It is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill 185.

At the outset, let me remind you that I’ll be sharing the time with the Associate Minister of Housing, the member for Perth–Wellington, and the member for Etobicoke–Lakeshore.

It’s a pleasure to rise today as both Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and Minister of Red Tape Reduction in the province of Ontario.

Speaker, as you know, we introduced a very comprehensive bill yesterday that not only continues our government’s actions to make life more affordable for the people of the province of Ontario and make interacting with government easier for businesses and the people of Ontario, but also helps to unleash housing opportunity across the province of Ontario.

This is another in a series of bills, not only on housing but, equally importantly, on red tape reduction. You know that the government has really been focused on reducing red tape given the fact that, when we came to government back in 2018, we inherited a province that was the most overly regulated province in the country. We have often talked about the challenges that we have faced in encouraging business to set up shop in the province of Ontario, given how over-regulated we are.

One of the hallmarks of red tape reduction is that when you are reducing red tape, it is always meant to make life easier, yes, but you always want to retain items that make our province safer. And we have continued to do that.

As you look through the bill, Speaker, you’ll find a number of housekeeping initiatives that make a very important difference for the institutions that have sought our assistance—there’s right-sizing of a number of boards.

Many of the items that the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction have identified have been gladly taken up by our partner ministries in the lead-up to the bill. It really underlines the extraordinary work that is done by the team at the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction and public service, who challenge ministries on a daily basis to ensure that we can make our province easier to do business in and easier for people to work with.

It is important to note that, with this bill—I think it’s over one million hours in savings of time for those who interact with government, over $1.2 billion in savings at the same time. So this is, again, another step on the way of improving how people interact with our businesses and with our government, and will ensure that we continue to make Ontario the best place to live, work and invest.

There are a couple of items in there, of course, for the Ministry of Agriculture, like the Line Fences Act, but also with respect to building infrastructure and moving along quicker with respect to relocation of energy or gas pipes under the ground—obviously, under the ground.

There are a number of really important red tape items there, and I want to just thank the team at the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction for their hard work.

At the same time, there are a lot of targeted initiatives with respect to building housing across the province of Ontario. One of the things that we continuously heard is how important it was to target initiatives that we have done. We have done a lot of things, since coming into office, with respect to making it easier to build all types of homes.

We had a number of housing supply action plans which were geared to removing many of the obstacles that were put in the way by the previous Liberal government. As you know, Speaker, the hallmark of that previous government’s time in office was not only red tape, higher costs, but we had some of the lowest housing starts under that government. Purpose-built rentals certainly didn’t exist. Rental construction didn’t exist, frankly.

We certainly weren’t building long-term-care homes in the province of Ontario. In fact, the previous Liberal government don’t even consider long-term-care homes as homes. They’d rather consider them as institutions, and that’s not something that we do. I’m pleased that our colleagues in the official opposition agree with us that a long-term-care home is a home.

So there are a number of initiatives that we have done leading up to this, but the focus on this one really was—and one of the reasons why we’re introducing it, through the co-operation and the support of our colleagues at the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction, is because we have heard from our municipal partners that all of the things we have done till now have helped us have some of the highest new home starts in the province’s history, the highest purpose-built housing starts in the province’s reported history, but more targeted measures needed to be taken, given the fact that the high inflation, high interest rate policies of the federal government are certainly having a very negative impact on our ability to get new homes built and to get new home construction under way, and also to give first-time homebuyers the opportunity to buy into the market. So that is what we have brought forward.

Within this bill, you will see initiatives with respect to student housing. We are exempting universities from the Planning Act—as-of-right for student dormitories and student housing. We know, of course, how important it is to build more housing for our students, especially in light of the fact that the federal government has made unilateral cuts to post-secondary education, without consultation with provinces. So we are moving quickly to address that.

We have the University of Toronto, which has been trying for 10 years to build a student dorm, without success. This bill, if supported by the House, will unleash that opportunity for them and get shovels in the ground much faster.

The bill also improves on the efforts that we’re doing with respect to infrastructure. As you know, in the lead-up to the bill, we announced one of the largest infrastructure programs in the history of the province: over $1.8 billion to build sewer and water capacity in all parts of the province; roads and bridges. At the same time, we have one of the largest capital construction projects with respect to schools, the continuing building out of long-term care and hospitals in different parts of the province, and the road construction that we’re doing in different parts of the province. What we’re doing is building communities. This bill helps unleash that.

We heard from our municipal partners also, in particular, of the need to give them the ability to—given the challenges that we have on infrastructure, given the massive infrastructure deficit that we have inherited from the previous Liberal government, that they needed better tools to allow them to use their water and infrastructure. Often, homes that had been approved sat idle, and water and sewer allocation was captured by an approved development where a shovel was not put in the ground. So we are giving all municipalities legislated approval to reallocate that sewer and water to projects that are good to go, that are ready to go. We heard that from our municipal partners across the board. We’re doing that so that we can get shovels in the ground. It’s estimated that there are close to 60,000 to 70,000 units that have been held up because of this, so this will unleash that opportunity.

We are making changes to the Ontario Land Tribunal—in particular, we are removing the right of third-party appeals to the tribunals. Similarly, we heard from home builders and we heard from our municipal partners that delays at the Ontario Land Tribunal were holding back thousands of homes—in between 70,000 to 80,000 units which could come online almost immediately. So we are making that change.

At the same time, the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Red Tape Reduction will be chairing something that I’m quite excited about: an expert panel—and she may speak about it more in her remarks—that will look at harmonization of planning processes across our fastest-growing regions. We’ve heard this time and time and time again, whether it’s from plumbers, electricians, architects, engineers: that setbacks in one community are one thing—a setback in Stouffville, a planning process in Stouffville is one thing; five metres across the street in Markham, it is a completely different process, and in Richmond Hill, it’s different, and so on and so forth. So we are convening an expert panel which will include municipal partners but will include stakeholders, from engineers, from architects and those who have to interact with our municipal partners on a daily basis, to harmonize those regulations so that we can also get shovels in the ground faster.

The bill also will ensure that as of June 1, we will update the bulletin so that our definition on affordable housing, which, again, was unanimously supported by this House—and I thank colleagues on all sides for that. It’s a definition that takes into consideration the unique aspects of communities across the province. As of June 1, that will be fully proclaimed. It also indicates that on July 1, three lower-tier municipalities, Halton, York and Peel, will be completely dissolved. Their planning will be dissolved to the lower tiers. And we anticipate having the entire province devolve to lower-tier planning by the end of this year—again, very, very targeted measures to get things built faster.

We also heard from a lot of stakeholders that the outdated planning or parking regulations and rules surrounding minimum parking around our major transit station areas is something that had to be revised. The costs of these outdated and old regulations, which in many cases date back to the 1970s, could be upwards of $100,000 per unit. We are eliminating those parking minimums around those major transit station areas, not only in Toronto, where we’re making $30 billion worth of investments in transit and transportation, but in much of the GTHA, where you’re having expansions on the GO train network as well as subways—but not just in the GTHA. In communities across the province, they are investing in transit, in bigger transit options, and they have asked us to do this. I think it makes perfect sense. It will help unleash lots of housing and more affordable housing at the same time.

This bill targets our initiatives at things that can help get shovels in the ground faster. I know my colleagues—both my parliamentary assistant at red tape reduction and the Associate Minister of Housing, as well as my parliamentary assistant for municipal affairs and housing—will expand further on some of those initiatives. As I said, going forward, we intend to utilize as effectively as possible the work that the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction has done across government to help us unleash and unblock some of the challenges that we are facing in housing. They have done tremendous work on a number of other files, and we know now that they can help us on this file, as well.

I also want to touch quickly on some of the modifications of the Development Charges Act. Our partners, both municipally and in the building sector, have said you have to focus on infrastructure—sewer and water, sewer and water, sewer and water. It is the difference between building hundreds of homes and millions of homes, frankly, across the province of Ontario. It’s something that we have been asking the federal government to focus on since I was appointed to this ministry. I’m pleased that the federal government has also finally recognized the need to build infrastructure capacity. But the development charges changes that we made reflect the changes in our economic environment over the last number of years with respect to high inflation and the rapidly increasing costs. So it’s focused on sewer and water and getting that infrastructure in the ground. We still do, however, tie a freeze in development charges—an 18-month freeze in those charges. It used to be a 24-month freeze; it is now an 18-month freeze. The reason we have done that is, again, to encourage our home builders to get shovels in the ground as soon as possible.

It is a large, large bill with many different facets, but it is a very targeted approach. It is an approach that is framed on the things that we’ve heard from our municipal partners.

At the same time—I’ll just close with this before we move on to other speakers—yesterday, we also released a provincial planning statement which has to be looked at in co-operation with the bill that we’ve put forward here. It is a document which highlights the importance and makes it easier to build along our major transit corridors, and in co-operation with these two documents and some of the changes that we’re making, will help us meet our goal of building 1.5 million homes, if not more.

So I’m very excited by this, and I hope that all members will join us in supporting this bill when it comes back for third reading.