill 184, Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Community Housing Act, and Bill 97, Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act. Through these acts, we required landlords to make efforts to negotiate a repayment agreement if a tenant has entered into rent arrears before the LTB can issue an eviction notice. We also increased the fines under the RTA offences to $100,000 for an individual and half a million dollars for a corporation—the highest level in the country.

We’re requiring landlords to disclose to the board if they have previously filed for an eviction to move into a unit or renovate a unit. This is to provide knowledge to our adjudicators to look for patterns and identify landlords who may be breaking the law. We’re requiring this information to be ready because of the pieces of legislation that we have tabled. It’s because of our actions that this information is available to a tenant.

We’ve also increased the compensation for a bad-faith eviction to allow the LTB to order an additional 12 months’ rent in tenant compensation, and we’re also providing tenants with two years instead of the historical one year to apply for a remedy if the landlord evicts to repair or renovate a unit and does not give the tenant an opportunity to move back in.

Speaker, our government understands the need to increase the rental housing supply across Ontario, not just in Toronto, in downtown Kitchener, in Collingwood, in Stratford also, and ensuring in every community we increase the rental supply in Ontario. We’ll continue to put forward proposals that do just that.

I know some members in this place may be aware of a housing model called the Helsinki model, from Finland, obviously. They have a unique model—I learned about it in my role as PA to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing—where they were focused extensively on increasing market rental supply.

I’ll explain why that’s important. When you increase the market rental supply, those who may be in an affordable rent-geared housing unit who can’t afford to move to market rental will move to the market rental, so they’ll climb the ladder. And then those who may be in a precarious situation or even unhoused can then move into the supportive housing, and obviously those who have been unhoused move into those supportive units. Essentially, every person is able to climb the ladder, but the only reason all those individuals can climb that ladder is because, at the top, for market rental, there is that supply.

In Finland, they’ve focused on this extensively over the years, increasing that market-rate rental apartment, allowing those individuals to move up that ladder, to move into their own place, ensuring that those who may be from a lower income on that ladder move into a unit for them, allowing them to have that stability of a place to call home and move up that ladder.

As the member from Brampton North mentioned, some politicians in this country believe that millennials want to rent forever. I can tell you, Speaker, that is not the case. Many millennials want to purchase a property at some point in their lives, and ensuring that that supply is there as well, ensuring that we get a vast majority of homes built—and different types of homes: of course, single-detached, but townhomes, apartments, multi-residential apartments for families as well.

I think often of a builder in my own area of the world, in my riding, building a great development in Palmerston, Ontario. He has recently presented at a mayor’s breakfast, as many of us in this place attend, where he is building, essentially, a stacked townhouse. It’s unique for rural Ontario; I know it’s very common in some of the larger urban centres. But he is building a stacked townhouse. It is unique in the fact that it has a walkout basement that has separate hydro utilities attached to it, and then three bedrooms, I believe, in the upper unit. The builder told the group that he has traditionally built single-detached. He is about mid-career, I would say. He has built single-detached his entire career. Now, for the next half of his career, he’s only going to build this, because he knows he can move this product.

Why this product is so beneficial: Whether it’s a young person who can then rent out the basement or rent out the upper part and live in the bachelor unit in the basement, they have that supplemental income so that they can then afford the mortgage. They can get into the market and be able to provide that source there. Or, also, very importantly, I have a larger senior population in my riding. Whether it is there for our senior population, who may want to downsize—for example, a younger family can move into this stacked townhome and live in the three-bedroom unit above, and their in-laws or parents can live in the walkout basement. Then they can then move out of their over-housed situation, where they may have multiple bedrooms that they are no longer using, but are looking, though, to stay in the community they helped build.

Our builders are very innovative in moving forward these different types of offerings to the market and ensuring that, as in our most recent piece of legislation, Bill 185, was tabled—there are common themes in that, as has been mentioned already by the Associate Minister of Housing. It’s ensuring that we cut red tape, remove barriers and get shovels in the ground on critical infrastructure.

Speaker, I tell our municipal colleagues often—

Interjection.

I will mention the member from Brampton North. I had the pleasure of speaking with Environmental Defence at committee. As he knows, they’re against the 413, but they’re not against other highways. They’re only just against the 413.

When we’re focused on our most recent housing-enabling legislation, it’s shovels in the ground. I tell our municipal colleagues often. I had the pleasure of a few delegations at Good Roads on Sunday afternoon. I met with them, and I have told them often: I’m happy to open a sewer main, a water main, because I know at the end of the day, us putting shovels in the ground for that type of infrastructure will get many, many homes built.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing says it often. We don’t want to build hundreds of homes. We don’t want to build thousands of homes. We want to build millions of homes. Right now, we are building millions of homes. We are well on the way, as the Associate Minister of Housing mentioned in his remarks: historic starts year over year, despite high inflation, which is a federal Liberal problem. We’re cutting red tape. I know our municipal colleagues appreciate the fact that we’re investing over $1.8 billion in housing-enabling infrastructure, waste water in particular, and another billion dollars for roads, bridges, roundabouts that are vital to getting homes built. Traffic flow is very important.

I know our government is also taking a Team Ontario approach. I know the National Housing Strategy has come up today in the debate, and I know that the minister has written a counterproposal to Minister Fraser federally. It was disappointing that he did not accept that fair proposal. I know our municipal colleagues stand with us in that ask of the federal government to honour its commitment to its provincial partners.

Speaker, I think it is very concerning that we have a federal government that disregards the Canadian Constitution whenever it wants to—I’ll be frank; whenever it wants to. We are seeing record high numbers of separatists in Quebec. I can still remember when the last vote was in Quebec, and I do not want to see this country split apart. The federal Liberal government continues to override the constitutional responsibilities of the various levels of government.

We’ll stand with our municipal partners to ensure that we are there for them and working with them to advocate for the vital funds which are owed to them. We agreed to this agreement. We agreed to meeting these targets, and it’s shameful that the federal Liberal government is not there to honour those agreements.

I know other members have mentioned fourplexes today as well. It’s working with our municipal partners, as I have mentioned. Whether it’s getting roads built, whether it’s getting pipes in the ground, we are working with them to remove obstacles, and if they choose to implement fourplexes and, as was mentioned, we did introduce three as of right, and even within this most recent legislation we have tabled, we are still going to ensure—we’re making regulatory changes to ensure that those three as of rights are across this province, ensuring that a municipality cannot prevent that moving forward.

We’ll work with our municipal partners to ensure that we support, if they choose to do so, fourplexes in their communities, but they know what’s best. The Premier says it often: It’s not downtown Toronto or Queen’s Park that knows best, it’s out there in their communities, listening to the people on the ground. That’s what I do often in my own riding, as I know many members do in this place.

We’ll continue to work, as I mentioned, with our municipal partners to support critical waste water infrastructure to ensure that we get more homes built. I know in my own riding there is the potential in a smaller community to see over 800 homes built, but we need that waste water capacity. I know the Minister of Infrastructure is working very hard to get that money out the door as quickly as possible to ensure we get more homes built across Ontario.

Speaker, I also want to address something the NDP housing critic mentioned on social media recently. The NDP housing critic, the member from University–Rosedale, is advocating for policies that would eliminate the supply of rental housing units in a housing supply crisis and lead to higher rents in Ontario. Don’t take my word for it, Speaker. You can take an independent housing expert who has said it would be a disaster for renters in Ontario, and I quote: “The research is actually clear. What the member for University–Rosedale is suggesting would hurt renters who can’t afford to buy and send gentrification through the roof.”

There is nothing progressive about what is being suggested here, Speaker.

Only when it’s Brampton.

It’s not the Fraser Institute.

Interjections.

I think I hit a nerve, but I know the member from Niagara Falls mentioned homelessness prevention funding, which the member from Brampton North mentioned. In Peel, we increased 30%, I believe, in Peel.

Now, for those in this House, in Niagara, we increased it by 86%—86%.

That’s huge.

Fraser Institute?

And how you measure is important, because if all one cares about is supply, as I just heard in debate from my friend in the government, then you can say, “Oh, purpose-built rentals are up. Everything’s great. One climbs the ladder. One day you might have a home you can afford.” But the fact of the matter is, if we look at affordable housing by that definition, 30% of one’s income, then we have failed—abysmally failed Ontario.

We’re failing Ontario because—I’m not making these figures up. Look at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., the federal agency responsible for measuring housing starts. What are they saying? Housing starts across the board from last month are down almost 14%, and from last year at this time, they are down by 4.6%. That is the market itself, but if we look at affordable housing units—this is the thing that disturbs me the most from Professor Whitzman’s research—in our market in Ottawa, for every unit of affordable housing we built—remember the definition, 30% of your income—we are losing 15, and why? Because greedy real estate investment trusts are sweeping into our communities, buying up real estate stock, prettying up the units, throwing out the tenants.

Councillor Ariel Troster back home just published an op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen. I encourage people to read it. What she has uncovered from her research at the city of Ottawa is that the number of N13 notices—those are the eviction notices—has increased—wait for it, Speaker; wait for it, members—by 545% between 2021 and 2022—545%. So we are watching the affordable homes in our community, 30% of market rent, being ripped out of our hands by greedy real estate investment trusts swooping in, buying up units, prettifying them to an extent, kicking out the tenants. And what have we done? Absolutely nothing—nothing—because we have had blind faith, blind faith that the market is going to produce affordable housing. And as the member for London North Centre said, that is not what the market does. That is not what private developers do. It’s actually the role of government. It’s the role of a government to make sure that there are affordable homes for people so they can climb the ladder the member opposite was talking about. But it doesn’t happen by accident.

Let me talk about a government that made it happen. I know about this government because my friend, my neighbour Evelyn Gigantes, who was once Minister of Housing, who was once the MPP for Ottawa Centre, was there and saw it happen. There was a federal government that had very good financing for non-profit and co-operative homes, and between 1989, a period preceding her government, and 1995, more than 14,000 co-op homes were built in the province of Ontario—more than 14,000.

But wait, what happened in 1995? A Conservative government was elected. They immediately ceased the funding of that program, and they immediately ceased the funding of affordable social housing. Why? Because Premier Harris at the time said, “The market will solve these problems.” It hasn’t.

The market has made real estate investment trusts very rich. The market has made sure that people who earn wonderful salaries, like the 82 vice-presidents at Metrolinx I was talking about earlier today, can have not just one home; they can have a vacation property. They can have lots of opportunities. But the average person scraping and struggling, the 50% of Canadians that research tells us are living paycheque to paycheque right now—they can’t find a place to live. So that’s why I’m very happy that our housing critic from University–Rosedale and our party, led by Marit Stiles, has said it’s time for this province, Ontario, to get back into the business of enabling non-market homes, because that’s what we need.

Now, we could have blind faith. Speaker, I could have it too. I could stand here before you and say that after I make this speech, I’m going to get back to my condo at a rate of, per 100 metres, 10 seconds; I can bench-press 300 pounds; I could earn a Nobel Prize tomorrow; I could imagine myself earning a Grammy Award one day. I could have lots of fantastic ideas, but if I’m not partnering with the people who can build the housing, it won’t matter at all. It won’t matter at all.

I’m aware of the fact that the government has talked often about the need to build critical infrastructure so housing could be built—the water and sewer systems. It’s true. But the problem is, if you look at their latest bill, Bill 185, the kinds of homes that are being encouraged here would lead, potentially, as I’m reading the bill before the House, to sprawl development. Let me talk about one project of sprawl development in our city that the staff of the city of Ottawa urged the city council not to authorize but they did: the Tewin development, way in the south end of the city. The cost of running water and sewer to that one development is going to be $600 million, in excess of $600 million. The amount of money my city can expect from the latest federal program, the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund, a $6-billion fund, is about $180 million. That is one housing development that we can’t even pay for with the program that the Prime Minister is talking about.

And let’s be fair in case the government thinks I’m picking on them: The federal government has been asleep at the switch too. The federal government has had a housing strategy—it launched in 2019—that began with the idea that housing is a human right, that said they were going to build affordable homes, and they have not done that. Three per cent of the homes, according to Professor Whitzman, that they have built over the last five years can be described as affordable housing, at 30% of income—3%.

I remember it well, because when I was knocking on doors for the Nova Scotia NDP in the last provincial election, I was in a neighbourhood, Halifax-Fairfax, if I’m getting the riding correct, and it was a wonderful postwar bungalow neighbourhood. Apartment buildings were coming in, and I was getting ready to talk to neighbours about housing opportunities for their kids. What I was hearing from the neighbours, in fact, was that rent in many of these buildings in the city of Halifax was in excess of $2,000 per unit. When I walked by them, I saw big signs saying, “Benefiting from the National Housing Strategy.” Why in the world are the taxpayers of this country providing generous subsidies to developers to make market housing that is not affordable? That’s my question to the federal government.

But my question to the provincial government here is, you signed a deal in 2018 with the feds—a $5.8-billion deal—and you pledged to build 19,660 affordable housing units. You’ve hit 6% of your target. That’s better than the Prime Minister’s 3%, but not much better. So if the market has consistently failed, it’s time to get the state back involved, without apology.