It’s been six years now since my constituents paid deposits to Greatwise Developments for new homes, and construction has still not started. A year ago, I raised this issue in the House and the government responded that they were putting bad developers on notice, making them think twice before taking advantage of homebuyers. And yet, while homes are going up all over Ottawa right now, this developer hasn’t even prepared the land to start construction.

Why is the Premier allowing a bad developer to hold homebuyers hostage with no consequences at all?

When will we finally see real action, not just words, from this government to hold bad developers accountable, so families like my constituents finally get a home in Ontario?

I’d also like to say hello and welcome to folks from AEFO, ETFO, the trustee organizations and the Toronto Schools Caregiver Coalition who are joining us online this afternoon to watch the debate on education.

Alavida Lifestyles is charging seniors in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean thousands of dollars in rent and fee increases to retain their housing. A resident at Park Place retirement home has been served a $27,000 increase for this year. Another resident at the Ravines is being charged $24,000 more. Seniors on fixed incomes can’t pay these kinds of increases, so they are facing the prospect of losing their homes. And yet, the government’s response to these seniors so far has been a shrug.

What is the government’s plan to protect these seniors against price gouging and eviction?

Seniors in these retirement homes are feeling scared and isolated by Alavida’s high-pressure tactics. Some of them are even having trouble eating and sleeping.

And yet, the Minister of Housing told me in a letter that there are no limits on how much a retirement home can charge or how often they can increase the price. In other words, these seniors are being extorted on this government’s watch, and it’s all perfectly legal. So my question to the government is, why is it still legal?

I was very happy to hear the minister say multiple times this afternoon that the law is only as strong as its enforcement, because I have constituents in Ottawa West–Nepean who, five years ago, paid tens of thousands of dollars for deposits for new homes that have yet to be delivered. Twenty-nine months ago, they filed a complaint with the Home Construction Regulatory Authority and have not received any kind of action from the HCRA since then.

They appealed to the former Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery in May and to the Premier in June. They were here in October to appeal to the minister. It’s been six weeks since I sent a letter to the minister with additional information showing how this developer has been skirting legislative requirements, and yet my constituents have not even received a response, let alone any action from this government.

I’m wondering, when can my constituents count on the minister to enforce the law and protect homebuyers in Ontario?

Thank you to my colleague from London North Centre for those thoughtful comments on the bill. I have a situation in my riding where 32 constituents have been waiting five years for a developer to build the homes that they have put down tens of thousands of dollars for. The developer has failed to communicate with them about timelines and has provided inaccurate information. These people who are making one of the largest purchases of their lives have been begging this government to act to protect them. They filed an appeal to the Home Construction Regulatory Authority 28 months ago, and there has been no action by HCRA, no penalties levied, no fines, and no action taken.

What does this bill do to help consumers like my constituents who are unable to get homes built or are getting homes that are built of shoddy construction in the province of Ontario?

I’m pleased to rise on behalf of the residents of Ottawa West–Nepean to speak in favour of this excellent motion tabled by the member for London North Centre calling for the government to create and fund a public housing agency called Homes Ontario to finance and build 250,000 new affordable and non-market homes on public land over 10 years.

We are in a housing crisis, one that the government’s actions have only been making worse. While they’ve been focused on enriching wealthy land speculators, housing starts were down 18% in the first half of this year in Ottawa. In fact, we saw the lowest number of freehold housing starts in 25 years this year.

The government’s reliance on private developers and market incentives is just not getting the job done, Speaker, and it’s the people of Ontario who are paying the price. Rent is up 11% again this year. A one-bedroom apartment is now going for $2,055 in Ottawa. I hear daily from constituents who cannot find an affordable place to live, and so, so many stories of tenants whose landlords are squeezing them with above-guideline rent increases or trying to force them out so that they can jack up the rent on the next tenant. In one of the most egregious cases, Speaker, an apartment with high turnover because the landlord is refusing to address safety concerns saw rent go from $1,400 a month to $1,900 a month to $2,600 a month, all in the space of six months, earlier this year. This is not sustainable. The people of Ontario cannot afford this.

That’s not even to speak about the many people who have been priced out of our housing market entirely. Ottawa has 535 permanent shelter beds, Speaker, and yet that’s not nearly enough to meet the need. We have people living in hotels and temporary shelters, in some cases for years. We have people sleeping rough in our streets and our parks.

A big crisis requires a big idea to fix, Speaker. It’s time that we start marshalling all the resources that we have at hand to get the government back into the business of building homes and supporting deeply affordable housing, to use public land for homes, not for profit. If access to a home in Ontario depends entirely on someone making a profit, then many people will simply never get a home that meets their needs. So to the government: Please stop focusing on the profits of a few wealthy developers who are friends with your Premier and get to work making sure that everyone in Ontario has an affordable place to call home.

I’m honoured to rise on behalf of the residents of Ottawa West–Nepean to speak about Bill 135, the Convenient Care at Home Act. This bill amends the Continuing Care Act to create a subsidiary of Ontario Health called Ontario Health atHome, amalgamating the 14 current Home and Community Care Support Services into a single agency that will be responsible for home and community care services in the province.

I just want to clarify for my constituents that what we’re talking about here is the agencies that used to be called community care access centres, then local health integration networks, then Home and Community Care Support Services and now Ontario Health atHome. That’s a lot of name changes in just six years—I hate to think how much money has gone to updating business cards and letterhead—and the result is that, when constituents talk to me, they usually end up picking one of the names and then tagging on, “or whatever it’s called now.” If one of the goals is easier and simpler access to care, I’m not sure another name change would have been at the top of my list, but here we are.

Last year, I had the opportunity to tour the Queensway Carleton Hospital in my riding of Ottawa West–Nepean, an important institution which provides incredible care to residents in the west end of Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley. Dr. Falconer, the CEO of the Queensway Carleton, made a point of taking me to the acute care for the elderly unit, a relatively new unit at the hospital. He told me that the acute care for the elderly unit was created because a significant number of the admissions to the Queensway Carleton are seniors, and they know that every day that a senior spends in a hospital bed they are 50% less likely to ever live independently once again. The acute care for the elderly unit works incredibly hard to shorten hospital stays for seniors to get them up and moving again, get them back on their feet as quickly as possible so that a hospital stay doesn’t rob seniors of their independence. But oftentimes, going home safely means having home care and community care services available, and this is where the system is breaking down, Speaker.

Earlier this year, hospital CEOs in eastern Ontario sent a letter to this government, and I’m going to read it to you. It’s addressed to the Minister of Health: “We, the undersigned representatives of acute care hospitals in eastern Ontario, are writing in support of Ontarians who require community support services to live at home.

“We clearly understand both the challenges and the potential of our health care system. The sustainability of supports in the patient’s home and in the community is critical to our ability to effectively respond to the acute care needs of our communities.

“Community support services are a key part of a proactive and responsive solution to health care pressures. We are writing to raise the alarm that a robust, well-funded community support sector is required to respond to the needs of Ontarians, in partnership with hospitals. Without realistic and meaningful funding to community support services, patients in our community will suffer and acute care hospitals will continue to see growing numbers of ALC patients.”

It’s signed by 12 CEOs of acute care hospitals in eastern Ontario, including Dr. Falconer of Queensway Carleton.

These CEOs signed this letter because they understand that when we don’t have a strong community care sector, more patients end up in the hospital and they stay in the hospital longer, because the supports are not there to get them home. Our hospitals depend on a strong home and community care sector so that patients can go home safely, with the supports they need to help them on their recovery journey. But you would never guess that from the way this government funds home and community care, Speaker. The sector is so vastly underfunded that they are in crisis, and what funding the government has promised they don’t seem to be able to actually get out the door, deepening the crisis and pushing organizations to the brink of collapse.

One executive director of a not-for-profit home care organization told me this summer that he’s not sure how much longer his organization can keep subsidizing the government as they wait for promised funding to flow. He is warning of collapse. What I am hearing from all of the community support sector organizations in Ottawa West–Nepean is that their workers cannot continue to subsidize this government’s underfunding of this sector. The workers feel that they are being asked to make up for the government’s stinginess with their time, their hearts and even their wallets. They are burning out trying to fill in the gaps left by this government’s failure to properly invest in and stabilize the system, and so they are leaving the sector.

The organizations that are providing not-for-profit home and community care in my riding—Carefor, the Olde Forge, Jewish Family Services of Ottawa, Meals on Wheels—are all having difficulty recruiting and retaining staff, and a big part of that is fair compensation. But you can’t offer fair compensation if demand is going up and inflation is going up but your funding is not. Between 2012 and 2023, the community support sector received only a 3.5% increase in funding. Inflation over this period, meanwhile, was 27.5%.

The people who work in this sector are great. I have really enjoyed getting to know them and seeing them in action. They are compassionate, energized and committed, but they are not magicians. They cannot make less money, provide more care and better wages.

Last year and earlier this year, community support sector organizations in eastern Ontario worked hard to draw the Minister of Health’s attention to this issue. They warned of the serious situation in the sector and the need for more funding in order to be able to continue providing care for seniors, for people living with disabilities and for people coming home from the hospital in eastern Ontario.

Let me read from a memo that was submitted to Ontario Health East and signed by 31 community support sector organizations in eastern Ontario: “The community support sector is faced with presenting and/or living within annual budgets that are not sustainable and simply cannot be balanced. In many cases, providers are anticipating significant deficits—percentage in the double digits.”

The memo goes on to say, “Organizational foundations are crumbling, in the face of exponentially greater challenges and pressures. Timely and significant funding increases are needed to build organizational responsiveness and resilience.

“—Service reductions are inevitable in the absence of realistic annual budgets. As the aging population with complex health conditions increases, service reductions will be counterproductive to building a responsive health care system.

“—Current deficit budgets may result in increasing client fees to a level that would limit access for the most vulnerable, low-income clients striving to age at home. Raising the client co-pay fee for service adds yet another barrier to Ontarians in need.

“—Inflation rates currently sit around 6.8%. Patients are finding it difficult to make ends meet and are often faced with tough economic trade-offs, when considering their health care needs. Employees are leaving CSS employers, and the health care sector in general, in favour of employers able to offer higher compensation rates, and incentives.”

The memo concludes, “Community support service providers seek to be viewed as valuable contributors to a robust health care system for Ontario. We are part of the solution to current pressures. We share Ontario Health’s goal to ‘connect, coordinate and modernize our province’s health care system, working with all partners so that everyone in Ontario has an opportunity for better health and well-being.’ Current Ontario Health funding does not support the effort needed to align with OHE goals.”

These organizations warned that they needed a funding increase of 10% to 15% in order to be able to continue to provide the same level of service, and that without this level of funding they would have to implement service cuts of up to 40%. And let’s be very clear what we’re talking about here, Speaker, because I know 15% sounds like a lot of money, but home and community care are actually some of the most cost-effective forms of care that we have in Ontario. The average cost of a hospital stay is just under $7,000 in Ontario, which is actually on the low side when we look at health care in Canada, because our government grossly underfunds hospital care too.

But hospital care is an expensive form of care. The daily cost of hospital care for an individual, according to the Financial Accountability Office, is $722. The daily cost of home care for an individual is just $36. And what did the community support sector organizations in eastern Ontario say they needed to maintain service levels and not have to implement any cuts or fee hikes for patients? Just $7 million. The government’s health budget for 2023-24 is $81 billion, Speaker; $7 million isn’t even a rounding error for a budget of that size. And yet the government could not bring itself to act, despite the fact that community support services are incredibly important and far more cost-effective than acute care services, despite the fact that they reduce the need for acute care services and despite the fact that there is strong demand from Ontarians, who after the past few years have been very clear that they want to age in place—not in long-term-care facilities, not in hospitals, but at home.

I raised these concerns on their behalf multiple times in this House. On March 30, I asked the government about imminent cuts to the dementia program at the Olde Forge Community Resource Centre, leaving 95 seniors with dementia without their day program. The government House leader smirked about how this government wants seniors to work and participate in the economy.

On April 19, along with the member from Ottawa Centre, I asked the government why they were allowing prices to increase 300% for Meals on Wheels for the lowest-income members of our community. The Minister of Health stood and said she had increased funding—an increase that was absolutely not seen on the ground by those members of our community now paying 300 times more for their food.

The government did not heed the warnings of so many health care leaders in eastern Ontario that increased funding for the sector was vital. They ignored the call for urgent investments. They allowed those 95 seniors at the Olde Forge to lose their dementia day program. They allowed prices at Meals on Wheels to skyrocket, resulting in some community members having to cancel because they could no longer afford food.

And then finally—finally, Speaker—a glimmer of light: The provincial association for home and community care organizations, the Ontario Community Support Association, received a verbal assurance from the minister that some additional funding was going to be coming to the sector, but what followed is what I call the summer of chaos, because for a long time no one in the sector knew what was happening. The cuts and the price hikes were already implemented. The minister refused to put the commitment in writing. Organizations were being told different things by Ontario Health about how much funding might actually be coming, then finally, an increase was confirmed, an increase of around 3% for most of the organizations in my riding, but no one could tell them whether it was one-time funding or base funding. You cannot hire more staff with one-time funding. You can’t offer wage increases to staff and then take them away. Ontario Health’s communication could not have been more abysmal.

Finally, in September, organizations received confirmation that funding increases will be considered base funding, but they’re being told they must raise wages and serve more clients with just 3%. What the organizations in eastern Ontario are telling me is that this is just a drop in the bucket compared to what they need. What they really need is funding increases of 15% in order to be able to increase wages, lower fees and expand services to meet the level of demand. This is staving off near death; it is not sustainability.

Furthermore, in order to make a difference, the money actually has to flow, and what I am hearing is that it is still a commitment that has not materialized. You can’t pay workers with promises, because workers can’t pay for rent and groceries with promises.

I wish this was a unique circumstance, but sadly, it’s not. In early 2022, the Conservative government promised a billion dollars for home care and $100 million for community support services. Sounds pretty good, right? But a year later, only a fraction of that money had actually been delivered, just over 10% of the money for home care and less than 30% of the money for community care. Organizations were left to plead with the government to actually deliver what they promised.

Carefor CEO Steve Perry told the Ottawa Citizen, “We are going to run the risk of collapse, or at minimum of service rationalization.” Carefor’s inability to compete for staff with other parts of the health care system meant that between 2020 and 2023 Carefor’s workforce was down 25% of its nurses, 28% of its PSWs and 15% of its community support staff. According to the Citizen, these shortages meant a 21% reduction in home nurse visits, a 14% reduction in PSW visits and a 13% reduction in community care services, all because this government can’t seem to get promised funding out the door.

So how long will home care and community support sector organizations have to wait for this new, still inadequate amount of funding to actually arrive? This is the reality of home care and community care in eastern Ontario.

What will this bill, the Convenient Care At Home Act, do to address these challenges in the sector? Not a darn thing. In fact, the procurement process envisioned by this bill has the potential to make things much, much worse, because what this bill envisions and what the Minister of Health has said is that once Ontario Health atHome is created, the plan is for this new agency to procure home care services through requests for proposals, similar to the process Ontario Health is currently using, and as my colleague the member for Nickel Belt, the official opposition’s health care critic, has pointed out, if this is just like the current procurement process, then what we are talking about is RFPs that will go out for service providers that can provide care to the whole province. And who is going to be able to bid on a multi-year contract to provide home care to all of Ontario? Not Carefor, a not-for-profit home and community care organization that has provided excellent care in Ottawa for 125 years; not Jewish Family Services, which provides excellent, culturally sensitive care for Jewish seniors and diverse seniors, many with language barriers, in Ottawa; not the Olde Forge, which has provided supports to seniors in Ottawa’s west end for more than 50 years. These local, not-for-profit organizations don’t have the resources or, frankly, the mandate to bid on contracts to provide care for the entire province. It will be the big, for-profit companies, like Bayshore and Extendicare, that will be in a position to bid for province-wide contracts.

Let’s talk about what that will mean for seniors, for people living with disabilities, for people with chronic or complex health needs in Ottawa West–Nepean. These are companies that siphon off our precious health care dollars for the pockets of their shareholders. How do they do that? They pay their workers extremely low wages and then bill the province double, sometimes triple, what the workers are paid, with the difference going to the shareholders, not the workers. They also refuse to pay workers for travel time and travel costs, so home care workers in some parts of the province work 10-hour days, but they’re only paid for six of them and they’re not compensated for the cost of gas or of using public transportation.

As you might well imagine, Speaker, this makes it very difficult to recruit and retain workers, because who would want to work in these conditions? These workers are essentially subsidizing the shareholders of large, for-profit companies with their time and their expenses. Nobody can sustain that over time, so workers are constantly leaving, for-profit companies are perpetually short-staffed and patients are left to deal with shortages and a revolving door of care providers.

Another thing these companies do is book patients back-to-back even though they live miles apart, as if workers are going to apparate from one location to another as if they’re wizards in a Harry Potter novel. Or they double-book patients as if workers have a time-turner that they can just turn back to go back in time to serve another patient at the exact same time.

The result of these unreasonable demands and the workforce instability is complete chaos and lack of care for patients. Care visits are routinely being missed or cut short. Caregivers change on a weekly basis. Family members are being told by caregivers that they are supposed to provide key elements of care. These are complaints that my office hears constantly from local residents receiving care from for-profit health care providers.

What my constituents need is not something that opens the door to further privatization of home and community care. What they need is high-quality, reliable care delivered by a qualified, well-compensated and stable workforce. But that means making the necessary investments to actually stabilize the workforce—to expand care rather than to cut it.

Unfortunately, what we see from this government time and time again is the opposite, and now we have another bill that opens the door to further privatization. It’s time for the government to stop its ideological attack on our public health care system and focus its attention on delivering high-quality care to Ontario residents who deserve no less instead of rewarding health care profiteers.

Report continues in volume B.

Five years after paying deposits to Greatwise Developments, homebuyers in Ottawa West–Nepean are still waiting for their promised homes. They’ve been sent notice of delay after notice of delay, with no delivery date currently provided. The developer also gave inaccurate information, blaming the city for delays when actually the developer failed to file the permits. My constituents complained to the Home Construction Regulatory Authority, expecting some support. Instead, 22 months later, they haven’t even received a decision.

Why is the Premier continuing to allow unscrupulous developers to run roughshod over Ontarians who just want to move into their new homes?

It gets worse. While my constituents are in limbo, receiving bad information or no information, a clause in the contract allows the developer to unilaterally cancel the home purchase if the developer believes there is a dispute between the homebuyer and the developer. This means that if my constituents speak up publicly, they lose their new homes. It is unfair that a developer can behave with impunity and then take away someone’s home if they complain.

Will the Premier protect homebuyers in Ontario by banning gag order clauses from home sales contracts?

Thank you to the member for London West for your excellent comments, as always.

In Ottawa, we have really seen the cost of natural disasters to taxpayers and to residents. We’ve heard a lot from the government this afternoon about saving taxpayers’ money. Let me tell you, when you have a once-in-a-century flood, that is incredibly costly to taxpayers. It is incredibly costly to homeowners as well.

One of the things that we’ve seen, as well, is that environmental assessments are incredibly important for knowing where and when it is safe to build and when it is safe to have a building project. When you don’t take the time to do that right, it is going to have more costs for taxpayers and more costs for homeowners when that natural disaster occurs.

Can the member speak a little bit more about why it is so important to have these environmental assessments done, from the perspective of the residents in Ontario?

Winter is upon us, and while this time of year is often celebrated and welcomed as a time for holiday get-togethers, hot chocolate and outdoor winter activities, it is also a time of extreme hardship for our neighbours who are experiencing poverty and homelessness. As the temperature drops, it is important to note how this will affect the most vulnerable among us and to take meaningful action to address the systemic causes of poverty and homelessness.

My office has received calls from concerned constituents who have noticed an increase in people sleeping rough and in new encampments. As we head into the bitter winter months, they worry about access to housing and supports, and they worry about how government policies like low social assistance rates and lack of rent control are making people homeless.

In addition to being worried about their unhoused neighbours, many people who contact my office are worried about winding up on the streets themselves.

Kevin, who lives in a property owned by a large corporate landlord, has told us that his landlord is already distributing notices informing all of their tenants across all their properties to expect the rent to increase by at least the maximum amount set by the province. The landlord has also warned tenants that they will be seeking above-guideline increases wherever possible.

At a time of record-breaking inflation, low social assistance rates and a stagnant minimum wage, it is concerning to see corporate landlords attempting to rake in more profits, putting their tenants at risk of eviction.

This holiday season, we need to remember to support those in our communities who are experiencing poverty. That means doubling social assistance rates, raising the minimum wage, enacting real rent control, and building genuinely affordable housing, instead of boosting developer profits to build homes no one can afford.

Thanks to the member from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound for the question. I’m not sure we do fundamentally agree on the problem because the problem is not just a lack of housing; it’s a lack of housing for people across the income spectrum.

If we are not taking into account the needs of people living on social assistance, if we are not taking into account the needs of seniors living on fixed incomes, if we are not taking into account the needs of people living on minimum wage who are being squeezed by the cost-of-living crisis, then we could be building homes that normal Ontarians still can’t afford.

We need to be building homes that are not-for-profit, that aren’t just putting money into the pockets of developers. We need to be building more supportive housing. We need to be building more community and supportive housing. We need to be building more co-operative housing. We need to be building more affordable housing of all kinds, and I hope the government would take the opportunity to integrate that into this bill.

We’ve already seen over the past 20 years that when the development of housing is left solely up to developers, we’re just not going to see developments of the kind of low-income, affordable, not-for-profit and community housing that we need in this province. That’s why it’s so important that the government step in and take an active role in helping to develop that kind of housing.

That’s why I think the NDP’s proposal for a public agency was such a crucial part of our platform to ensure that we are actually investing in the development of that kind of housing. That could ensure that the lowest—