My question is for the member from Humber River–Black Creek. I know we heard often at committee from a variety of stakeholders, and we heard from the Ontario home builders and the greater Ottawa home builders. They said the number one concern they had was increasing costs, was the high interest rates of the federal Liberal government and also the high cost of the carbon tax increasing the cost of building materials and homes.

I know the member has said he has voted against it in this place, and I appreciate he is willing to vote against the carbon tax. But will he call his federal NDP colleagues, who are supporting Justin Trudeau, and ask him to scrap this tax?

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?

My answer to my colleague across the way is, we continue to consult with our home builders to get homes built across Ontario.

It’s telling, colleagues, that my colleague across the way does not trust our municipal colleagues to make sound planning decisions.

Thank you to my colleague from Markham–Thornhill for this very important question. One of those ways—as we mentioned, I believe, in all of our remarks today—was student housing. We’re exempting that from the Planning Act for our universities.

I think of the University of Guelph, who have lots of students. It’s a great university in Guelph there, but they need student housing. But as the minister mentioned, those students now are in the community, taking rentals out of that stock from the local community. If we build student housing, they can then move into student housing and there is more rental stock for many workers—and because of the investments we’re attracting through our auto manufacturing, I know there are many in Guelph.

Thank you, colleagues.

This is a generational investment in rural Ontario, and it’s because of this Minister of Education and our Premier that we’re making these investments. What I was really pleased to hear and learn from our local school board, working—again, partnerships across our provincial, municipal and with our school boards in relation to getting schools built. This school is slated to be opened in September 2026. I know the municipality will work hard to open it even sooner, but it’s working with our municipal partners to streamline these builds, ensure that we have complete communities, whether it’s a hospital, long-term-care facility or a school. We’re going to continue to listen with our municipal partners to look at more ways to speed up the municipal approvals process so that growing communities can benefit from the high quality of life that Ontario is known for.

Speaker, there are other ways we are responding to municipal feedback regarding stalled development. Our proposed changes eliminate the mandatory five-year phase-in of development charge rates. This would apply to development charge bylaws passed on or after January 1, 2022. The development charges are fees that municipalities can apply on a new development or redevelopment to help pay for the capital costs of infrastructure, such as water and waste water plants, and to support new homes and other development in their communities. And for municipalities that have to amend their development charge bylaws to remove the phase-in, we are proposing that they would be able to do so using a streamlined approach.

What’s more, I am pleased to share with the Legislative Assembly that we brought into force the discounts and exemptions on municipal development-related charges for affordable residential units on June 1, so just last week. To support this implementation, we have published a website with the data that sets out the market-based and income-based thresholds for affordable ownership and residential units listed by local municipality. We believe this will incentivize the construction of new affordable housing across this province.

Throughout my remarks today I’ve shown how our government has listened to our municipal and other partners and responded to their needs through the proposed bill. I also wanted to talk about how we plan to keep the conversation with our partners going by improving consultation tools and the way we communicate with the housing sector.

As part of this package, we consulted on land use planning approvals through an update to the proposed provincial planning statement, or PPS. At the close of consultations, on May 12 of this year, we received over 175 submissions outlining feedback to our proposals. While municipalities are the decision-makers through the planning approvals process and are best able to speak about how their communities are developed when it comes to housing and services, evolving from A Place to Grow and the provincial policy statement, the proposed provincial planning statement would set the overall rules for land use planning in Ontario. It would be the guide for protecting our environment and our public health and safety. It would lay out the policies for using and managing our province’s natural resources and it would set out our government policies for managing growth.

We held consultations last year and received stakeholder feedback on our previous proposals for the PPS. After receiving this feedback, one of our key proposals is to make a change to the proposed provincial planning statement that includes increased housing intensification in existing urban areas that are near transit.

Our proposed changes also include promoting a range of housing options, including student housing and, importantly, seniors’ housing; making it faster and easier to make land available for residential development; and supporting better coordination between municipalities and school boards.

Another key change we are proposing would support the redevelopment of shopping malls in underused plazas.

We are currently going through the feedback we received on these proposals right now in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Speaker, through these measures and proposals I’ve spoken to today, our government wants to ensure that our municipal and housing sectors have the tools they need to support more housing in communities across the province. By extension, we believe our proposed Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act would give Ontarians more access to homes that meet their needs and budgets.

I know our government continues to work with our municipal partners to get more homes built across Ontario, as I mentioned, not just in downtown Toronto but in northern Ontario and rural Ontario. We’ll continue to put forward targeted measures, working with our municipal partners, to get homes built and to get shovels in the ground because we all know we want to ensure that Ontario remains a great place to live, work, play and raise a family.

It’s an honour today to rise in the House to speak to the contents of Bill 185 and share some of the work that our government is doing to cut red tape and build more homes faster across the province.

As I go through some of the targeted measures—as the minister mentioned in his remarks, we’re taking targeted measures—in the proposed Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act, you’ll notice that promoting a culture of partnership rather than a culture of delays is a thread woven throughout this piece of legislation. We’re working to ensure that our municipal and other housing sector partners have the tools that they need to get shovels in the ground to build more housing across the province.

To begin, I would like to highlight the aspects of this bill that address our goal of improving consultation and providing municipalities and builders with greater certainty to get homes built faster. Our government is proposing a change through Bill 185 that would, in some cases, reduce project delays by up to 18 months. Our proposed changes to the Planning Act would streamline certain third-party appeals to the Ontario Land Tribunal. This is a change that could help the housing projects in communities receive planning approvals quicker. As the minister mentioned, we would maintain the rights to appeal for groups such as First Nations, aeronautic governing bodies—airports, in the common tongue—and public bodies.

All too often, we’re seeing housing proposals get tied up in lengthy approvals processes. Of course, this is frustrating for all types of projects, but it’s especially frustrating when the proposal could have a positive impact in a growing neighbourhood—a neighbourhood with existing amenities like grocery stores or hospitals or one that is close to transit.

Speaker, approximately 67,000 housing units were subject to third-party appeals of official plans and rezoning between 2021 and 2023. Our proposed change could mean getting shovels in the ground a full year and a half earlier, which could then allow more families to move into new housing faster.

We have another proposal that we believe is needed in order to change with the times. We’re proposing a regulatory change to enhance public engagement on new planning applications and other Planning Act and development charge matters. We would do this by modernizing the public notice requirements to enable municipalities to give notice on their website if there is no local newspaper available. As we all know, the media landscape in Canada, and especially in our rural communities, is changing. Many now do not have weekly newspapers, unfortunately, and many are now virtual or websites online. This change will allow those consultations that are required to continue in the 21st century. It’s part of broader changes the government is making to improve accountability and transparency and part of the changes we’re making to ensure municipalities have the tools they need to grow their communities.

We would also work with our municipal partners to develop best practices for modernized public engagement and consultation. This could include expanding our reach to include notices in multiple languages to support culturally diverse communities so that more people can have their say when notices go up that affect where they live.

As the minister mentioned, we’ve also made changes around parking requirements. These changes could speed up getting shovels in the ground on housing faster. Through Bill 185, we’re proposing to lower the cost to build by removing the requirements to have a minimum number of parking spaces for developments in certain areas near most major transit stations. This proposed change to the Planning Act would apply to the lands, buildings or structures that are located within certain areas near transit called protected major transit station areas. It would also apply to other areas where municipalities plan to accommodate more housing and jobs around subways, rail and bus rapid transit stations.

Instead of mandating minimum parking requirements, our proposal would let homebuyers and home builders decide the number of parking spaces for new residential development near transit based on market needs. This is something we heard often from our municipal partners. I’m thinking of the mayor of Guelph, who has advocated strongly for the reduction in parking minimums. We’ve also heard it from our builders as well, which will help reduce their costs.

This form of decision-making exists in Toronto already. Our proposal would allow homebuyers and home builders across the province to weigh in, ensuring that these parking minimums do not hinder the development of new housing. If this Legislative Assembly chooses to pass this bill, this proposal could remove construction costs for a building between $2,000 to $100,000 per parking space per project, helping to make more projects viable in these challenging economic times. Under existing requirements in some municipalities, this could reduce costs by up to $50 million for a 500-unit development, making it cheaper to build and purchase new homes near transit. It will also make transit more accessible to more people across Ontario.

While we aim to cut red tape, in the process, our proposals aim to make building homes less expensive. We’re proposing changes to the Planning Act that, if passed, would enable future regulations that could help eliminate municipal barriers to building additional residential units. As those in this place know, we did make three as of right across the province under past legislation, and this legislation builds upon those important steps—buildings like garden suites, laneway homes and basement apartments, which are becoming very common across Ontario, whether it’s our urban centres or our rural communities.

By providing the government with the regulation-making authority related to additional residential units, we would be able to reduce the barriers created by the maximum lot coverage or rules around setbacks to preserve angular planes—in other words, the distance between buildings to allow light to pass through—and the rules around limits on the number of bedrooms allowed per lot, in turn supporting the number of additional residential units that can be built.

I’ll add that our policies are already delivering historic results in our beautiful province. Last year, Ontario achieved 99% of its province-wide housing target of 110,000 units. This number incudes the number of additional residential units, which are an important type of housing that helps increase the density in existing neighbourhoods.

I know I’ve had an opportunity to tour a couple of these new residential units in my own riding in the city of Stratford and in the town of St. Marys, seeing even our rural communities jump on this opportunity. It is through our legislation that we have passed that they are able to do this, streamlined in a quicker manner, and to offer those rental apartments to young people or seniors who are looking to downsize in our communities.

The Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act also includes proposed measures that prioritize infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects, with new use-it-or-lose-it tools. We’ve heard from our municipal partners that one barrier to meeting the provincial housing targets can be unused service capacity such as water and sewer servicing. A large factor in this is stalled developments. In fact, we heard from seven municipalities that 70,000 housing units with planning approval had remained inactive for at least two years.

The new use-it-or-lose-it tools aim to prioritize infrastructure for housing projects that are ready to go. The tools will help address those stalled developments and support the allocation of housing-enabling infrastructure such as water and sewer servicing in a more efficient fashion.

If passed, our proposed changes to the Planning Act, the Municipal Act of 2001 and the City of Toronto Act would explicitly enable municipalities to adopt policies setting out how sewage and waste water servicing capacity can be allocated or reallocated to developments that are ready to proceed. The result would be fewer barriers in delays prior to construction.

I know we heard about the use-it-or-lose-it policy often at the Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy in our consultations that we have had earlier this year and continue to have around regional governance and other hearings we’ve had. I know our municipal partners have asked for this, and we are happy to work with them again, Speaker—the partnerships that we are forming with our municipal partners to get more homes built.

We’re not only prioritizing building infrastructure for housing; we’re also prioritizing building more types of homes for more people. To get there, we need to look at what is working and what isn’t. As we know, a new development may require many municipal planning approvals before construction begins. Under the Planning Act, municipalities can make decisions through their planning approval processes that determine the future of their communities. Municipalities make decisions around official plans, zoning bylaw changes and site plan control. This is one of the major reasons why we have listened to the needs and concerns of our municipal partners.

While navigating through the planning approvals process, some of Ontario’s priority projects—projects that are essential to building communities—have encountered delays. To solve this, we’ll be consulting on a new expedited approval process for community service facilities. We’ll be starting with kindergarten-to-grade-12 public schools and potentially extending the consultation in phases to long-term-care facilities and hospitals.

I know I had the pleasure of hosting Minister Lecce this Friday in my riding of Perth–Wellington to announce over $17 million for a brand new school in Mapleton township.

Interjections.

I was listening to the member opposite mentioning initiatives in transit located in his community. Also, student housing is in his community.

I know the Council of Ontario Universities said the following in response to Bill 185: “Exempting universities from provisions in the Planning Act and removing zoning barriers will help expediate the development and construction of much-needed campus housing projects, as well as help ensure student success.”

Speaker, I know this is what we often heard from our universities across the province, asking us to support these important measures. Can the member opposite tell us if they will answer their call and vote for this important piece of legislation?

Thank you to my colleague for his remarks this afternoon.

My question, Speaker, is: When the Ontario Liberal leader, Bonnie Crombie, was the mayor of Mississauga, she had one of the worst housing records in Ontario. Last year, under her leadership, in the middle of a housing crisis, Mississauga actually rejected about 90% of the proposed homes. That’s over 17,000 homes that won’t be built for the people in her community, in a city that only reached 39% of its annual housing targets, Speaker. When it comes to building housing, Bonnie Crombie has failed to get the job done. Does the member opposite agree with us that Bonnie Crombie has failed the people of Mississauga?

Thank you to my colleague for his remarks this afternoon on Bill 185. Speaker, I know the member opposite knows very well, since being here since 2018, we inherited a government that had unbearable regulatory costs. Businesses were literally fleeing the province under the former Liberal government. We brought forward many red tape bills, and we continue to bring forward red tape bills to decrease the costs on our small businesses and on our home builders, in particular, in this legislation.

Can the member please elaborate on why it’s important we continue to remove barriers for our municipal partners and our home builders across Ontario?

Thank you, Speaker. That was the right answer. He wants to make sure I tell his family he’s treating me well here, which are great constituents in my riding of Perth–Wellington.

My question, obviously, to my colleague from Niagara West: He did allude to it in his speech, but I know he reads the legislation before this House in great detail, so I will obviously ask a housing question. I was wondering if the member can share with this place what is the number one challenge that your municipal colleagues in Niagara West are finding to get houses built in Niagara West and across Ontario? What is the number one thing they need?

It’s wonderful to rise this morning to talk about our most recent red tape bill and ensuring that we get more homes built across Ontario. I hear often in my riding that we need to do more to help the people of Ontario have a home that meets their needs and their budget, and I want to present some of the details about these various themes in our proposed bill, Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act, as well as some targeted housing measures in that piece of legislation.

To begin, I’d like to touch on some additional aspects of this bill and supporting initiatives that address our goal of building homes faster at a lower cost.

Our government continually seeks ways to help reduce the cost of building new homes, whether it’s through the most recent legislation the Minister of Energy has brought forward or whether it’s ensuring that we are proposing building code amendments that ensure costs remain low for our builders, ensuring that they continue to build the homes we need.

That’s why we’re proposing to remove requirements to have at least a minimum number of parking spaces for developments in certain areas near most major transit stations.

The proposed changes to the Planning Act would apply to the lands, buildings or structures that are located within certain areas near transit called protected major transit station areas. It would also apply to areas where municipalities choose to accommodate more housing around subway, rail or bus rapid transit stations, which is what we mean when we talk about higher-order density.

Instead of mandating minimum parking requirements, our proposal would let homebuyers and home builders decide for themselves, based on the market needs, the number of parking spaces for new residential development near transit. I think this is a very important proposal, a very good proposal, from a Progressive Conservative government—letting the market decide how many parking spaces would be needed around a major transit area.

Importantly, this proposal, if passed, could remove construction costs of between $2,000 and $100,000 per parking space per project, helping to make more projects viable.

I know we are in very challenging economic circumstances with the high interest rates, and I was discouraged to see the Bank of Canada not choose to cut interest rates yesterday. Our Premier continues to call on the Prime Minister to do more to lower interest rates as soon as possible.

We will continue to take action to ensure that we reduce the costs of building homes and apartments near transit, and this initiative, if passed, would do just that. Under existing requirements in some municipalities, this could save $50 million for a 500-unit development and make it cheaper to build and purchase new homes near transit. It will also make transit more accessible for the people of Ontario.

In keeping with the same theme, we’re also proposing changes to the Planning Act that, if passed, would help eliminate barriers to building additional residential units. We would do this by providing authority for regulations related to ADUs. Our proposed regulation-making authority would support the creation of additional residential units such as garden, laneway or basement suites. The importance of these additional suites cannot be overstated. Even in rural Ontario, which I have the honour of representing in this place, these additional residential units are a way for our seniors to downsize. I know a common term is “over-housed individuals”—who may live in a larger house but have nowhere to downsize within their community. Having these additional residential units gives them that option to remain in the community that they helped build, be close to their children and grandchildren potentially, and to enjoy their golden years. These basement suites, laneway suites and garden suites are just ensuring that we have those options for a variety of housing that our government continues to support being built across Ontario. We will enable future regulations that can eliminate municipal barriers such as maximum lot coverage and limits on the number of bedrooms allowed per lot.

I have the privilege of serving on the Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy, and we were travelling recently across Ontario for regional governance review and that study. We heard very often from our municipal partners on a use-it-or-lose-it policy. I’m pleased to see our government bring forward this aspect in this bill before this place right now. It is important to prioritize the infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects, and that’s what this use-it-or-lose-it policy will do.

We have heard many times from our municipal partners, as I mentioned, that stalled development and unused service capacity can be a barrier to meeting provincial housing targets. For example, seven municipalities have reported that over 70,000 housing units with planning approval have remained inactive for at least two years. For that reason, we’re proposing a use-it-or-lose-it process. This process will help address stalled developments and support efficient allocation of housing-enabling infrastructure, such as water and sewage servicing capacity.

If passed, our proposed changes to the Planning Act, Municipal Act and the City of Toronto Act would enable municipalities to adopt policies setting out how sewage and water servicing capacity can be allocated or reallocated to developments that are ready to proceed. This will result in fewer barriers and fewer delays prior to construction—or put another way, this will get shovels in the ground faster.

I know the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing spoke earlier. We meet often with AMO and ROMA as well as many other municipal associations in Ontario, and they have stressed the feedback to us around addressing stalled development.

Consulting with our municipal partners was very important with this legislation, and so we are enabling municipalities to better use existing revenue tools to pay for the development of housing-enabling infrastructure and other needs. We would do this through our proposal to eliminate the five-year phase-in of development charge rates.

Speaker, let me remind you that development charges are fees that municipalities can apply to a new development or redevelopment to help pay for the capital costs of infrastructure that may support this new growth.

Our proposal to eliminate the five-year phase-in would apply to development charge bylaws passed on or after January 1, 2022. For municipalities that have to amend their development charge bylaws to remove the phase-in, we are proposing that they be able to do so using a streamlined approach.

What’s more, this June 1, Ontario will bring into force exemptions and discounts on municipal development charges for affordable residential units. I think we can all agree in this place that it is important that we do not levy development charges on non-profit—the good work that Habitat for Humanity does. They were here a few weeks ago in Queen’s Park, meeting with a variety of members, and they told us time and time again, “Thank you for removing the development charges on Habitat for Humanity homes.” That is helping them get more homes built for those who need it in our communities, and I know our non-profit sector appreciates that—in ensuring that our affordable residential units do not have those charges levied on them. This would provide incentives to build more affordable housing across the province.

Speaker, obviously, this bill looks at amending the Planning Act, a document that I have the pleasure of reading often. I’m not sure if my colleagues in this place read it as much as myself and the minister and the associate minister. This time, we’re proposing to amend the Planning Act under the theme of improving consultation and providing municipalities and builders with greater certainty to get homes built faster. This proposed change would streamline certain third-party appeals to the Ontario Land Tribunal to help communities get quicker planning approvals for housing projects. This would help reduce building costs and, in some cases, reduce project delays by up to 18 months. That could mean getting shovels in the ground a full year and a half earlier, meaning people and families will move in even sooner to new homes, faster. To put that into perspective, between 2021 and 2023, approximately 67,000 housing units were subject to third-party appeals of official plans and rezoning. This simply cannot continue.

We’re proposing further changes to the Planning Act, and these would allow appeals when a municipality refuses an application or simply does not make a decision within the statutory timeline or a settlement boundary change that would accommodate future growth outside of the greenbelt.

We know that times change, and along with that, so have the methods for consulting on and communicating land use planning changes. That’s why we’re proposing a regulatory change to enhance public engagement on new planning applications and other Planning Act matters. We would do this by modernizing public notice requirements to enable municipalities to give notice on their website if there is no local newspaper available. Unfortunately, in many rural communities, there are no local papers still present. So this provides an opportunity for our rural municipalities, in particular, to have those public consultations on their website or through a newsletter they may mail out with their property tax statements, for example, giving them that flexibility to be even more accessible to the residents they serve.

Similar regulatory changes are proposed under the Development Charges Act. If our bill is passed, we will work with our municipal partners to develop best practices for modernizing public engagement and consultation. This could include expanding our reach to include multilingual notices. Ontario is a very large province, a very diverse province, which is wonderful, to see the variety of cultures represented in Ontario—but ensuring that our consultation process and our municipal consultation process around development is accessible to all. I look forward to having those consultations with our municipal partners as we move forward.

Our fourth and final theme is related to building more types of homes for more people. Under this theme, our proposal is to get shovels in the ground faster for priority projects. Under the Planning Act, municipalities can make decisions that determine the future of their communities. This includes making decisions on official plans, zoning bylaws, plans of subdivision, and site plan control.

We know a new development may require many municipal planning approvals before construction begins. Unfortunately, some Ontario priority projects have encountered delays when navigating the planning approval process. To solve this, we will consult on a new expedited approval process for community service facilities. We’ll be starting that with, for example, K-to-12 public schools, potentially extending in phases to long-term-care facilities and hospitals.

I know our government has put forward an ambitious infrastructure plan, which was announced in the budget a few short weeks ago—whether it was the over $1.8 million in housing-enabling infrastructure; whether it’s the Building Faster Fund that we announced last year at AMO, $1.2 billion; whether it’s the doubling of our capital budget for our schools, which I know was very well received across Ontario. We have many growing communities. I know this government is committed to ensuring that we build complete communities with schools, child care, hospitals, and ensuring that those planning approvals get done as quickly as possible, ensuring that those processes are seamless. That is what our goal is through these consultations—to ensure these priority projects are moving forward.

Speaker, we’re also moving forward with our consultations around the PPS, or the provincial planning statement, ensuring that we are putting forward a provincial planning statement that will get more homes built faster and sets out the rules for, obviously, land use planning in Ontario.

I know this is a very ambitious piece of legislation—ensuring that we work with our municipal partners who we heavily consulted with and with our home builders and our other community builders across Ontario; ensuring that we build the homes that Ontarians need, whether it’s the home for a grandma and grandpa, or whether it’s a home for a new family or a new Canadian to our shores. It’s ensuring that we have those places for those individuals too—it’s not just a building; it’s a place that they can build a community, they can raise their family, they can enjoy those golden years. That is what our government is focused on—ensuring every Ontarian has the opportunity and the ability to achieve home ownership and an affordable place to rent.