I’m pleased to rise and ask a question of the member of Ottawa South.

One of the features of this legislation is that it creates new tools to ensure compliance, which will apply in every licensed out-of-home care setting. The new tools include orders to return funds, administrative monetary penalties and increased fines to ensure that it simply will not be possible to make a profit by providing poor care to children.

To my question, though, to the member from Ottawa South—Bill 188 proposes to entrench rights for youth overall. How are they doing that—the past relied on the Ombudsman Act. This particular legislation now would put that right within the Child, Youth and Family Services Act to remove any lack of clarity on the rights youth have with respect to the Ombudsman—

I’m really pleased to be able to speak on housing today and to speak in support of our motion.

Housing as a commodity or an investment is very problematic. It has cut so many people out. It has created inflated prices. It has allowed the disappearance of affordable housing to short-term rentals. It’s kicking seniors out of their homes. Two hundred seniors are losing their homes as we speak. It’s pricing seniors in Ottawa out of the market. It is dire and not how we should be providing housing for people or thinking about housing. So I’m very much in favour of the idea of housing Ontario and, really, the importance of building mixed housing and the importance of having these low-cost loans.

In the case of Thunder Bay, we have two projects: Suomi Koti for seniors. We don’t even need public land. They have the land. If low-cost loans had been available, if this government actually had something to support not-for-profit housing, Suomi Koti would already be half built by now. Giwaa On Court is another example of a rebuild of the post office. No need for public land, but they need affordable financing in order to build. It’s still on stall. Both of these projects were presented to the government. There’s been zero support, and I’m so looking forward to the implementation of our bill because these projects could actually be built, and that would be 104 units available immediately in Thunder Bay.

Co-ops: we have a long history of co-op housing in Thunder Bay. In fact, co-op everything. We’ve had co-op bakeries, co-op food buying groups. Castlegreen Co-op has been there. It is still there, and it is still a prime place to live; Superior View, newer co-op housing. What is wonderful about this co-op housing is that they are mixed income.

So we have problematic low-income housing that has wound up being a magnet for the gangs coming to the city. But when you are able to move out of there and into a co-op, where you’re no longer ghettoized, with many people who can’t afford a place to live, then you actually can become part of a community and it really doesn’t matter that you don’t have a ton of income. Those programs have been very successful, and they have moved people into those safer environments, and we really need that.

I’m thinking of another co-op which is Centre francophone de Thunder Bay, another co-op. It’s deep-rooted in northwestern Ontario.

Modular housing: There’s lots of talk of this, but we have to remember that there are different standards of modular housing. Some of them will keep to the current building code, but there’s modular housing available that goes well beyond this and is actually designed for different climates. It’s designed not to off-gas so that people with environmental sensitivities can live with it. It is designed to not have mold, a problem that is in many homes on First Nations’ communities because they were poorly built and poorly thought-out. So again, there are many, many rich opportunities available to us.

Finally, the idea of fourplexes: Why is this such a frightening notion? I’m quite sure I lived in a fourplex in Toronto. There’s lots of them around. There’s lots of them in Thunder Bay. This is not a frightening thing. It’s not suddenly an eight-storey monster in the middle of nowhere.

I will end my remarks there by saying there are solutions. There have always been solutions if you’re not afraid to embrace them. Public land or private land, but affordable financing, and we can get that housing built.