My question is for the Premier. Tenants in a Kitchener apartment building are fearing the worst because they’re being handed eviction notices. They’re worried that their landlord is trying to evict them to raise the rents. They’re seniors, newcomers, folks on ODSP, single parents, people who can’t afford for their rents to go up. They have no place to go.

The Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board has been failing to prevent bad-faith evictions, so much so that the Ombudsman’s report called the board “fundamentally failing.” Speaker, will the Premier help these folks by saying yes to real eviction prevention for renters by implementing vacancy control to limit huge rent increases between tenancies and stop these bad-faith evictions plaguing our communities?

The government’s failures are only driving up the cost of housing. Right now, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,200. How is a person on a full-time minimum wage a month supposed to pay that much? That’s all their money. How can single parents, retirees, folks on ODSP survive?

Speaker, my constituents cannot afford to wait. Again, will the Premier commit to real protections for renters, implement vacancy control now, limit the huge increases between tenancies and de-incentivize these bad-faith evictions plaguing our communities?

I’m humbled by the honour and privilege to be here before you today on the treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people. These lands are governed by the Dish With One Spoon treaty, a treaty of peace, friendship and respect. May we heed the wisdom and all eat out of the dish, share the responsibility that the bowl is never empty, taking only what we need, and keep the peace so no knives are needed.

I’m grateful to work on this land, to support the land defenders and preserve it for the next seven generations. May we continue to pursue truth and reconcili-action in all aspects of community. Thank you to my predecessor Laura Mae Lindo. She is an inspiration to many in our community. She left big shoes to fill. She pushed for system change, and I hope to do the same. Like Laura Mae, I’m an eternal optimist, and I still carry some hope.

I’m proud to rise in the Legislature as the second-ever MPP for the Green Party of Ontario. While it’s me standing here today, I’m just one part of a bigger movement shaped by so many amazing people. I’m joined today by the GPO team, friends, family and staff. Many more in Kitchener Centre and across Ontario are with me in spirit, part of a growing group of people committed to combatting the many connected crises our communities are facing.

Thank you to Mike Schreiner for being so kind, generous and thoughtful. You’re an amazing mentor and MPP, and I’m learning from the best.

Thank you to MP Mike Morrice for teaching me how to love knocking on doors, for blazing a trail in Kitchener Centre, and for showing folks what good service, integrity and leadership looks like.

Thank you to my mom and dad and sister. Brendan Clancy has joined me today. My mom is watching. She was an amazing nurse. She was an advocate for her profession and patients. Unfortunately, she left the profession, pushed out by the mounting workload and a move to 12-hour shifts. My dad was a small business owner and a 30-year-plus volunteer with KW AccessAbility in Kitchener Centre, a group working to ensure that all have equal opportunities to thrive. My sister is a teacher and a union leader, and she works hard to ensure that workers’ rights are respected.

Of course, I wouldn’t be here in front of you today without the residents of Kitchener Centre. I’m very grateful for your trust and confidence in me. My job is to be your voice at Queen’s Park. I promise that I will always put people before politics by working across party lines to bring home better for you.

In our campaign office, we had a big, beautiful mural; it was about 20 by 15. It was an old tree, with many, many branches. On the twigs and branches, we put photos of community members who contributed to the campaign. Underneath the mural was a quote: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This became a compass for our office. When we go fast and when we go alone, we risk doing harm.

In social work, the field that I practised in for 16 years, our motto is, “First, Do No Harm.”

In Kitchener, in Ontario, and around the world, the systems we rely on every day are collapsing, and the harmful impacts are everywhere we look. In my riding, and I would say all ridings, people are finding it hard to get by.

Just the other day, a woman with a developmental disability came to the office. She was crying, she was screaming and she was angry, because for the first time in her life, although having deeply affordable housing, she didn’t have enough to buy groceries. She’s a survivor, but she can’t take it anymore. The system is failing her.

This year alone, in the Waterloo region, the number of families using the food bank more than doubled—that’s right; in one year, more than doubled. Why? Because food prices keep rising while grocery giants are raking in record profits. Last year, grocery giants made over $6 billion—yet another record high, and an 8% increase from the year before. That’s money out of your pocket that you don’t get back.

While prices of necessities have gone up, Ontario Works has been frozen since 2018, at $733 a month—ODSP rates are at just over $1,300 a month. Let’s take a moment to consider what it would be like to live off of $733 a month.

We live in a world of monopolies. The lack of competition in almost every sector means people are paying more than ever to survive—more on cellphone bills, more on rent, more on groceries, more on transportation. Not only that, but they’re galvanizing the attention and motivation of our children—these tech companies that steal the attention and motivation of our kids. The gouging has to stop.

Just the other day, I was walking through Victoria Park, and I struck up a conversation with a group of students who had moved to Kitchener from Brazil. They shared that they were barely surviving right now, despite having great degrees, credentials and jobs, because they can’t find an affordable place to rent. And I talk to a lot of young people who have lost hope of ever owning a home. Meanwhile, investors and pension plans continue to increase their investments.

In Kitchener-Waterloo, the average home price has increased over 159% in the past 10 years. Last year alone, Kitchener rents were up 6.5%. All across Ontario, homeless encampments are a new reality, and our communities can’t keep up with the needs of those who have been displaced from their homes. There’s an encampment in Kitchener that’s two blocks from my home.

Recently, our region invested millions to create a managed encampment with tiny homes and supports. Fifty residents moved to this encampment from the encampment near my home into these tiny homes. But because of our current drug crisis where needs aren’t being addressed and the housing affordability crisis, the encampment is full again today.

The number of people experiencing chronic homelessness in the Waterloo region has grown by 129% since the beginning of 2020. I talk to folks who have lived in Kitchener their whole lives. They say they’ve never seen this before. It’s never been so bad. And we’re on track to triple by 2028 unless urgent action is taken. Meanwhile, our affordable housing stock is being bought en masse and turned into luxury condos by real estate investment trusts.

This is not just a problem in Kitchener. In Canada, for every new affordable home that we build, we lose 15 in the private sector. We are hemorrhaging affordable housing every year. Housing has become a commodity when it should be a human right.

These factors that are causing the cost-of-living and housing crises—corporate greed and lack of regulation—are also the biggest causes of climate change. I became involved in the climate movement as a mom who wanted to do what I could to take action against the escalating crisis. I started volunteering with Citizens’ Climate Lobby and also answering phones for Mike Morrice’s 2019 campaign. I got involved because I’m grieving for my kids, for my grandkids or the babies being born today. They won’t know what it’s like to skate on an outdoor rink or pond, or ski through a bush, or even slide down a hill at a local park. I think we’ve all experienced this winter. It’s unprecedented. They’re also spending time inside in the summertime. Why? Because of wildfire smoke and extreme heat that makes it dangerous to be outside. Imagine children spending their summers indoors.

Recently, Ontario’s climate change impact assessment concluded that if we don’t take action to curb carbon emissions, Ontario will face 55 to 60 days of extreme heat by 2080. I talked to an elderly man who goes without food and shops at our local Tiny Home Takeout for free so that he can pay for an air conditioner to survive. Others on OW in his building don’t have that luxury.

Yet, oil and gas companies who have known for decades that their products are killing our planet continue to ramp up pollution and rake in record profits. That’s 18 cents a litre that you don’t get back. It lands in their pockets. Canada’s five biggest oil and gas companies saw profits of $38.3 billion in 2022. That’s more than double the year before—another double, the wrong kind of double.

Meanwhile, the cost of climate change—wetter, warmer and wilder weather—has been rising for decades. The Ontario Financial Accountability Office has estimated that climate change will add $4.1 billion a year over the rest of the century to the cost of maintaining our public infrastructure. It’s time to adapt.

Who will pay for this in the end? Who inherits the debt left by corporate greed? My children, our children, future generations will pay. Our home will pay, and all those who live on it will pay. We live on the only planet that’s suited to us, and there is no planet B.

So yes, there are many challenges, but in Kitchener Centre, so many of us are going farther by going together. As our mayor, Berry Vrbanovic, says, “We’re barn-raisers. We come together when someone is in need.”

There are so many people in my community who inspire me every day to push for more and for better—people like my friend Nadine Green, one of the founders of A Better Tent City, a place with tiny homes and great community. One night, she was sitting in her car when there was extreme cold. She decided to welcome unhoused folks into her variety store overnight. She didn’t want them to die. She didn’t want them to be left out in the cold. This became a habit, and she was evicted from her store. But she partnered with Ron Doyle and other community leaders to create A Better Tent City. They built 50 tiny homes and have a place to live for 65. They live in a warm community filled with dignity.

She’s joined by many others who work to provide homes for those who need them, including the Working Centre, Indwell, SHIFT, House of Friendship, YWCA, women’s crisis services, Lutherwood, the Union co-op, OneROOF and many more.

My riding is also home to Peter Jola, an ethnocultural community leader working hard to ensure that no community member is left behind. He came to Kitchener 30 years ago, fleeing violence in South Sudan, after he and his daughter were offered a flight from Irish dignitaries. Since then, he has helped his community members settle here and find a new home. We have a lot to learn from Peter and others who see the world like he does. They empathize with others struggling with mental health, addictions, poverty, disability, and religious and racial oppression.

I’m grateful to CCORIC, a committee I was on for many years; Compass; YMCA; Reception House; the multicultural centre; Sanctuary; Immigration Partnership; and so many other organizations serving newcomers in Kitchener for decades.

I’m inspired also by our tenant groups, housing advocates who are coming together to ensure no one is left behind when community members are facing renovictions by bad-acting landlords. They’ve been organizing services from the Social Development Centre and ACORN to make sure no one is left behind, including our lived experience working group—hello, Char. They want to be sure that no one is kicked out of their home. They serve as a reminder that the best way to eradicate homelessness is to prevent someone from becoming homeless. It’s leaders like this who shape the legacy that I hope to leave behind in this House.

Over the next few years, I will lead with an open heart and an open mind. As a business grad, I hope to ensure that we make good fiscal decisions, not two-year gains with long-term pains. As a former school social worker, my greatest tool is my empathy. I will hold people’s experiences with reverence, whether they’re a parent whose child dropped out of school, or they’re caring for an aging loved one, or they are someone with a disability; whether they’re facing toxic hate in our community or online; whether they’re a small business owner trying to stay afloat.

I hope to enter this chamber and every interaction with humility and compassion—and sometimes a joke; I’m Irish.

As a former city councillor, I call on us to govern with good process. Our Waterloo regional chair, Karen Redman, once said, “You measure what you value, and you change what you measure.” I hope to push for all of us to make decisions backed by data, not fear, and step into those required changes when we encounter them.

As a mother, I’m determined. I’m not just thinking of the next election cycle; I’m here for the next seven generations to come. I’m anxious and worried about my children’s future. I can tuck them in, I can buy them groceries, but I can’t look them in the eye right now and say they will have a better future than I did. That’s not okay. So I will hustle to protect water, food, air and climate for all of the generations to come after us.

I pledge to Kitchener Centre not to talk at you, but to listen. I’m not your leader. I’m your neighbour who will sit with you in a circle and carry the responsibilities you’ve entrusted me with with honour. I’ll defend our residents from harm, and I’ll make sure that no one is left behind.

To my partner, Ryan: I know we’re all making sacrifices for me to be away from you and the kids. I hope I make you proud by sharing all your nerdy optimism, taking the solutions you share with me that are in full swing across the globe, and to push for a green economy that you believe in.

To my kids: Thank you for breaking my heart in ways I never knew possible. I will work as hard as I can to ensure that you and all the children of Ontario will have a chance for a healthy future, with a roof over your head and all the tools you need to thrive.

To my fellow MPPs: I hope that together we will do no harm and that we will do everything in our power to go further together. Thank you.

Speaker, I move adjournment of the debate.