I’m honoured to stand today to discuss one of the more important problems currently facing people in every community across Ontario: access to housing. Our government understands that people across Ontario need a wide range of housing options at various price points to best reflect their needs at every stage in life. Industry experts, economists, home builders, and countless financial and market professionals have offered solutions about what can and must be done to solve this problem. Our government is listening and we’re taking action. We know that government bureaucracy doesn’t build homes, which is why our government is choosing to reduce red tape and create the environment for our community home builders to increase Ontario’s housing supply.

When examining the roots of the situation we’re facing in Ontario with respect to housing, similarities can be drawn across many jurisdictions—across Canadian provinces, American states and even globally, as many countries are struggling with similar challenges. Ontario is certainly not immune from global forces.

I have heard from people in my riding and have listened to media pundits discuss the factors exacerbating the housing crises affecting communities across Ontario, Canada and North America. Rising building costs remain a challenge for builders. Interest rates on mortgages remain a major challenge for potential homebuyers and for people renewing their mortgages. One common denominator I’ve heard directly from home builders, from existing and prospective homebuyers and from renters remains a lack of housing supply.

With a little luck, at any time of day you can tune in to Newstalk 1010 here in Toronto, or AM 800 back in my hometown of Chatham-Kent–Leamington, and probably hear a live radio personality and their guests discuss this very situation at various times throughout any day. I’d agree with some of them that the current housing dilemma involves a constellation of deep and complex factors involving local and global market conditions, population growth, current lending rates and the consequences from policy decisions made many years ago that resulted in diminished supply relative to our population growth, especially the net growth experienced here in Ontario because of years of sustained and positive immigration levels.

The main issue driving this prolonged period of record immigration was that communities weren’t building homes at the same rate equal to the families and individuals who needed all forms of housing. Home builders have long identified challenges with slow, arduous local planning processes, outdated rules and the NIMBYism that unnecessarily delayed important projects that can contribute to the very housing solutions Ontario has been seeking.

To continue to grow our economy and fill the wide range of available jobs now and in the future, we need to attract and retain these hard-working, entrepreneurial, industrious, skilled and motivated people who want to build a life for themselves and their families here in Ontario. To this point, Ontario stands apart from the broader cross-section of other jurisdictions experiencing similar housing pressures. The reason? Since 2018, Ontario has cultivated a climate and nurtured the conditions to attract record investments and create unprecedented opportunities for now and for the future.

In spite of these pressures, setbacks and delays the world experienced during the pandemic, Ontario’s economy recovered quickly. Led by Premier Ford, it’s on a course to lead all jurisdictions across North America in terms of investment in the next generation of meaningful, well-paying jobs.

In response to this housing supply crisis, our government has adopted an all-of-government approach to tackle this very difficult situation, emphasizing collaboration between both municipal and federal levels of government to facilitate the environment needed for community builders to construct homes more efficiently. With a goal of building 1.5 million homes by 2031, it requires partnership with Ontario’s elected mayors and councillors, because municipalities know their communities best. They understand where it makes sense to build and where it just makes sense not to.

Under the leadership of this Premier, we’re working together in supporting municipalities by giving them the tools they need to build more homes faster and tackle the affordability crisis that’s pricing too many people, especially young families and newcomers, out of the dream of home ownership.

We have set ambitious housing targets and we’re holding municipalities accountable while rewarding them for successes with our $1.2-billion Building Faster Fund, designed to help municipalities pay for critical housing and community-related enabling infrastructure needed to accommodate growth, such as site servicing and building new roads. The Building Faster Fund includes $120 million that’s being reserved for small, rural and northern municipalities, to help build housing-enabling infrastructure and prioritize projects that speed up the increase of housing supply.

In partnership with municipalities, Ontario will continue to work hard to unlock housing opportunities and support growing communities. The province continues to call on our federal government to pay its fair share and help fund housing-enabling infrastructure investments and support vibrant, growing communities.

Municipal infrastructure is vital to fostering Ontario’s economic prosperity and enhancing quality of life. The crucial funding will power municipalities to sustain the province’s expansion by maintaining essential systems, like water and sewer networks, and facilitating connectivity to roads and bridges.

My riding of Chatham-Kent–Leamington is expansive. It follows the shores of beautiful Lake Erie. Chatham-Kent is home to the Thames campus of St. Clair College. It is still largely rural and made up of several smaller municipalities, like the former city of Chatham, Comber, Tilbury, Wheatley, Blenheim, Merlin, Ridgetown and Highgate, all amalgamated to form the current municipality.

Just consider the network of legacy infrastructure in a community like Chatham-Kent: several different water and waste water treatment plants, hundreds of kilometres of underground pipe and an extensive network of municipal roads. Chatham-Kent possesses one of the highest concentrations of bridges and drains anywhere in the province, with watersheds that include Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie and the Thames River.

Nevertheless, Chatham-Kent identified an opportunity to seize the moment to attract families and grow. Despite targeting to build 81 new homes last year, Chatham-Kent broke ground on 522 new housing units.

Interjection.

I thank you.

For their efforts, the municipality received $440,000 to contribute to much-needed infrastructure for exceeding its 2023 provincial housing target. The Associate Minister of Housing was on hand to present one of the very first cheques from the Building Faster Fund to our mayor, Mayor Darrin Canniff, to council and to our team.

Chatham-Kent home builders are getting homes built. Local officials in Chatham-Kent can choose when and where fourplexes work for their community. Mayor and council are continuing to streamline processes. This NDP motion seeks to remove the ability of our local leaders to make decisions about their own home communities.

Furthermore, elements of this motion are misleading. Fourplexes do not need to be legalized. Several cities have them already, including right here in Toronto. Communities like Chatham-Kent are getting a wide range of homes built, and as such, I think it’s best to let people in Chatham-Kent and elsewhere make their own decisions. We don’t need an ineffective policy forced upon them by the member from Davenport.

Let’s talk of Leamington, my home community. Leamington is one of Canada’s southernmost communities, nestled along the shores of Lake Erie in Essex county. Its temperate climate makes it attractive for retirees and its close proximity to the US uniquely positions it as an ideal destination for automotive investment, food processing and advanced businesses to support the area’s traditional field and orchard crops, along with the highest concentration of greenhouses anywhere in North America. This industry employs thousands of local and international agricultural workers. These ideal conditions continue to attract investment, but further highlight the need for a wide range of diverse housing to accommodate a growing and vibrant population.

Recent work by our municipal officials concluded that strategic investments in water and waste water infrastructure alone could unlock the potential for 8,000 new homes in a community of roughly 30,000 people. Housing-enabling water infrastructure, like that proposed by this government for projects like water, water treatment, waste water and road building, remains a top priority, with the potential to double the population of this little town in less than two decades.

The case study to unlock the potential in Leamington is precisely what our Premier has heard from areas across Ontario. This is why we’re investing $1.8 billion in new housing-enabling infrastructure, so communities like mine can get shovels in the ground and build the 1.5 million homes we need by 2031.

The funding includes $1 billion for new municipal housing infrastructure and $625 million more for housing-enabling water systems funds. The new $1-billion Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program will support core infrastructure projects that help enable housing for growing and developing communities, for roads and water infrastructure. We’ve heard it loud and clear, and we’re taking action.

Ontario is quadrupling its investment from $200 million to over $825 million over three years to expand housing-enabling water systems. This will help municipalities repair, rehabilitate and expand drinking water, waste water and stormwater infrastructure to build more homes now.

By growing our investments, we’re helping create an environment that’s conducive to building housing and having our sectors across Ontario thrive. Our substantial investments in this infrastructure are the pathway we need to bolster home construction while concurrently easing regulatory constraints and burdens on developers. The dual approach aims to stimulate a diverse array of housing options, ultimately augmenting the housing supply and to achieve market stability.

Members in this Legislature who want to truly support housing must work together to create good policy to allow home builders to build a wide range of homes across Ontario. I strongly recommend that members keep doing what’s working and get away from things and policies and motions like this that do not.