It’s a quote.

Say that to the millions of Ontarians who work in cities across this province. Tell them where they want to raise their kids.

This is the out-of-touch prevailing attitude amongst decision-makers in this government. The housing sector has had enough.

So who does this bill let down? In short, everyone—all those currently without homes who can’t keep waiting, young people stuck living in their parents’ basements, the seniors who want to find an apartment or condo to downsize to, couples looking to start a life together. For more reasons than I can count, Bill 185 is a failure for the people of Ontario—a massive missed opportunity.

If this government had any hope of meeting its 1.5-million housing target, they lost it when they tabled this bill instead of a much, much more ambitious one.

Bill 185 plays it safe. It misses the mark. Playing it safe on housing is quite dangerous, and it is a letdown to the people of Ontario.

That’s not what he said. That’s 100% false.

It’s a pleasure to rise in the House today to debate the issues that matter most to Ontarians.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the issue that matters most to Ontarians is—

Interjections.

Interjections.

The scale of the suffering across our housing sector is enormous. We have people living on the street; leaving the province, with out-migration to the tune of 70,000 young people per year; others living under precarious and unsafe conditions; and more people delaying major milestones in their life—things like families having kids, young people moving out from their parents’ basements, or seniors downsizing into smaller homes. This catastrophe is happening in the midst of an out-of-control housing crisis. Home prices are at never-before-seen levels, rent is out of control, and the Landlord and Tenant Board has become virtually inaccessible—all of this within the backdrop of a government that cancelled rent control, that tried to pave over the greenbelt, that can’t make a single decision without subsequently walking it back because they never do their homework. Amidst that, one might expect that we would have a government that would try to finally take action, that would try to do something. But their record over the last six years has been abysmal.

Construction began on only 5,589 homes in Ontario last month—the lowest that it has been in over six years. Anthony Passarelli, CMHC’s lead economist for southern Ontario, said, “Over the rest of the year, we expect [housing starts] to continue to trend down in the province and particularly in the GTA.” So, of course, cue the excuses, right? Number one: It’s someone else’s fault—probably the federal government, because of high interest rates. But British Columbia is building two and a half times more homes per capita than we are and yet are subject to the same interest rates.

The government will say that they’re making progress despite the fact that they are falling well behind their target of 1.5 million homes per year and subsequently are being forced to change the goalposts to have a hope of being able to save face. They will try to argue that the government is on track, but they would have to build 38,000 homes per quarter to meet their annual housing target, and last quarter, which just ended a few months ago, they only built around 15,000—not even 50% of what they need.

This is the kind of bill that could have been forgiven if it was introduced in year one of their mandate, not year six. For all their talk about housing supply action plans, this bill is big on talk and so small on action. Two years after their own Housing Affordability Task Force report came out, they’re still consulting, essentially kicking the can down the road so they can say they’re doing something without actually doing literally anything. And when the Premier tweets about his government’s accomplishments, it’s telling that addressing the housing affordability crisis usually doesn’t make it on the list.

So let’s talk about this bill. I want to begin by explaining what has been neglected in this legislation.

There is nothing beyond a line in the preamble in Bill 185 that directs municipalities to actually plan for 1.5 million homes. I’ll say it again: This government is talking about but not planning for 1.5 million homes. It’s hoping for 1.5 million; it’s praying for 1.5 million, but there is absolutely nothing in this bill that requires municipalities to actually plan or build 1.5 million homes. That’s a bold goal—1.5 million homes by 2031. Mike Moffatt would say that number is already out of date and should be higher. Anyway, 1.5 million—that is a target that this government set, and that is a target that this bill abandons. It does not direct municipalities to plan for that. It does not fix zoning laws to make those homes possible. It does not legislate the necessary infrastructure to support those homes. For this reason alone, this legislation is unworthy to be presented before this House. But it’s worse: Bill 185 neglects the power, the responsibilities and the duty this government has when it comes to building homes.

The Premier and Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing are keen to blame their lack of progress on everyone and everything else, but they won’t make the major policy changes needed to drive real change. Their neglect amounts to an abdication of duty, and here’s how:

The government convened the Housing Affordability Task Force; they have since completely ignored it. Bill 185 does nothing different. The government benefited from mountains of consultation, but they are now killing time by doing more consultation instead of enacting the recommended policies.

Bill 185 overlooks the opportunity to end exclusionary zoning. It refuses to legalize fourplexes as-of-right province-wide. It does not directly strive for greater density around major transit areas. It does not make converting commercial real estate into residential real estate easier—something many stakeholders are begging this government to do. It does nothing to address the myriad of problems bogging down the Landlord and Tenant Board. It does nothing to address the many roadblocks standing in the way of getting more housing built, like angular planes, setbacks and minimum lot sizes. Does the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing even know what an angular plane is, or has he neglected to learn that too?

Bill 185 neglects those who have used the appeal system in good faith by entirely banning third-party appeals in one fell swoop, as opposed to reforming the system to proactively prevent abuses.

Furthermore, all the developers and home builders who have spent years working on housing projects and finding ways to make those projects pencil—Bill 185 neglects them all, by flip-flopping over and over again, going back and forth to no end on whether or not there will or will not be a five-year phase-in period on development charges.

The Premier and Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing have neglected to secure an environment of predictability and long-term stability in the housing sector. That is very clearly resulting in fewer housing starts.

Lastly, we are now seeing this government’s wilful neglect of our health care system—particularly rural hospitals like Durham hospital, resulting in developers cancelling their housing projects.

The extent of this government’s action has really been limited to simply printing novelty-sized cheques to give to municipalities, but this is not a substitute for real planning backed by actual laws and regulations, and the Minister of Housing knows it.

Also missing from the bill is a commitment to make municipalities whole after Bill 23 pulled the rug out from under them, particularly for infrastructure. Sure, the provincial budget has offered a paltry $1.6 billion as an olive branch, when the projected shortfall is significantly closer to $5 billion. Municipalities are now left on the hook while the Premier’s gravy train instead spends just over a billion dollars for the sole purposes of delivering beer in convenience stores just about one year early—priorities, right?

The final thing that’s missing from this bill and, frankly, from this government is common sense. They could have committed billions in infrastructure funding. This government could have committed a billion dollars for securing primary care, keeping hospitals open, expanding home care, or even building homes. Instead, they prioritized beer—$1 billion.

Anyway, to touch very concretely on the details of this bill—I’m going to touch on the four major areas, titled euphemistically as follows:

(1) Building homes at lower cost;

(2) Prioritizing infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects;

(3) Improved consultation and greater certainty for more homes built faster;

(4) Building more types of homes for more people.

I’ll dive into each of these.

So let’s talk about building homes at a lower cost. This includes things that indicate just how out of touch this government is. For example, it removes minimum parking restrictions around MTSAs, which is a bare-minimum policy and one that doesn’t have much to give at all in places that are already highly car-centric, as developers will still build parking in these places. But that’s not actually the question that home builders and developers have been asking. The real question they have is, how much density can go around MTSAs? That answer is not in this bill.

The minister will say that he’s consulting—so let’s look at the draft PPS. But why is he still consulting two years after the Housing Affordability Task Force already answered the question? And to make things even more infuriating, the government has already been stalling on that by saying they’ve been consulting with municipalities.

This is where life gets really bizarre. In related announcements, the government just said they will allow mass-timber construction for up to 18 storeys, but the development community is not clamouring for that. They’re clamouring for clarity on restrictions that make it difficult to build that tall in the first place, such as clarity around angular planes. Similarly, there’s a promise of consulting with fire safety stakeholders about single-exit stairs in small residential buildings, but this was something that Bill 109, two years ago, under the last Minister of Housing, had promised to do. So why are we still consulting?

The next major area of this legislation is prioritizing infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects. This is where I really begin to feel bad for builders, developers and municipalities. The lack of foresight, planning, coordination and courage of this government has led to an environment in which no one can plan and, therefore, no one can build. First, development charges were off the table, throwing municipalities province-wide into chaos, causing property taxes to skyrocket and resulting in developers planning their construction accordingly—now an unexpected walk-back.

Interest rates are affecting housing, admittedly, from coast to coast, but it’s telling that new construction is falling the fastest and hardest in Ontario compared to places like BC and Nova Scotia. As a result of all of these walk-backs, there is now a complete and utter lack of confidence in this government. When hundreds of millions of dollars are on the table, people don’t know what they can expect next month, let alone next year, in terms of policy continuity and clarity of direction. No one can make investment decisions in such an environment, and certainly not municipalities planning for infrastructure.

The next section of this bill is improved consultation and greater certainty for more homes built faster. I’ll say, where do I even start here? As I’ve already said, they’ve been consulting for the past two years and seem caught up in this as a way of delaying.

I’ll also say that included in this section, the bill institutes a near-universal ban on third-party appeals that is simply heavy-handed. There’s no mistake that the current system of appeals is problematic, between long waits at the Ontario Land Tribunal—because it’s underfunded and the significant number of political appointees, it has become a process creating more barriers to reasonable housing than are necessary. But a blanket ban that ignores the root causes? Clearly a more nuanced and calculated approach is necessary, which the Housing Affordability Task Force called for. But where a scalpel was required to address this issue, this government came with a machete.

I’ll skip ahead a few moments just to touch on why this bill will not make a dent in the housing crisis. It won’t get us close to 1.5 million homes, because it has nothing that will make a material difference to our housing efforts. We needed a major home run on housing, and all we got was a swing and a miss.

I’ve been talking to stakeholders, and they were ready for a big housing bill from this government. A new minister, a fire under his feet—the housing sector had its hopes up. But the lack of audacity from Bill 185 has resulted in some of the most profound disappointment I have ever seen from stakeholders since my time in office.

We have government MPPs getting up on stage at conferences, touting their out-of-touch vision for housing in Ontario. The Associate Minister of Housing was recently caught stating that he just wants “everyone to be able to have a detached house with a yard” and that “no one wants to bring up a child in downtown Toronto.” Well, say that—

Let’s talk a little about why history matters, and let’s talk about how there’s only been one NDP government ever in the history of Ontario because people remember what happened under the Rae government. Let’s talk about respect for voters.

The member for Waterloo wants to say that the carbon tax doesn’t matter. It is the number one issue in my riding when I talk to people, and quite frankly, the federal Liberal government is going to lose the next election because of the carbon tax. And I don’t understand why this member will stand up in her place and she will say that it’s irrelevant to the cost of a home when we know for a fact—and we’ve heard it from home builders, we’ve heard it from OREA and we’ve heard it from other organizations—that it adds thousands of dollars to the cost of home sales that, ultimately, get passed along to the people who are buying those homes.

So I want to hear it from the member directly: Will you stand up against the carbon tax and help make life more affordable for Ontarians?

Thank you to the member from Waterloo for her presentation. I’m just wondering—I remember the Premier saying earlier today in debate, and I’ve heard him say it before, that he’s never increased the cost of living for anyone. But I remember, as I listened to your remarks and as I did my research for today, I note that the average rent in my city of Ottawa for a two-bedroom apartment in 2018 was $1,301, and in 2024, the average is $2,488. I also note that this government removed rent controls on buildings built after 2018.

So the Premier can call it whatever he wants; I call that jacking the rent. I’m wondering if the member from Waterloo has any comments about how this government has jacked the rent on people in Ontario.

Next question?

The member will take his seat.

I would request some order in the House so I can hear the member speak. He has the floor.

I’ll go back to the member for Don Valley East.

Start the clock.

This is actually why history matters, because the former member from Parkdale–High Park worked on stabilizing rentals. The reason we have any sort of inclusionary zoning is because of the former member, who fought for that. We, of course, always supported the co-op and not-for-profit sector. We could not get the Liberals to move on these things because they had a majority. It would be like us trying to get you guys to actually care about child care, for instance, right?

So history matters in this place. And for what it’s worth, though, the Liberal leader has talked very positively about the carbon tax, but this government refuses to own their own carbon tax that they have created in this province with the industrial compliance fee and the fact that you cancelled cap-and-trade. You guys want to keep talking about this? That’s fine. It doesn’t help with the housing crisis—nor does Bill 185, for that matter.

Also, it’s interesting to talk about the high costs. This is the government that froze the minimum wage in 2018. They actually put their hands in the pockets of minimum-wage workers and took out $7,000 over the course of the pandemic for full-time workers and $3,200 for part-time workers during a health care crisis. If that doesn’t speak privilege and elitism, I don’t know what does.

Let’s talk about affordability around housing. This is something that you refuse to acknowledge—that renters have rights too. Renters are families; renters are grandparents; renters are students—but no, not to you. This is the party that puts their developer friends first—anybody who can buy access to you. You actually got legislation written because of a price. So everything is for sale in Ontario, except for a little dignity on the housing file.

The current mayor of Vaughan and the former leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, Steven Del Duca, admitted this year that the housing crisis started or began when he was around the provincial cabinet table. Under the previous Ontario Liberal government, this province witnessed 15 years of inaction on housing, which was also supported by the NDP.

Can the member please tell us why her party didn’t feel the need to act on housing sooner to prevent the affordability crisis we are witnessing today?

It is infuriating, I will say to the member from Waterloo, that this government hides their shortcomings with the carbon tax. It’s not just us that’s saying it; OREA said this at SCOFEA. OREA said: “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” this “bill. We need to build more homes on existing properties and allow upzoning along major ... corridors....” And they asked for the elimination of “exclusionary zoning and allowing four units, as-of-right.”

We know that BC is killing it when it comes to the housing starts. They’ve got 52% as many starts as this House. In fact, Ontario’s housing starts are tumbling. So my question to you is, rather than being arrogant and hiding behind the carbon tax, this government should roll up their sleeves and see what BC is doing to have a real bill that addresses the real challenges in the housing crisis in Ontario.

Interjection: Can you remind them of their carbon tax?

You know, the member from Perth–Wellington—I’m not sure if he understands how insulting it is, when people ask serious questions that are impacting the people of this province, around child care, around autism or around special education, and then the government comes back with “carbon tax.” It levels a new level of disrespect, I think, to the bigger problems.

What I will say to the member from Perth–Wellington is the reason we have a federal carbon tax is because your government dismissed the cap-and-trade program, and this is the backstop. The Supreme Court of Canada, as you all know, has said that the federal government has the right to address climate change in this manner. But we would not have that carbon tax if your Premier—because he’s not my Premier—hadn’t cut the cap-and-trade. That’s right.

This is the frustration, Madam Speaker. We have a carbon tax in Ontario because of this government, because they failed around the cap-and-trade piece. But they have their own made-in-Ontario industrial compliance fee, which is a carbon tax, which you don’t talk about in this House. But we are going to talk about it, because it needs transparency. That’s what we want from that.

Thank you to the member from Waterloo for her remarks this afternoon. She mentioned six painful years, Speaker. Well, if I had their poll numbers, it would be six painful years, colleagues.

As we heard at committee, the Ontario home builders came to committee and presented, and so did OREA and other builders in the province of Ontario. I asked around, obviously, increasing costs of interest rates, costs of labour, construction materials, but obviously also as well, Speaker, the carbon tax. So I asked the home builders if the federal Liberal carbon tax and its increasing year over year is increasing the cost of housing in Ontario. And, Speaker, they said yes. They confirmed that it is causing costs—costs of building materials and labour—to go up.

Does the member from Waterloo agree that the federal Liberal carbon tax is increasing the cost of housing? And will the member from Waterloo call her federal member and ask her to scrap this tax?

We’re going to go to questions for the member.

It was a flight path; I’m sorry. It was a flight path, yes.

Sometimes “MZOs R Us” doesn’t really work for the community or for the sector, but this is definitely—somebody got lobbied real hard, Madam Speaker, real hard, and they got what they wanted. They got their direct ask into Bill 185. And I’m going to tell you, this does not instill trust in how the government is looking at the housing crisis or trying to address some of the proposals.

I’m going to read from Bonnefield Financial, Tom Eisenhauer. This pretty much sums up how I feel about Bill 185—tried to give it a good show at SCOFEA, but that didn’t happen.

He says, “Ontario’s ... government introduced Bill 185—patronizingly named the ‘Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act.’ Buried within the bill are some legislative changes that will accelerate the loss of wetlands, environmentally sensitive areas and especially farmland in Ontario.”

I guess unless you’re in the Far North and you now find yourself in a warmer climate and therefore start pulling those stones out of the stone.

“Of all the threats to our future food security, the loss of our prime farmland is the most severe. And of all the causes of farmland loss (soil degradation, unsustainable farming practices, climate change, erosion, decertification), irresponsible urban sprawl is by far the leading cause. Based on StatsCan data, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture calculates that between 2016 and 2021 Ontario lost 319 acres of farmland a day ... a day! That equates to the loss of almost 5% of the province’s entire farmland area in just five years. The vast majority of this loss was to urban development.”

So, this is on your watch, right? And it does have a cost. It does.

“Bill 185 will effectively neuter settlement area boundaries which limit urban sprawl by restricting the size of municipalities. Developer landowners will now be able to appeal any development rulings that restrict their ability to build on farmland, wetland or environmentally sensitive areas.”

This is an acceleration of sprawl. It is intentional, it is happening in real time and it has been made worse since this government has come into power in Ontario.

The bill will also remove the Ontario Land Tribunal’s ability to review some decisions around municipal decisions, but then, you know what? This got changed, further limiting the guardrails that prevent urban sprawl.

“The provisions of Bill 185 run counter to the advice the ... government commissioned from former federal Conservative ... leader Lisa Raitt”—I like Lisa Raitt—“who recommended that stronger protections for farmland and natural areas be an essential component of any measures that encourage more and better housing.” This is a smart recommendation by a former federal Conservative who knows the file very well, Madam Speaker.

“Ontario needs more housing urgently, but not at the expense of future generations’ food security and the environment.” It’s like we didn’t even experience the pandemic together. I mean, we did have different experiences, make no doubt about it, but one of the recommendations from the Senate of Canada is that we become more food-secure. We should not be so dependent on other jurisdictions. We have some of the best farmland in Ontario. We have some of the best farmers. And the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has been very clear in their opposition to Bill 185. This is a genuine concern that they have around future generations of farms.

“The focus of new housing should be intensification of the ‘missing middle’ in existing urban areas as recommended by a long list of experts and task forces and as requested by municipalities like Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa.” It’s interesting that Bill 185 is silent on that, actually.

“Bill 185 will be a disaster for farmland in Ontario—a far greater threat than the proposed development of parts of the greenbelt,” and so that is why Bill 185 matters so much. I think a lot of us—our eyes were opened on how vulnerable those arable greenbelt lands were, Madam Speaker. But Bill 185 accelerates that proposed sprawl in an incredibly irresponsible manner.

He goes on to say, “To paraphrase the great Chrissie Hynde’s ‘Ohio’ lyric”—this is good—“Ontario farmland is being paved down the middle by a government that has no pride.”

So you’re willing to risk everything with Bill 185. And also, it’s not going to solve the housing crisis. I mean, sometimes, you work backwards from a problem, right? You have to acknowledge the problem.

You refuse to acknowledge that renters in this province have almost been attacked by this government with the removal of rent control in 2018. The issue of affordability is something that this government refuses to address. I mean, you can say that there are this many purpose-built rentals, but if you can’t afford them, they don’t really exist, Madam Speaker, right? They don’t. And right now, the financialization of some of those condos should be under review of your government. We know how money is laundered in Ontario and this happens through these condo developments as well.

Waterloo region has had an open letter against Bill 185 now for a number of weeks. It has partly been connected to, of course, the expropriation of 770 acres of prime farmland in Wilmot, a planning practice that is surprising. But the provincial government, to be clear, has asked these municipalities to find large, industrial land banking, and I know the region of Waterloo doesn’t have the money to buy out these farmers, so the money is going to come from somewhere. It looks like it’s going to be coming from the Ontario government, Madam Speaker.

So, at the end of the day, we have a piece of legislation which, once again, should never be called “building new homes.” It’s really just “here’s an open door for developers” and you’ve formalized it. You basically hung the little sign outside the Legislature and said, “Yes—open for business for developers and land speculators,” and you’ve committed to building property and housing that doubles down on a very unsustainable housing plan, which will actually end up costing all of us down the road.

I’ll leave it at this, from the open letter from Waterloo region:

“Environmental protections are not just ‘red tape.’ We depend on our farmland, our fresh water, and on the other ecological services provided by our unbuilt landscapes. Furthermore, the regional planning processes that have been carefully designed over decades should not be seen as barriers to building much-needed homes. Instead, our regional government plays a vital role,” and they should not be undermined in this process.

It was a flight path.

I am sure that the members on that side of the House are hearing the same stories from their constituents as we are hearing on this side of the House. I just want to—just last week, a single mom came to my office, working full-time but struggling to pay her bills. She got an eviction notice after 18 years in her apartment and doesn’t know where she’s going to live. A 75-year-old man told us he works a minimum-wage job at Walmart, because he has to, to pay the bills. He’s lived at the same address for 30 years—the unit is now up for sale; he’s desperate about where he is going to live.

So my question to the government members is, why is there nothing in this bill or any of the previous housing bills that this government has introduced that is going to deal with stabilizing rents and keeping tenants housed in this province?

I’m happy to oblige. The member would be probably unsurprised to know that this is supported by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, who says the following: “We support the introduction of use-it-or-lose-it provisions, which would allow a municipality to establish a deadline for lapsing of planning approvals and provide an incentive for developers to build their approved projects.”

This is from the city of Mississauga. On giving planning authority to local municipalities, they say this: “We welcome this change, which will give lower-tier municipalities full planning responsibility on July 1, 2024, if the legislation passes.”

Here’s some thing from McMaster University: “We support exempting universities from Planning Act approvals. It will allow universities to build student housing more quickly and at lower cost, while reducing pressure on area market housing for students.”

And the list goes on, Madam Speaker. It’s quite a list of supportive quotes, and I thank the member for the question.

I really enjoy this debate on Bill 185. I’d like to ask the member from Essex a question. I know that we’ve had lots of support from across the province from different sectors, different municipalities. AMO is a big supporter. Could you quote some of the other supporters that you know of, please?

Well, I have some good news for the young people who are looking to rent. I was a renter myself. There were historic number of starts last year in new rental starts here in the province of Ontario, in 2023. That’s great news, because again it comes down to that fundamental supply-and-demand imbalance.

If you don’t have the opportunity to have a large amount of supply, in this case, of rental housing coming onto the market, guess what? You’re going to have a lot of people bidding on a limited number of spots. What does that lead to? Price inflation and ultimately high rents. Bringing more supply onto the market is the way of ensuring that we bring those rents down. You can see this in jurisdictions across the world. When you have an oversupply or an increased supply of rental housing, as we’re doing with the policies that this government has brought in place, those solutions will come forward.

Unfortunately, there’s still the consequences of years of Liberal inaction on building rental housing that we’re all paying for.

The member from Niagara West started off by referencing some of the young people that had been in the chamber earlier today. In a recent round table—and some of those voices actually came to the committee—they actually were just begging the government to stabilize the rental sector. This is all that they have at their disposal right now. So my question to you, the member from Niagara West, is what does your government have against renters? And why do you not recognize that stabilizing the housing sector is one of the key pieces to actually ensuring that we address the housing crisis in this province?

It is a pleasure, of course, to bring some of the concerns of the people from Waterloo region to Bill 185. We were in committee for a few days. We did clause-by-clause. It was a painful, painful exercise, I will tell you, because even when the ideas are good, the government is not interested in listening. In fact, the government isn’t even interested in listening to their own Housing Affordability Task Force, which actually had a few good ideas as well.

I do want to thank our critic on Bill 185. She brought forward, with the help of our research team, which always punches above their weight, some really thoughtful amendments to this bill. Because we came into the process quite earnestly in thinking that the government might embrace the idea that what they’ve been doing, which has not been working because our housing starts are down—and so there was room for improvement, right?

So here we are. I think this is the 12th or 13th red tape bill that the government has brought forward, ironically, in some cases, creating more red tape in the entire process. And it’s becoming really frustrating because the government is clearly spinning their wheels on housing. They’ve created some chaos, particularly with Bill 23, which preceded these bills, which really destabilized the relationship that this government has with municipalities and, of course, broke trust with the people of this province with the $8.3-billion greenbelt scandal which the RCMP is currently still investigating—the criminal investigation into this government.

So it was with that mindset that we went into this process and quite honestly said, “Well, maybe they’re at a point right now that they’re ready to work collaboratively.”

The housing crisis is a serious issue. Everybody understands that housing is an economic stabilizer for people. It’s hard to go to school, it’s hard to raise a family, it’s hard to get a job without housing. Housing is pretty much it, right?

We also learned at pre-budget committee that housing is also health care. This is why the university hospital just down the way is actually entering a new capital campaign to attach housing to their hospital because, otherwise, people just continue to cycle through the emergency room at great cost—way greater cost than providing a roof and warmth, or cooling in the summer. So, really, innovation down University Avenue—I commend that hospital and those doctors for leading the way. I would like to see the same leadership from the government, quite honestly.

And people are starting to take notice. I’ll just tell you before I get into the substance of the bill that I had my Leading Women, Building Communities awards on the constituency week. I did give this award to the Mount Zion church for their Black history advocacy—just really strong women. It was so refreshing to be in a room filled with good people who really care about their community and are looking for solutions to help and to fill the gap.

A lady came up to me, and she said, “Catherine, I want to give you a Band-Aid.” I was like, “Oh, well, that’s nice. Why are you giving me a Band-Aid?” She goes, “I think you should put it on your forehead.” Quite honestly, I didn’t know where this was going to go, because these conversations, as we all know, can go in very different direction. She says, “No, I think you should put this Band-Aid on your forehead because you must be in so much pain from banging your head against the wall.”

This is what it felt like at committee, quite honestly, because the committee members on finance, they don’t really have the ability to move away from the government’s agenda, which is unfortunate because the government’s agenda is not working on housing. Even some of the very, very good ideas that have come from home builders in Ontario, for instance—who are not against building fourplexes, right? Fourplexes are actually embedded in the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force. They are part of the solution. Are they the everything? Of course not, Madam Speaker, not at all. But for the government to draw the line in the sand—triplexes are okay; fourplexes, not so much—is ridiculous.

It is also ridiculous to hear the Premier of Ontario stand in his place and talk about eight-storey fourplexes. It is absolutely ridiculous. Or that fourplexes compromise the integrity of the neighbourhood—you know what the Premier is actually defining? It is the very definition of NIMBYism.

After all of those days and months and it feels like years of the whole greenbelt thing, where they were calling us NIMBYists for actually advocating for greater transparency and intensification in the very neighbourhoods that are already established—because the infrastructure is there; the schools are there; the hospitals are there; the community is there. We were advocating for that intensification because it makes sense and because, unlike the very strange sentiments from the member from Niagara West that we aren’t really losing 319 acres a day of farmland in Ontario—I have never heard this story before, I have to say. It was a head-shaker, wasn’t it? But the member from Niagara West basically said, essentially, that climate change is making the north warmer, so now we can have more farmland up there. So he’s no longer a climate change denier; he’s a climate change promoter.

Oh, the north. I don’t know if you’ve spent some time up there. Hydroponics? Absolutely. There’s some innovation happening on farming. It’s beautiful; it’s great to see. But this is a common theme that a lot of Conservatives espouse, that there’s this land exchange: “We’ll pave over those wetlands over there, but we’ll create another one over here.” It is a ridiculous concept.

I have to say, the member from Niagara West, that is astounding. I think it’s worth noting because it’s the first time that this new narrative around climate change has actually been introduced in the House. It’s something to be watched because I think that if we’ve learned anything after six painful years of this government—they can spin anything, and then they can use your tax dollars at home to actually promote their agenda.

The Auditor General has already confirmed 75% of those “It’s All Happening Here” would be deemed partisan advertising under the original rules that the Liberals agreed to bring in and then changed for their own political interest.

Who can forget that one commercial? Do you remember the commercial when the Liberals were really on the ropes? I want to say 2015 and 2016, whatever. It’s this lady who’s jumping over this valley to get to her pension. We paid for those commercials, and of course, there was a fictional pension plan, quite honestly—the concept. I remember knocking on a door—and this is why it’s so important. This is why truthful advertising, particularly from a government to the citizens we are elected to serve—that trust can be broken very quickly. When I knocked on the door, this elderly lady who had never worked says, “No, I want my pension.” Yes, she believed the commercial is what I’m saying to you. To add insult to injury, her tax dollars went to pay for that commercial.

We got to some of that through the public accounts committee. Public accounts wasn’t as frustrating, I think, as SCOFEA was because the government could not provide really any rationale for what they were doing, especially when they brought in this new, suddenly urgent amendment on Bill 185 to allow airports, large manufacturers and cities now to have exclusive—they’re going to be able to go to the land tribunal’s planning committee, but citizens and people who care about the environment are not. Now, you’re not even hiding it anymore, that the environment is not your priority, right? When you’re intentionally excluding these voices about their own community—this is a fundamental undemocratic move that the government is making, to exclude the voices of Ontarians in their own communities.

So, to put it mildly, it was a tough sort of week in SCOFEA, because we care deeply about our communities. Environmental change and climate change is real, and it is having an impact on how we should be planning more sustainable communities and housing within those communities, full stop.

There was some good news, though, last week—just to mix it up a little bit here—Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 charges. It was a beautiful, beautiful moment, quite honestly. It kind of restored hope a little bit more in the justice system—not in Ontario’s justice system, of course, because we have some long-standing issues in that regard, but that was a good moment.

Now, our critic talked about some of the amendments that were brought forward. One was to the City of Toronto Act to protect and compensate tenants who are being renovicted or demovicted. Is this government concerned about those people? Not at all. They totally shut that conversation down, not interested in displaced seniors from their precarious housing. The fact that the government introduced this amendment near the end there—which was very concerning, actually, because we have seen how this government establishes legislation: It’s who has access, who’s got the money, who goes to the fundraiser, who goes to the party. This is a direct ask of these communities.

Now, I understand that the government has looked at airports a little bit differently, because they did award an MZO to a skyscraper close to an airport, which we can all agree is not a good idea, right?

Next question?

We’re going to move to further debate.