I think de Tocqueville would be very, very pleased to see that the government of Ontario, with a majority that has been granted by the voters of Ontario, is bringing forward policies to ensure that those who were being left behind under 15 years of Liberal and NDP waste and mismanagement here in the province of Ontario finally have an opportunity to achieve the dream of home ownership, have the opportunity to ensure that their lives are getting better, that they have the opportunity to obtain good jobs, that they have careers available in those jobs, that they’re able to not have to worry about hundreds of dollars going out the door every year towards licence plate stickers, that they don’t have to worry about the incredible increase of red tape upon them and their families as they go about their business.

I’m sure de Tocqueville, when he would look at the measures that are brought forward not just in this legislation but that have been brought forward by every one of this government’s bills, that represent what I believe is the founding philosophy of not just de Tocqueville but I know our Premier and our entire party, and it is that ensuring that everything that we do in this chamber, everything we do as a government, is for the best interests of the people—all the people.

Questions to the member for Niagara West?

Thank you to the member from Niagara West for his debate here today. I know, like me, he shares the frustration of seeing red tape that slows down the building of housing, and in particular, infrastructure.

I know the member from Perth–Wellington touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to give the member a chance to maybe talk about some projects in his riding that have just taken so long to come to fruition because of the lack of infrastructure and the lack of availability from the municipalities to be able to participate in this. So maybe I’ll give him an opportunity to touch on some great projects in his riding that he’s looking forward to seeing move forward.

Questions? The member for Perth–Wellington.

I recognize the member for Ottawa South.

The member for Niagara West.

The member for Niagara West can finish up.

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?

Yes, one word, and it’s infrastructure. We had the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing visit my riding recently, coming to St. Catharines and speaking with the mayor of St. Catharines through the Building Faster Fund, and also had the opportunity to meet with officials from the town of Lincoln, who have a remarkable project just shy of 100 acres where there will be 15,000 people able to live on just shy of 100 acres—a really remarkable mixed-use community of density, mixed-use and then also single-family homes. And they spoke about the need to get water infrastructure, waste water infrastructure and how so many of their housing targets have been held back by the need to make sure that those investments happen.

They spoke glowingly about the investments that this government is making in infrastructure, that we’re not just listening to our partners across the way in the NDP but really listening to municipal partners, who are actually working day in and day out to get those homes built, working with the partners in the building industry. They said that the game-changing investments that this government is making in our budget are going to supplement many of the actions we’ve taken and ensure that homes get built.

This is the legislation we have in front of the House, and this is legislation that is going to be bringing forward one of the pieces that I’ve heard about from my municipality partners, as well, which is the use-it-or-lose-it component. They want to be able to have some tools to push and prod some of those builders who maybe need a little bit of pushing and prodding in order to get going.

I think, in my riding of Niagara West, when I look at some of the projects that are under way in Smithville, where they’re going to be doubling their population over the next 10 to 15 years; in Grimsby on the Lake, where they are expanding a massive number of new projects, intensification around a major urban transit area, I see that these partners speak about the tools that are in this legislation, and I’ve had a lot of messages, texts and emails from elected officials and those who work with them saying, “This legislation is going to help get that job done and we thank you for it.”

Interjections.

He’s going to have to talk to his grandkids, he’s going to have to talk to his great grandkids about how their opportunities were throttled by that government when they were in office, and how it’s only under the PCs and Doug Ford that we’re able to ensure that opportunities, again, exist for this generation, here in the province of Ontario.

A while ago, I met with the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, and they talked about how they were engaging with elected officials here in the Legislature and talking about how important it is to keep our existing heritage buildings because they are already buildings that are in stock of housing and it’s good for the economy, it’s good for the environment and it’s good for cultural benefits.

I know the member talked about archives and how it was costing $3,600 to film historical information. So I want to ask the member: This government has reversed many things on housing. One of the things in Bill 23 is that they’re asking municipalities to register heritage properties and designate them by January 1, 2025. We have about 36,000 to be registered and the ACO was asking if this government will extend that extension in order for municipalities to get that work done because staff are so busy because of all the reversals this government has done.

Will the government consider changing that date to January 1, 2030, as per the ACO?

While we’re on the subject of red tape, do you think that the fact that the Premier doubled his office budget in just five years and increased the staff from 20 to 48 on the sunshine list—that that just doesn’t add more red tape? I’d ask the member: If he wants to stop the gravy train, it’s starting from the Premier’s office.

Interjection: Choo-choo.

I’m thankful for the clarification.

What I would say to the minister is, the people of Ottawa that I know well who are housing experts that work for the city, research experts that work for a university—they’re ready and willing to work with you. I’m sure you know that already. But we have to get things moving quickly, and the best evidence that I’ve seen—again, that I tried to offer in the 20 minutes I’m contributing to debate this afternoon—is the more money you can get directly to the person, the more efforts can be made to save the affordable renting stock we have, the more success we can have in this moment right now. Because none of us wants to see the suffering that we’re seeing in our cities, I’m sure—no one.

Questions?

I appreciate the speech from the member opposite.

I just want to correct a couple of things—or just update, I guess. It was actually the Bob Rae government in 1992 that brought in an exemption for newly built purpose-built rentals. He did that because, after five years of Liberal government, the stock had reduced by so much the NDP government at the time thought that that was the only way—correctly—to get new stock online.

I want to give some of the numbers on the National Housing Strategy just by way of an update: Ontario has actually built 11,000 of the 19,000 units that it had pledged to build over 10 years. We were given a pledge of 26,000 renovations; we have actually done 123,000.

But to do the kind of things that he’s talked about with respect to British Columbia would mean that we would have to fire service managers and remove those services from our municipal partners, and I sincerely ask the member opposite if he thinks that we should move in that direction in order to do the kinds of things that he’s talking about and follow British Columbia’s lead.

I want to refocus. You touched on this, but the appeals process: We went through this terrible period when the urban boundary expansion and the greenbelt grab showed no evidence that it was following any rational process and preferential treatment was shown to have been applied. Now, we have an appeals process for any developer that wants to build low-density sprawl on farmland or so forth, that if a municipality says no, they can appeal it—but if they say, yes, no one else can appeal this decision.

I just want to say that this is really concerning, particularly given what’s happening in Wilmot—or that we don’t know what’s happening in Wilmot. There’s a perfect example of a process that is undefined, that is not happening in a rational, predictable way, that could result in us seeing the loss of 770 acres of farmland in Wilmot.

The member has talked a lot about building deeply affordable units, building not-for-profit housing, and I think this bill seeks to help that happen. We’re looking at ways that we can streamline the planning process, looking at ways that we can help those builds go faster.

With the remaining time, I’d like to know whether or not the member is going to support this bill and whether or not he’s going to approve of the government’s position as to how we can actually help people he has referred to in his speech earlier today actually find a place to live.

It’s always an honour to rise in the House and speak—today, on Bill 185, the government’s most recent housing bill.

Speaker, I just want to highlight something that I don’t think we need to highlight—but to remind everyone, we are in an unprecedented housing crisis. For the first time, a whole generation of young people are wondering if they’ll be able to own a home or if life is actually going to be more affordable and better for them than it was for their parents. We know that this crisis has been a long time in the making. As a matter of fact, in 2018, when I first ran for election, one of the issues I made a top priority was addressing what we thought then was a pretty bad housing crisis, which has actually only gotten worse over the last six years.

It’s unheard of, at least in my community, that the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Guelph is now over $2,000. It would take a minimum wage of $25.96, in Ontario, for a minimum-wage worker to be able to afford average rent. There is no city right now in the province of Ontario where a minimum-wage worker can afford the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment. As a matter of fact, in Toronto, even two full-time minimum-wage workers cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment that doesn’t cost more than 30% of their income. It takes 22 years now for the average young person to save up enough money to be able to afford the down payment on an average starter home.

Some 16,000 people tonight on any given night in Ontario will be sleeping rough. More people are on the social housing wait-list than the number of social housing spaces that are available. And part of the reason that’s the case is that 93% of the deeply affordable homes built in this province were built prior to 1995, when the provincial government, following the federal government, decided to stop investing in deeply affordable homes in the province. So it is a crisis, an unprecedented crisis. It’s like a forest fire raging out of control. And when I read this bill, it feels like the government is bringing a garden hose to put out the fire.

There are some good things in the bill but woefully insufficient to address the scale of the crisis that we’re facing. After six years of putting well-connected, wealthy insiders ahead of actually building homes that ordinary people can afford, it feels like the government is almost admitting defeat on this file, begging municipalities to bail them out, especially when the Premier joined the NIMBY crowd and said no to housing multiplexes—six- to 11-storey buildings along major transit corridors—said no along with others in our communities who are fighting housing.

So I want to just quote some of the advocates in Ontario who have been leading the charge to say, “Yes in my backyard,” because we need a “yes in my backyard” campaign in this province. When I was helping community groups say no to opening the greenbelt for development and when I was talking to groups who had signs on their front yards that said, “Premier, keep your promise. Don’t open the greenbelt for development,” I also told those groups that, “Also on your yard, you need to have a sign that says, ‘Yes to building a fourplex in my neighbourhood’ so we can actually build the homes we need.”

Here’s what More Neighbours, a long-time YIMBY housing group, said about this bill:

“After six years in power, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives are still unwilling to implement the changes needed to end the housing crisis.” The bill “has a few good ideas but largely passes the responsibility for making meaningful change on to others, adding delay and uncertainty, despite the province having full power to act now.... Cutting red tape should mean ... implementing provincial zoning standards.”

Let’s talk about another organization that has been advocating for bringing back the dream of home ownership for young families in Ontario, the Ontario Real Estate Association:

“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 today’s bill,” referring to Bill 185. “We need to build more homes on existing properties and allow upzoning along major transit corridors if we are going to address the housing affordability and supply crisis in this province.”

Speaker, I agree with those commentators; there are some good things in this bill, and I’ll credit the minister for bringing those good things forward. But small changes, things that we could celebrate, are hard to celebrate when you look at the scale of the crisis we’re facing.

And I want to give you one example: Something I’ve long advocated for is using timber buildings and increasing the use of those up to 18 storeys. To me, that’s an example of a good measure in this bill, but as Environmental Defence says, “However, such an amendment to the Ontario building code will have very limited impact unless the Premier reverses his decision to leave in place the municipal zoning bans that make it illegal to actually build these types of homes on the overwhelming majority of ... lots.”

So, Speaker, I’ll support things in this bill like standardizing the design to reduce delays and costs of modular homes and panelized homes. I’ll support things I’ve been advocating for, like eliminating parking minimums in transit areas. But as John Michael McGrath, a journalist and housing expert, will say, “None of those items from the government’s plan is bad. They’re just not sufficient. In the face of a housing crisis that is, every year, driving thousands of Ontario residents to more affordable communities in other provinces, the Ford government is fiddling with the dials of housing policy, seemingly unsure of what it’s doing or even what it’s trying to do.”

“There’s nothing in the bill introduced Wednesday that’s going to fundamentally alter the trajectory of the housing shortage in Ontario.”

Speaker, I think what is so frustrating is that after six years in power, instead of actually bringing themselves to build homes that ordinary people can afford, the government still seems to be focused on, “How can we break all the rules and roll out the red carpet so wealthy, well-connected land speculators can cash in billions while ordinary people are still trying to find an affordable place to call home?”

I would have thought, after the $8.3-billion greenbelt scandal, that the government would have learned the lesson, but instead one of the concerns I have about this bill, especially when you combine it with the changes that have been made to the PPS, is that this bill will actually make the housing crisis and the climate crisis both worse because it’s incentivizing expensive sprawl, effectively wiping out the protective settlement area boundaries and municipal comprehensive review processes that prevent low-density sprawl. Allowing land speculators—at any time they could demand that our farmlands, wetlands and wildlife habitat be earmarked for sprawl development by the law allowing them to appeal boundary changes. These problems can be exacerbated by the act’s shifting of planning authority away from regional governments and downloading them onto smaller-tier municipal governments.

Speaker, the reason I’m so concerned about sprawl—and it’s obvious, as the leader of the Ontario Green Party, that I would be concerned about the climate implications, both in terms of increasing climate pollution but also making it harder for us to prevent things like flooding. It should be obvious that I’m concerned about paving over our farmlands and our wetlands and our forests, but I’m also concerned about the cost of sprawl. It costs 2.5 times more dollars for a municipality to build the infrastructure to service low-density development than it does to service gentle-density, missing-middle and mid-rise housing.

I see the member from Ottawa South is here in the House right now. In Ottawa, there was a study that was done for low-density development. Above and beyond property taxes, it cost the city an extra $465 per person. By contrast, in gentle- to mid-density areas of the city, after taxes, the city actually made additional revenue of $606 per person because of the lower cost of servicing those homes—a $1,000 difference per person.

So, if we’re going to talk about sustainable ways, both financially and environmentally sustainable ways, we can rapidly and quickly increase housing supply in the province, we need to legalize across the province as-of-right multiplexes in residential neighbourhoods and six- to 11-storey buildings along major transit and transportation corridors, which I don’t think has gotten enough conversation in this House. I spoke with one developer who specializes in mid-rise development who said, “Just your bill, Mike, to legalize six- to 11-storey buildings along major transit corridors would cut our approval times in half, allowing us to quickly and cheaply increase supply of housing in this province.”

Speaker, there are many solutions—there are many solutions we need—but it’s going to take a government that actually has the courage to stand up and put forward the bold solutions that will significantly move the needle on housing supply in this province.

When I’ve heard the story of Wilmot told in this place, there are alarm bells that get raised, given the story I brought up about Watters Road. We have to save our farmland. We don’t have to trade off our farmland to make sure that we can build deeply affordable housing in Ontario. We absolutely don’t have to do that.

The other thing I would say, Speaker, is that developers again and again tell me—and I run into them all the time back home—they’re not in the business of building deeply affordable housing. That’s not what they’re in the business to do.

There was a time when the province of Ontario and the Canadian government worked together with municipalities and non-profit housers to do that work. We have to commit to do that work again. Thirty years of evidence has shown us that no one is going to do it for us; we have to do it ourselves.

So I think we do need to work towards the intensification of the downtown. As I said before, you have a willing partner in the people of Ottawa Centre. We want to make sure that happens.

But what I do know is there’s a whole lot of vacant provincial properties all over Ontario that could be repurposed. There’s a whole lot of LCBOs, for example, in strip malls upon which there are air rights where we could build housing, for which the province actually can make the decision. The last time I asked the Ministry of Infrastructure this question, my friend, it was 812—812 vacant properties in Ontario owned by the province. Why can’t we repurpose some of that for some usage, even if it’s transitional usage and it’s not fully outfitted homes? There is nothing stopping us from doing that. And I’m sure that where you live and where I live, there are partners willing to make that happen.

I remember the Prime Minister getting up at a conference in 2019 and saying, “Well, technically, housing isn’t my jurisdiction, but....” We have to stop talking like that. There is a federal Minister of Housing. There’s a provincial Minister of Housing. There are people responsible for housing at the municipal level. We can’t play a jurisdictional game anymore when it comes to housing.

And I will not accept the argument that there aren’t any resources available for us to get people housed right now, because the city of Ottawa, through its housing allowance to people who interact with our shelter system, has proven there’s a way we can keep people in their homes if we can get them money to make the rent.

So that’s what I would say. We can use the money the province has to keep people housed, and we don’t have to blame each other for what we’re not doing. We can do something.

There are a lot of things that could be put into this bill that you may see the members over here standing up to vote for.

I encourage both of us to pressure our respective groups so we get the best bill before the House.

Next question.

I thank the speaker for his remarks on this bill. He covered a lot of topics, but there are two words that I heard and I want to draw out some thoughts, if I can. One is “infrastructure,” the second is “intensification.” These words are related. I noted the speaker’s comments about, in the city of Ottawa, the need for water and waste water infrastructure to get housing built. While not in this bill, in the budget bill, there is $1.8 billion to support that effort, a really fundamental, massive injection of capital available to municipalities, small and large, to get that infrastructure built.

I guess my question is, doesn’t the member see the measures in this bill consistent with that broad effort to get housing built in the municipal boundaries to intensify housing?

I’ve already spoken today about the gravy train in the Premier’s office and doubling his budget and more than doubling the people on the sunshine list. But that’s not the only gravy train that’s happening in Ontario. There’s a greenbelt gravy train that got derailed, luckily, thanks to the efforts of so many people.

Do you think if the Premier focused less on the gravy trains that are there for not just his office but for those insiders and friends and those land speculators, there could be a focus on building affordable homes and we’d actually get to the targets that we’ve set?

Thank you to my colleague for his presentation. In this bill we hear about more wood—to allow more building with wood, which is great, in this bill.

But you did mention a lot about non-market housing and building affordable housing and co-ops and supportive housing, and in my riding, of course, there’s a lot of those missing. We have homes that could be revamped, and we have people that would like to move from their home to have a transitional home after, because now they say, “Well, we can’t afford a big home anymore,” or, “We want something more affordable.”

Do you think this bill addresses that, and will that fix some of the problems we deal with in most communities up north and in the south, I guess, and in your riding also?