I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this bill today. As Associate Minister of Housing, I spent the last number of months laser-focused on housing and I look forward to sharing some of my perspectives.

I want to point out, to begin, a few issues that I have with the NDP motion and I’d like this chance to talk about some of the history of housing supply in Ontario.

Our province needs more housing of all types. Our government is investing in building more affordable housing, more supportive housing, and we’re cutting red tape to make more market housing get built by community home builders and the not-for-profit sector, not by government.

I’ve read the NDP motion. Some of it I agree with, particularly the first two lines: “Whereas everyone has the right to an affordable home,” I agree; and “Whereas any solution to the housing affordability crisis must include public, non-profit and co-op housing options,” as they do today. The rest, frankly, Speaker, I take exception with.

They say to look forward, you must take a look back, and what we can see when we look back is what worked and what didn’t work and what we can do to build a better future for housing in Ontario. Everyone agrees that Ontario is in a housing supply crisis, and I emphasize the word “supply.” It didn’t happen in the last five years. In fact, Speaker, it happened over the last 30 or 35 years, and we must remember that this crisis was created then.

We have had a population explosion in Ontario; I say this often. Since I was in high school, the population of this province has more than doubled. In fact, the small town of Streetsville that I grew up in was about 6,000 people. And when you talk to the member from Mississauga–Streetsville, she will say that all the farms around Streetsville that I grew up working on are now houses. What do we do, Speaker? Tell those folks to go away? I don’t think so.

We continue to see a massive housing explosion in this province, and we are doing everything we can—under our power, under our will, under our conviction—to get more homes built.

Looking back, under the leader of the former Bill Davis Progressive Conservatives in Ontario, we built houses that we needed. In fact, Premier Davis set the provincial record for the most housing starts in a single year. Then, in 1990, the world changed. We ended up with a new government, led by Premier Rae.

If you’re wondering, Speaker, there’s a reason the NDP doesn’t talk about their record. The reason is that the NDP experiment did not work. In fact, it failed miserably. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has detailed housing data that goes back to 1955. By the time the NDP left office in 1995, Ontario set a record for the lowest—I repeat, the lowest—number of housing starts since 1955, at 35,818.

I want to reiterate that over the last year of the Peterson Liberal government, Ontario had approximately 73,000 housing starts. When the NDP took office, they inherited a good housing situation, and by the time they left, housing starts were cut in half and the NDP were responsible for creating a housing supply crisis that’s continued on since. In essence, we’ve been playing catch-up since 1995.

When Mike Harris and the PCs won government, they inherited a tough situation. After 2003 and after eight years of steady increases under Premier Harris and Premier Eves, we grew housing starts exponentially. Sadly, in 2003, the last year of our government, we saw housing starts drop. At that time, we’d had the best years since the 1980s, and after 15 years of Liberal government, housing starts waned dramatically. Under the McGuinty-Wynne Liberals, Ontario’s housing starts didn’t fall off a cliff like they did with the NDP, but they certainly did decline. Over the last decade in office, the Liberals averaged just under 67,700 housing starts per year.

Under this government, Ontario has had the best three years of housing starts since the 1980s. Starting from July 2018 going through the end of 2023, Ontario has averaged 86,500 housing starts per year. That’s almost 20,000 more housing starts per year than the Liberals averaged over their last decade in office, and dramatically more than when the NDP were in office in the 1990s.

In 2023, we set a record for the most housing starts on purpose-built rentals in a single year, up 27%. After just over five and a half years of this government, Ontario has already had more housing starts on purpose-built rentals than the Liberals through the last 15 years of their government.

Speaker, the story of housing over the last 35 years has been clear. In 1990, the NDP walked into a good housing situation and failed to get the job done. The Liberals failed to get the job done—

And as always, facts speak for themselves—facts. And as always, we were left to clean up the mess, and we’ve been cleaning it up ever since.

Look at the situation we have today. We have a housing supply crisis. We’ve had more people coming to this province than we’ve had housing starts. We’re facing economic headwinds. Affordability is the big issue facing all Ontarians and all Canadians. For every one of our constituents, that’s the number one issue. The global economy is sluggish, yet we’re still growing housing starts.

Years of high inflation have caused high interest rates, which, combined with the CMHC stress test, make it very difficult for first-time homebuyers. And let us not forget the lovely carbon tax. It raises costs on every component of every home. The carbon tax on fuel raises the cost to deliver everything, from the concrete used for a foundation to the shingles on the roof. It’s prohibitive. It’s terrible. It’s wrong.

In spite of these challenges, as I have said, Ontario has had the best three years of housing starts since the 1980s. In 2023, Ontario had just under 19,000 housing starts on purpose-built rentals. This year, our finance minister put forward an infrastructure budget that invests billions in housing-enabling infrastructure like water and waste water systems that create more places and more opportunities where homes can be built. Infrastructure need, frankly, is the biggest constraint we have on getting more homes built faster, and this government is doing something about it. We’re investing in the future of home building in Ontario.

Now, let’s examine fourplexes. The motion calls for legalizing fourplexes as of right. This government has moved to three as of right, and we trust local mayors and councils to make their own decisions for their own communities. Today, any municipality can build fourplexes—anyone can. One size doesn’t fit all. As I believe my colleagues already know, fourplexes as of right have already been adopted by many cities throughout the province. However, the fact remains that while housing starts have grown, building fourplexes has not been part of our housing growth in spite of that option existing in large cities or communities across the province.

Speaker, as the Associate Minister of Housing, I was honoured to be able to go to communities like Sarnia, which beat their housing target by 250%, and Chatham-Kent, which beat their housing target by 500%. All of these cities I visited very, very much appreciated their well-earned recognition from the Building Faster Fund, which is a three-year program, as you know. If you didn’t get it this year, you can earn it next year or the year after. When it comes to building new housing, these communities are getting it done, and, as part of the Building Faster Fund, they’re receiving additional funds for housing-enabling infrastructure so they can build even more homes, whatever type of house it is in the housing continuum.

Chatham-Kent and Sarnia, again, as examples, also allow fourplexes selectively. They are allowed in some communities where they make sense, and they aren’t allowed to be built in communities that they don’t make sense in. Let them decide. These cities don’t need to be told what to do by the NDP, the party with the worst housing record in the history of Ontario. These communities are getting homes built.

We’ve travelled from Thunder Bay to St. Catharines, from Sarnia to Ottawa and all points in between. What was the common denominator? Municipalities created a good environment for success, an environment where more homes were built faster. The opposition is acting as if they think that as-of-right fourplexes are a magic bullet to solve the housing crisis. They are wrong. Based on what we’ve seen, based on the evidence from municipalities that chose to do so, that is not the case.

We’ve talked about successes like Chatham-Kent and Sarnia, communities that far exceeded their local housing targets. Perhaps we should also talk about a few failures. One of the biggest failures when it comes to building new housing is Bonnie Crombie’s record. I should note to the opposition that Bonnie Crombie implemented fourplexes as of right in Mississauga. Did this get housing built? No, it didn’t. Bonnie Crombie had one of the worst records for building housing of anyone in the province of Ontario. She accepted housing targets. She boasted that they would not only be met but they would be exceeded by those in her municipality.

I should note that the province of Ontario set housing targets for 2023 and we hit 99% of that target in that year. Now, outside of the city of Mississauga, we exceeded our targets by 104% in the rest of the province, so no lessons needed there when it comes to the carbon tax and how Bonnie Crombie has failed this province in terms of getting more homes built faster.

Affordable housing: This government recognizes the need to get more housing built of all types, wherever you are in the housing continuum. That’s why we’ve invested in more supportive and affordable housing than any previous government. We’ve increased funding for homelessness prevention programs. In my riding alone, in London alone, it went up 62% and switched to a more stable, multi-year funding model that is working and I know is very much appreciated by our municipal partners. That helps our local service managers deliver programs more effectively, again suiting the needs of their particular municipality.

I want to give a shout-out to our not-for-profit stakeholders, whether it’s Indwell, Habitat for Humanity, the Good Shepherd or Ontario’s housing co-operative system, just to name a few. They’re all doing a magnificent job, and we will continue to support them and give them the tools they need to get more housing built.

We’ve also removed development charges for affordable housing, and we’ve lowered them for purpose-built rentals. We’ve also removed the HST from purpose-built rentals in conjunction with the federal government. These changes have had an impact, and we’ll see the results for years to come.

This January in Scarborough, the largest co-operative housing project in the history of Ontario was announced at 2444 Eglinton East. Just down the street across the corner, also in January, Atria Development broke ground on 1,600 new purpose-built rental units near Scarborough Town Centre.

Ontario is building more housing of all types faster than any government in the history of this province. Market housing and non-market housing are getting built. Do we need to get more housing built? Absolutely. We are putting the tools in place to get that done.

This part is important, and I think we talk about it regularly when we’re in this Legislature. It’s clear that we need more places to build homes and more people to build them. That’s why, in this year’s budget, we put a heavy emphasis on investing in housing-enabling infrastructure, and the budget is building the infrastructure we need to get more homes built.

That’s also why this government is working for workers. I would also like to point out that we’re training more people to enter the skilled trades than ever before. Last year, there was a record 27,319 apprenticeship registrations because our government is working for workers. We need more people to build homes, and we’ve taken action to promote the skilled trades and get more people trained. Training more people to get more homes built is a key part of this government’s plan to get more homes built faster.

But I can’t help but notice that the skilled trades aren’t even mentioned anywhere in the NDP motion. In fact, when the NDP released their housing platform in October 2023, a simple word search revealed that there was no mention of training, no mention of workers and no mention of the skilled trades. In October 2023, the NDP housing plan had 14 mentions of “Homes Ontario,” the name of the new bureaucracy they want to create. That will really get homes built.

Much like the motion they put forward today, the official NDP housing plan had zero mentions of labour, zero mentions of the trades, zero mentions of training, zero mentions of jobs and zero mentions of workers. There’s only one party in this Legislature that’s working for workers, and that’s this side of the House. I’m proud that this party is making workers a key part of their plan to get more housing built. That is the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

I advise members of this House to vote against this motion. The motion also calls on the government to force fourplexes into communities that choose to take a different direction. The Liberal and NDP plan does not do anything to build new homes faster in Ontario. I encourage members to support a housing plan that is actually getting it done when it comes to building new housing.

In conclusion, in summary, we have a population explosion, a crisis that we’ve not seen in 30-plus years. We’re getting homes built and getting them faster, housing and all parts of the housing continuum. Fourplexes are not a magic bullet; they can be a tool for some communities if they choose to do so. At the end of the day, we’re creating the environment for community home builders, for the not-for-profits and for our municipal partners to create the environment to get the job done.