I’d like to thank the members from Niagara West and Essex for their presentation. As I’m sure they both know, representing rural ridings, Ontario is losing 319 acres of prime farmland per day, which represents 5% of the province’s entire farmland that will be lost in just five years. Bill 185 will make that loss even quicker. It will happen even faster.

Now, developers, airports, big manufacturers and cities are being provided the opportunity to appeal the Ontario Land Tribunal rulings that restrict building on farmland, wetland and environmentally sensitive areas, but this bill also takes away the ability for third parties. It takes away the ability of third parties to appeal these decisions. Is this yet another example of this Conservative government disrespecting rural Ontario and farmers?

I want to continue on the theme that my colleague raised, about contrasting this government’s approach to addressing housing with the approach that is being suggested by the official opposition. In preparation of my remarks today I did have an opportunity to take a look at the proposal from the official opposition and I’ll be quoting directly from it.

It starts with an acknowledgement that says, “There is little to no profit in building homes that are affordable for low-income people.” Then it proposes to ensure that 30% of the 1.5 million homes that they propose to build would be non-market homes. That’s 450,000 non-market homes. I am suggesting that each unit would cost $500,000. In order to build 450,000 non-market homes at $500,000 each, that would be $225 billion—$225 billion. How does the official opposition propose to raise this money? This is how they propose to do it: They propose to start with $15 billion “to finance the construction of new, non-market rental homes, to be operated by public, non-profit and co-op housing providers.” Then they say the capital costs of building the new homes would “be recovered from the rental income, which would be reinvested to finance more homes.”

That is the proposition put forward by the official opposition. They want to start with building homes that do not generate a profit and then take that absence of profit and build more homes with no profit. In other words, they want to build homes that don’t generate money and then have no money to build no more homes. That’s what that means.

You see, in order to build more homes, you need more money. In order to have more money, you have to generate the money, and not-for-profit doesn’t generate money by its very definition. That is the approach of the opposition. In other words, they propose to raise $225 billion in dreamland. Because right off the bat they acknowledge that such housing does not generate income. If you don’t have the generation of income, you cannot build any more houses period, end of analysis. That’s how it works.

I therefore contrast that approach with the approach of this government, which is, of course, to lower barriers to construction and by lowering those barriers, I mean lowering costs, such as lowering the red tape compliance, which stands in the way of practically every single development that is started in the province of Ontario.

One of those compliance measures is one which we spoke about earlier, which is the incessant intervention into the planning process of people who have no stake in the planning process. As I mentioned earlier, and gave an example of the municipality of Sudbury—which is 3,100 square kilometres—a person living literally 50 kilometres from a proposed subdivision could file an appeal blocking that subdivision, even though they have literally nothing to do with it, and that is one of the issues that the legislation proposed in front of us today seeks to resolve.

But one thing is for sure—one thing is absolutely for sure—no one is going to build houses in the province of Ontario by theoretically collecting rent from rental housing that makes no profit. You cannot build new homes on the backs of not-for-profit housing. It cannot work by its very inherent definition. It will not work, and that is why the plan proposed by this government is so much better than the unrealistic plan being proposed by the official opposition.

I want to rebut something that the member has raised and I’ve heard—inaccurately, unfortunately—in this chamber a few times now. The overall acreage of arable farmland in Ontario is growing each and every single day. If you look at the great northern clay belt—and this is from the Grain Farmers of Ontario—they look at 16 million acres that are coming online up in the Timiskaming–Cochrane region. If you look, since 2008, we’ve seen that the acreage in northern Ontario has increased from 53,000 acres to over 102,000 acres.

There are obviously downfalls and challenges to the rise of climate change across this land, but one of the impacts of climate change in the north is actually that there is more arable land coming online today than there ever has been. There is more farmland available to farm in the province of Ontario than there ever has been at any point in our history. Because if you look at the amount of acreage in places like eastern Ontario and northern Ontario, there is now land that, before, they were not able to grow on; the heat units have increased to such an extent that they’re actually able to grow beans and corns. I was even just reading this morning, they’re looking at growing potatoes in some of these places—

Again, I think one of the pieces that I spoke about in my debate as well was that is an iterative process, right? It builds on the 13 previous red tape—sorry, 11; 11 or 13—reduction packages that have come forward, and each of those have sought to make, perhaps, individually, not enormously consequential changes, but when taken as a whole, a really positive step forward to streamlining that process for home builders and also for providing certainty to municipalities. One of the pieces that was a challenge for some municipalities was uncertainty, and this is about providing that certainty and good governance.

I’m happy to oblige. The member would be probably unsurprised to know that this is supported by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, who says the following: “We support the introduction of use-it-or-lose-it provisions, which would allow a municipality to establish a deadline for lapsing of planning approvals and provide an incentive for developers to build their approved projects.”

This is from the city of Mississauga. On giving planning authority to local municipalities, they say this: “We welcome this change, which will give lower-tier municipalities full planning responsibility on July 1, 2024, if the legislation passes.”

Here’s some thing from McMaster University: “We support exempting universities from Planning Act approvals. It will allow universities to build student housing more quickly and at lower cost, while reducing pressure on area market housing for students.”

And the list goes on, Madam Speaker. It’s quite a list of supportive quotes, and I thank the member for the question.

I am sure that the members on that side of the House are hearing the same stories from their constituents as we are hearing on this side of the House. I just want to—just last week, a single mom came to my office, working full-time but struggling to pay her bills. She got an eviction notice after 18 years in her apartment and doesn’t know where she’s going to live. A 75-year-old man told us he works a minimum-wage job at Walmart, because he has to, to pay the bills. He’s lived at the same address for 30 years—the unit is now up for sale; he’s desperate about where he is going to live.

So my question to the government members is, why is there nothing in this bill or any of the previous housing bills that this government has introduced that is going to deal with stabilizing rents and keeping tenants housed in this province?

Well, I have some good news for the young people who are looking to rent. I was a renter myself. There were historic number of starts last year in new rental starts here in the province of Ontario, in 2023. That’s great news, because again it comes down to that fundamental supply-and-demand imbalance.

If you don’t have the opportunity to have a large amount of supply, in this case, of rental housing coming onto the market, guess what? You’re going to have a lot of people bidding on a limited number of spots. What does that lead to? Price inflation and ultimately high rents. Bringing more supply onto the market is the way of ensuring that we bring those rents down. You can see this in jurisdictions across the world. When you have an oversupply or an increased supply of rental housing, as we’re doing with the policies that this government has brought in place, those solutions will come forward.

Unfortunately, there’s still the consequences of years of Liberal inaction on building rental housing that we’re all paying for.

Next question?

We’re going to move to further debate.

I really enjoy this debate on Bill 185. I’d like to ask the member from Essex a question. I know that we’ve had lots of support from across the province from different sectors, different municipalities. AMO is a big supporter. Could you quote some of the other supporters that you know of, please?

It was a flight path.

It was a flight path; I’m sorry. It was a flight path, yes.

Sometimes “MZOs R Us” doesn’t really work for the community or for the sector, but this is definitely—somebody got lobbied real hard, Madam Speaker, real hard, and they got what they wanted. They got their direct ask into Bill 185. And I’m going to tell you, this does not instill trust in how the government is looking at the housing crisis or trying to address some of the proposals.

I’m going to read from Bonnefield Financial, Tom Eisenhauer. This pretty much sums up how I feel about Bill 185—tried to give it a good show at SCOFEA, but that didn’t happen.

He says, “Ontario’s ... government introduced Bill 185—patronizingly named the ‘Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act.’ Buried within the bill are some legislative changes that will accelerate the loss of wetlands, environmentally sensitive areas and especially farmland in Ontario.”

I guess unless you’re in the Far North and you now find yourself in a warmer climate and therefore start pulling those stones out of the stone.

“Of all the threats to our future food security, the loss of our prime farmland is the most severe. And of all the causes of farmland loss (soil degradation, unsustainable farming practices, climate change, erosion, decertification), irresponsible urban sprawl is by far the leading cause. Based on StatsCan data, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture calculates that between 2016 and 2021 Ontario lost 319 acres of farmland a day ... a day! That equates to the loss of almost 5% of the province’s entire farmland area in just five years. The vast majority of this loss was to urban development.”

So, this is on your watch, right? And it does have a cost. It does.

“Bill 185 will effectively neuter settlement area boundaries which limit urban sprawl by restricting the size of municipalities. Developer landowners will now be able to appeal any development rulings that restrict their ability to build on farmland, wetland or environmentally sensitive areas.”

This is an acceleration of sprawl. It is intentional, it is happening in real time and it has been made worse since this government has come into power in Ontario.

The bill will also remove the Ontario Land Tribunal’s ability to review some decisions around municipal decisions, but then, you know what? This got changed, further limiting the guardrails that prevent urban sprawl.

“The provisions of Bill 185 run counter to the advice the ... government commissioned from former federal Conservative ... leader Lisa Raitt”—I like Lisa Raitt—“who recommended that stronger protections for farmland and natural areas be an essential component of any measures that encourage more and better housing.” This is a smart recommendation by a former federal Conservative who knows the file very well, Madam Speaker.

“Ontario needs more housing urgently, but not at the expense of future generations’ food security and the environment.” It’s like we didn’t even experience the pandemic together. I mean, we did have different experiences, make no doubt about it, but one of the recommendations from the Senate of Canada is that we become more food-secure. We should not be so dependent on other jurisdictions. We have some of the best farmland in Ontario. We have some of the best farmers. And the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has been very clear in their opposition to Bill 185. This is a genuine concern that they have around future generations of farms.

“The focus of new housing should be intensification of the ‘missing middle’ in existing urban areas as recommended by a long list of experts and task forces and as requested by municipalities like Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa.” It’s interesting that Bill 185 is silent on that, actually.

“Bill 185 will be a disaster for farmland in Ontario—a far greater threat than the proposed development of parts of the greenbelt,” and so that is why Bill 185 matters so much. I think a lot of us—our eyes were opened on how vulnerable those arable greenbelt lands were, Madam Speaker. But Bill 185 accelerates that proposed sprawl in an incredibly irresponsible manner.

He goes on to say, “To paraphrase the great Chrissie Hynde’s ‘Ohio’ lyric”—this is good—“Ontario farmland is being paved down the middle by a government that has no pride.”

So you’re willing to risk everything with Bill 185. And also, it’s not going to solve the housing crisis. I mean, sometimes, you work backwards from a problem, right? You have to acknowledge the problem.

You refuse to acknowledge that renters in this province have almost been attacked by this government with the removal of rent control in 2018. The issue of affordability is something that this government refuses to address. I mean, you can say that there are this many purpose-built rentals, but if you can’t afford them, they don’t really exist, Madam Speaker, right? They don’t. And right now, the financialization of some of those condos should be under review of your government. We know how money is laundered in Ontario and this happens through these condo developments as well.

Waterloo region has had an open letter against Bill 185 now for a number of weeks. It has partly been connected to, of course, the expropriation of 770 acres of prime farmland in Wilmot, a planning practice that is surprising. But the provincial government, to be clear, has asked these municipalities to find large, industrial land banking, and I know the region of Waterloo doesn’t have the money to buy out these farmers, so the money is going to come from somewhere. It looks like it’s going to be coming from the Ontario government, Madam Speaker.

So, at the end of the day, we have a piece of legislation which, once again, should never be called “building new homes.” It’s really just “here’s an open door for developers” and you’ve formalized it. You basically hung the little sign outside the Legislature and said, “Yes—open for business for developers and land speculators,” and you’ve committed to building property and housing that doubles down on a very unsustainable housing plan, which will actually end up costing all of us down the road.

I’ll leave it at this, from the open letter from Waterloo region:

“Environmental protections are not just ‘red tape.’ We depend on our farmland, our fresh water, and on the other ecological services provided by our unbuilt landscapes. Furthermore, the regional planning processes that have been carefully designed over decades should not be seen as barriers to building much-needed homes. Instead, our regional government plays a vital role,” and they should not be undermined in this process.

Thank you to the member from Waterloo for her remarks this afternoon. She mentioned six painful years, Speaker. Well, if I had their poll numbers, it would be six painful years, colleagues.

As we heard at committee, the Ontario home builders came to committee and presented, and so did OREA and other builders in the province of Ontario. I asked around, obviously, increasing costs of interest rates, costs of labour, construction materials, but obviously also as well, Speaker, the carbon tax. So I asked the home builders if the federal Liberal carbon tax and its increasing year over year is increasing the cost of housing in Ontario. And, Speaker, they said yes. They confirmed that it is causing costs—costs of building materials and labour—to go up.

Does the member from Waterloo agree that the federal Liberal carbon tax is increasing the cost of housing? And will the member from Waterloo call her federal member and ask her to scrap this tax?

You know, the member from Perth–Wellington—I’m not sure if he understands how insulting it is, when people ask serious questions that are impacting the people of this province, around child care, around autism or around special education, and then the government comes back with “carbon tax.” It levels a new level of disrespect, I think, to the bigger problems.

What I will say to the member from Perth–Wellington is the reason we have a federal carbon tax is because your government dismissed the cap-and-trade program, and this is the backstop. The Supreme Court of Canada, as you all know, has said that the federal government has the right to address climate change in this manner. But we would not have that carbon tax if your Premier—because he’s not my Premier—hadn’t cut the cap-and-trade. That’s right.

This is the frustration, Madam Speaker. We have a carbon tax in Ontario because of this government, because they failed around the cap-and-trade piece. But they have their own made-in-Ontario industrial compliance fee, which is a carbon tax, which you don’t talk about in this House. But we are going to talk about it, because it needs transparency. That’s what we want from that.

We’re going to go to questions for the member.

It is infuriating, I will say to the member from Waterloo, that this government hides their shortcomings with the carbon tax. It’s not just us that’s saying it; OREA said this at SCOFEA. OREA said: “We are disappointed that two key recommendations by the province’s own Housing Affordability Task Force (HATF)—strongly supported by Ontario Realtors—have not been included in” this “bill. We need to build more homes on existing properties and allow upzoning along major ... corridors....” And they asked for the elimination of “exclusionary zoning and allowing four units, as-of-right.”

We know that BC is killing it when it comes to the housing starts. They’ve got 52% as many starts as this House. In fact, Ontario’s housing starts are tumbling. So my question to you is, rather than being arrogant and hiding behind the carbon tax, this government should roll up their sleeves and see what BC is doing to have a real bill that addresses the real challenges in the housing crisis in Ontario.

Interjection: Can you remind them of their carbon tax?

The current mayor of Vaughan and the former leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, Steven Del Duca, admitted this year that the housing crisis started or began when he was around the provincial cabinet table. Under the previous Ontario Liberal government, this province witnessed 15 years of inaction on housing, which was also supported by the NDP.

Can the member please tell us why her party didn’t feel the need to act on housing sooner to prevent the affordability crisis we are witnessing today?

This is actually why history matters, because the former member from Parkdale–High Park worked on stabilizing rentals. The reason we have any sort of inclusionary zoning is because of the former member, who fought for that. We, of course, always supported the co-op and not-for-profit sector. We could not get the Liberals to move on these things because they had a majority. It would be like us trying to get you guys to actually care about child care, for instance, right?

So history matters in this place. And for what it’s worth, though, the Liberal leader has talked very positively about the carbon tax, but this government refuses to own their own carbon tax that they have created in this province with the industrial compliance fee and the fact that you cancelled cap-and-trade. You guys want to keep talking about this? That’s fine. It doesn’t help with the housing crisis—nor does Bill 185, for that matter.

Also, it’s interesting to talk about the high costs. This is the government that froze the minimum wage in 2018. They actually put their hands in the pockets of minimum-wage workers and took out $7,000 over the course of the pandemic for full-time workers and $3,200 for part-time workers during a health care crisis. If that doesn’t speak privilege and elitism, I don’t know what does.

Let’s talk about affordability around housing. This is something that you refuse to acknowledge—that renters have rights too. Renters are families; renters are grandparents; renters are students—but no, not to you. This is the party that puts their developer friends first—anybody who can buy access to you. You actually got legislation written because of a price. So everything is for sale in Ontario, except for a little dignity on the housing file.

Next question?

The member will take his seat.

I would request some order in the House so I can hear the member speak. He has the floor.

I’ll go back to the member for Don Valley East.

Start the clock.

Thank you to the member from Waterloo for her presentation. I’m just wondering—I remember the Premier saying earlier today in debate, and I’ve heard him say it before, that he’s never increased the cost of living for anyone. But I remember, as I listened to your remarks and as I did my research for today, I note that the average rent in my city of Ottawa for a two-bedroom apartment in 2018 was $1,301, and in 2024, the average is $2,488. I also note that this government removed rent controls on buildings built after 2018.

So the Premier can call it whatever he wants; I call that jacking the rent. I’m wondering if the member from Waterloo has any comments about how this government has jacked the rent on people in Ontario.

Let’s talk a little about why history matters, and let’s talk about how there’s only been one NDP government ever in the history of Ontario because people remember what happened under the Rae government. Let’s talk about respect for voters.

The member for Waterloo wants to say that the carbon tax doesn’t matter. It is the number one issue in my riding when I talk to people, and quite frankly, the federal Liberal government is going to lose the next election because of the carbon tax. And I don’t understand why this member will stand up in her place and she will say that it’s irrelevant to the cost of a home when we know for a fact—and we’ve heard it from home builders, we’ve heard it from OREA and we’ve heard it from other organizations—that it adds thousands of dollars to the cost of home sales that, ultimately, get passed along to the people who are buying those homes.

So I want to hear it from the member directly: Will you stand up against the carbon tax and help make life more affordable for Ontarians?