Thank you.

The second thing I want to talk about, which is really key, is this government’s changes to eviction laws in the Residential Tenancies Act. There are some good changes in this bill when we’re talking about eviction protection. I want to summarize them before I get to the loophole that I see.

One, it is encouraging to see that Bill 97 doubles the maximum fine for violations under the Residential Tenancies Act—so it’s for the entire Residential Tenancies Act; it’s not just for evictions—to $100,000 for an individual and $500,000 for a corporation. But let’s also be clear: That money doesn’t go to the wronged tenant; it goes to the board or to the government. It’s not like a tenant walks away with a $500,000 windfall. Let’s be clear about that.

The second thing that I see as a positive move is that this government is looking, with Bill 97, to require landlords to get a report justifying a home must be vacated for renovations before a tenant has to leave. There needs to be some criteria there to ensure it’s not just some Joe Blow writing this report so a landlord can just say, “Look, here’s a one-page summary: Renovations need to be done, bye-bye tenant.” This government is acknowledging that a landlord needs to have some kind of evidence and needs to do some due diligence before they move to the LTB to evict a tenant. I see that as a step forward as well.

I also see as a step forward in the right direction this government’s decision to be more flexible around the time frame that a tenant has to apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for a remedy, if they are renovicted, to go to the Landlord and Tenant Board to say, “Hey, look, I think I’ve been illegally evicted and I want to seek redress.” Currently it’s two years, and this government is looking at adding up to six months after renovations are complete. The reason why that’s important is because in many cases, renovations—especially big renovations when you’re looking at demolitions—take longer than two years. We also have situations in our ridings where developers are just running the clock. They know that after two years the tenant can’t apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for redress, so they just wait them out.

We actually have a situation like that in our riding, at 11 Walmer Road. Shortly after I was elected, we canvassed the building, and we very quickly learned that the new property manager, Cromwell property management, was looking at doing some renovations to the building and was actively encouraging—and I’m being polite there—to have tenants leave. So tenants agreed to leave, and there were a few tenants—we are currently working with an individual called Caitlin and an individual called Delroy who is 83, who made it clear in writing that they want to move back in after renovations are complete. It has been over two and a half years. We have sent numerous emails, made numerous calls to Cromwell property management. Caitlin lives nearby; so does Delroy. They see U-Haul units come in as new tenants come into the building to move into these units, but Cromwell has never approached them and said, “Now it’s time for you to move in to your unit.” So they’re waiting, and there’s nothing they can do. There’s nowhere they can go. The two-year time frame has passed. So they’re worried. It is good to see that they now have six months after renovations are complete to apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for a remedy. My hope is that they will be eligible to apply.

So that’s the good.

Now I want to talk about the very bad which undercuts many of the modest improvements that you’ve made. The massive loophole that this government is not addressing with Bill 97 is the fact that there’s no enforcement. I want to explain to you what happens if a tenant is illegally evicted, so that you can understand this enforcement issue as well, in the hope that you’ll take illegal eviction seriously and work to address it. This is the loophole: For a landlord to be fined, a wronged tenant must become a volunteer private investigator and a good Samaritan for at least a year to make a case to the Landlord and Tenant Board, because it’s an average of a year for a tenant to get a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board, compared to six months for a landlord. Landlords are getting fast-tracked right now. It takes a year. Successful tenants—

Interjection.

Successful tenants almost never get their home back.

One of the most high-profile examples of tenants trying to get back into their units is something that happened in my riding, actually, a few years ago, at 795 College Street. These people decided to take their illegal eviction seriously. They took it to the Landlord and Tenant Board. It took them two years, and the landlord got a $75,000 fine. None of it went to the tenants. Then they took it to court, and the landlord got a $48,000 fine. The tenants never got their rent-controlled apartments back, and they got $12,000 in compensation for two years of work.

That’s why this enforcement issue—it destroys all the work you want to do to address illegal evictions. That is a massive loophole. I’m very concerned about it.

I asked FMTA how many fines were issued last year for the one million rental units in Ontario. Their response was flippant. They said it was maybe more than 20. Was it more than 20? I doubt it. Fines don’t happen. I have asked the Attorney General now. I’ve just done an order paper question to ask them how many fines have been issued for landlords who illegally evict, and the average amount of fine, and how many times a tenant is returned to their unit, so we can get these statistics. But I know these numbers are going to be extremely low. So we’ll see about that. That’s a big hole.

Excuse me for spending so much time on that, but we just get so many calls from renters who are terrified that they’re going to lose their home, and it really matters. You need to get this right. So please get it right.

The next piece that I want to talk about is this government’s decision to listen to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and the advocacy we have done and thousands of tenants have done—including this Speaker and the work that she has done—to ensure that tenants have a right to reasonably enjoy their unit and have a maximum temperature set for Ontario of 26 degrees. Other municipalities have this, and it’s time for the province to have this as well. This government has taken a step in the right direction to enshrine the right for a tenant to install their own air conditioning unit, provided that it’s done safely, they inform the landlord they intend to do so, and they pay for any excess electricity costs. The right to have an air conditioning unit in these extreme heat wave summers that we now have because of all governments’ lack of action on climate change—and yours is up there—is the right thing to do. But I want to repeat a statement that I said earlier, which is that only the Conservatives could turn a human rights tribunal ruling into a rent hike for low- and moderate-income renters, and it seems like you’ve successfully done that here.

This government is starting to have a bit of a track record of doing a bit of a rush job when they write their legislation, and I’m finding that they make amendments and changes in future legislation because they realize they’ve made a mistake or an error or they were a bit too quick to listen to one side but not the other. I also see this here. You might notice that the Residential Tenancies Act actually explicitly bans the use of seasonal fees, and there’s nothing in this bill to address that pretty core feature of the Residential Tenancies Act. So that’s a problem. The Residential Tenancies Act also enshrines the right to reasonably enjoy your unit, which—at this point, it is becoming essential to have an air conditioning unit, if you don’t have air conditioning. So there are some contradictions with this legislation here, which really just shows that sometimes you’re rushing a little bit when it comes to legislation. You’re not doing the kind of due diligence and taking the care that you need to get it right. That means listening to stakeholders and doing those consultations before you write the legislation—as well as during. So I hope to see some amendments in the committee to really look into this issue of keeping tenants reasonably cool, protecting them from heatstroke, ensuring that they’re not miserably hot in summer, especially given how much rent they’re paying right now.

The next thing I want to address is some of the planning changes to Bill 97 that talk about supply and housing supply. This is really twinned with what the members opposite have been talking about when it comes to this government’s decision to merge the provincial policy statement with the growth plan to create a new, I would say, radical vision for how we plan in this province—a very expensive and unsustainable radical vision for how we build. So I’m going to address them in turn.

One—and this is a real mystery for me; I don’t even know what this fully means yet, but I’m sure we’ll learn in time—is that with Bill 97, it requires landowners and municipalities to enter into agreements where a provincial land development facilitator has been appointed. I’ve heard this government talk a bit about what these facilitators could mean. I don’t know what municipalities or areas these facilitators are going to be assigned to. We don’t know how much power these facilitators are going to have. But what we are concerned about is that these facilitators, in partnership with the ministry, will likely have the power to change official plans as they go, to change municipal laws around planning as they go. These are very powerful changes to include in a bill, especially since we don’t exactly know what they mean, what they are, or what kind of powers they’re going to have. That seems like a real black box to me—that you’re going to have this unelected, unaccountable individual, who reports directly to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, being able to meddle in official plans that, as the member for Waterloo was explaining, sometimes take years to develop, involve the work of elected officials, and require hundreds of hours of public consultation. So I’m concerned about that power grab. It kind of falls into your track record when it comes to planning and how you like to control all of it. It is a concern, and I look forward to seeing more details of that piece.

The other piece that I see here with Bill 97 is that the municipal zoning orders are made even stronger. It gives the minister the ability to exempt MZO-designated lands from other provincial policies and official plans, such as farmland and wetland preservation. As we all know, MZOs can’t be appealed, and they do not require public consultation before approval. In short, the government loves these MZO tools. You want to keep making them stronger and stronger, so in case there’s an obstacle coming up, you can override it. That’s one piece.

And then the second thing is, I really think it’s important to also look at what these MZOs are being used for.

When I look in my riding, there have been examples of MZOs which I am quite comfortable with. The city of Toronto has requested them. One was used to lower parking requirements for a supportive housing facility at 877 Yonge Street—good. The other one will likely be used, if it hasn’t been used already, to expand the emergency room at Toronto Western Hospital—good. You’re not going to be seeing any objections from me on those kinds of important, publicly beneficial zoning changes to expand hospital capacity and ensure that affordable housing gets built quickly, and the city of Toronto supported them—good.

What concerns me, and what I’ve seen this government doing, is using MZOs to help your developer donor friends build housing that is incredibly expensive in areas that are precious, that are on flood plains, that are in wetlands, that are on farmland, that are on greenbelt land. That’s where I start to see the red flags, and I’m not the only one who has been raising those flags. Some reporters have done some deep dives into this, and they’ve seen that these MZOs have benefited developers who have donated over—this is a while back, so I’m sure the number is higher—$262,915 to Progressive Conservatives and Ontario Proud. These are the very developers who are now tangibly and immediately benefiting from these donations, because they get to maybe call up the minister, get an MZO, and get their development fast-tracked. It seems like it’s a bit of a pay-to-play, and I don’t think that’s how 14 million Ontarians want to see their government operate. I think they want a government that’s more accountable and transparent and that puts people first. And there are a lot of people who are questioning who this government prioritizes and who this government doesn’t. We see that with the use of MZOs.

These changes to the MZOs and these changes to the facilitators—it’s all part of this grand plan that the government keeps going back to time and time again, to really upend and change our planning process so that we are building sprawl on land that many of your developer donors either bought on cheap or already owned. It’s not the kind of planning that is sustainable, that is affordable, that is modern, and that’s really going to build the kind of houses that people want to see and need. That’s where I see this government going.

I want to spend a few minutes looking at the provincial planning statement changes so that the public understands what exactly this government is doing.

This government is ending firm density requirements for new developments. So there can be a single-family home on a half-acre lot and a single-family home on a half-acre lot, and that’s precious farmland. You would think, if we’re looking at building, that we’d want to take advantage of every acre of land we’ve got, which means building up, increasing density; not building out. That’s very concerning. It’s a fundamental change.

We’re also seeing that now municipalities are no longer required to meet minimum density targets of 50 residents per hectare, but they are just encouraged to set their own density targets, which is a fundamental change to the trajectory of planning and development in this province. You’re fundamentally changing it so that it’s now advisory only—that’s pretty concerning. It used to be 80, this government reduced the per-hectare standard to 50, and now you’re just saying, “It will be encouraged.” That’s not good.

This government is also making it easier for municipalities to expand their urban boundaries and permit development on nearby green space and farmland whenever they want. Previously, municipalities could only expand their boundaries as part of a review process and only if certain conditions were met—such as housing needs that couldn’t be met by increasing density on areas zoned for development.

This government is just declaring open season on farmland even though the farming sector in Ontario is one of the most productive farming sectors in the world. We are one of the few provinces and regions in the world that is a net exporter of food, and it is one of the biggest economic drivers of our province—all these jobs. They need to grow food somewhere, so we should be doing everything we can to keep the farmland we’ve got. Instead, this government is saying, “Nope.” We could be building homes that are more affordable and building them more cheaply in areas already zoned for development, but instead we are just going to declare open season on one of the most productive economic drivers in the province, and that is our farming sector. It’s bananas; it really is.

Thank you to the member for Newmarket–Aurora.

In committee, we did vote in support of measures to require a landlord to get a report in order to justify an eviction of a tenant in the case of a renoviction. We also voted in support of the increase in fines for people or corporations that violate the Residential Tenancies Act; in fact, we proposed higher fines.

The challenge is that the moves that this government is making to address the renoviction crisis and the illegal eviction crisis—evidence is clearly showing us that they are too weak to work.

I urge this government to look at the evidence, do evidence-based decision-making, and move forward with measures that are actually going to stop the illegal eviction crisis that we have, because what we have right now is not working.

We did introduce amendments into Bill 97 in order to strengthen renter protections. Every affordable private-market home that we have, we should be keeping. There is nothing more important and there’s nothing more wise that we can do right now to make housing affordable than bring in vacancy control and real rent control. When we’re talking about being proactive, those kinds of rent control measures, those kinds of rent protection measures are really going to make Ontario a desirable place to live. It means we’re going to stop the net migration out of this province to other more affordable provinces, which is a real concern. Those people take all their talents with them. It means we become a more affordable and desirable place. It’s a pity the government chose not to accept those amendments.

We very much support and agree with the target of building 1.5 million homes to meet the needs of Ontarians today and to meet our immigration targets in the future. Many more people want to call Ontario home. It’s why we introduced an amendment—

Thank you very much for that question.

We have been very clear that we are very much in support of increasing housing supply and meeting our 1.5 million housing target by 2031. But what we are also very clear about is that it is not just about increasing supply; it’s also about addressing affordability. They’re related, but one doesn’t automatically solve the other, which is why we are proposing a comprehensive approach where we build homes for Ontarians first and not investors; we clamp down on investor-led speculation; we make renting safe and affordable so people can save up enough for a down payment to buy a home—I don’t know anyone who can save up a down payment, paying $3,000 a month in rent—and we get serious about building affordable housing.

There’s very little in this bill that looks at creating housing and meeting the housing needs for people who are in a really tough spot. Maybe they are on a fixed income. Maybe they are fleeing an abusive relationship. Maybe they’ve just moved to Canada and they don’t know the laws and they moved into a housing situation that’s really not good. There’s very little in this bill for that.

The Conservatives have done a few things that concern me, around making housing affordable for people who are struggling. The government has decided to cut funding to municipalities and housing, which means there’s less funding available for shelters. The government also decided to cut funding to the rent top-up program. So if someone wants to find a rental home and get a top-up from the government so that they can afford the rent, rebuild their lives, have a home, move into the private market, get that little bit of help—that’s also being cut. It’s those kinds of programs that we need to really help people who are struggling.

Great question: Why?

I recently read an article on this—it was a representative of BILD from the development industry. They actually said that developers are sneaking in applications as quickly as they can now because they want to be exempt from the inclusionary zoning law. There’s this big rush for development to sneak in so they don’t have to pay their fair share. I think that’s a real concern. I think it should be stopped.

Developers need to pay their fair share and help contribute to solving our housing affordability crisis. Inclusionary zoning is a tried and tested way to do it. It has worked in other municipalities. The city of Toronto wants it. The Conservatives should get out of the way and allow it to happen. We introduced an amendment to allow that to move forward, and the Conservatives rejected it. Honestly, that’s a real shame.

Then, we introduced measures to ensure—this is all about protecting farmland. We introduced some motions that were developed by the member for Timiskaming–Cochrane to put in an additional layer of protection when a piece of farmland was being proposed to be taken off and developed. The motion is this: It would require an agricultural impact assessment which calls for—the council of a local municipality should not pass a zoning bylaw under this section that proposes to change the uses on land that was zoned for agriculture unless they do an agricultural impact assessment, which essentially means that before you convert agricultural land into another purpose, you need to do an assessment to ensure our overall farming sector is not negatively impacted. We know that our farming sector, our agricultural sector, is one of our biggest economic drivers for the province. It’s one of our biggest job creators for the province. It feeds us. So we should be doing everything we can to protect it. The government voted that down, which is a real pity.

Just moving through here, we introduced another “use it or lose it” permit process so that municipalities—not just the city of Toronto, but Ontario-wide—would have the option to bring in “use it or lose it” policies to incentivize developers to use the building permits that they have already secured in order to increase supply, unless they had a really good reason not to. That amendment got rejected.

We also introduced an amendment in order to protect some of our precious areas within the greenbelt plan, the Oak Ridges moraine plan, the Niagara Escarpment plan and the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan—areas that are protected by these plans. We introduced an amendment giving municipalities the right to do site plan control—to manage the exterior of the building—with projects of 10 or fewer residential units. The reason this is important is because allowing municipalities to manage site plan control really helps in protecting our precious green spaces, including the greenbelt. It was a request that was made, and we thought we would introduce it because our greenbelt is unique and special; so is our Niagara Escarpment; so is Lake Simcoe. However, the government chose to reject that amendment too, which is a real pity.

This was an amendment brought forward by the MPP for Beaches–East York—I really like this one. This was an amendment that looked at the Conservatives’ move, in Bill 97, to give the ministerial zoning order process some extra oomph by allowing MZOs to be exempt from provincial laws as well, including official plans and policy statements, which essentially means that—I’m just imagining—a developer could call up the minister and say, “I have this factory I want to build, or this warehouse on some farmland I want to build, or this subdivision I want to build, and there are these pesky provincial and city laws that I really don’t like. I don’t want to wait in the long queue like everyone else. I really want to be fast-tracked, so can you just write that MZO for me so I can get going?” A two-tier planning system process—one for your friends, one for everyone else. The MPP for Beaches–East York said, “Hold on. We should introduce an amendment that would ensure you can’t introduce an MZO that would jeopardize life or safety or accessibility, that would increase the likelihood of flood hazards”—because you don’t want to build on wetlands unnecessarily. It’s just putting some checks and balances on this MZO process. I thought it was pretty reasonable. I voted for it. The Conservatives voted it down, which is a real shame.

Now we get to my favourite, which is the Residential Tenancies Act. I like the Planning Act too, but I really like the Residential Tenancies Act. Bill 97 proposes a bunch of changes to the Residential Tenancies Act; some of them I like. There were some modest improvements there. But I thought we could do better. We introduced some amendments in order to improve and strengthen the Residential Tenancies Act so that the 1.7 million households in Ontario who rent can live in safe, affordable and well-maintained homes. That’s the goal. They deserve to live in Ontario too. Renters are not second-class citizens. It’s the Residential Tenancies Act which is really that law that should be providing good protections for renters. So we introduced some amendments on this. The first one we introduced was an amendment to ensure that there was rent control on all units, including units that were first occupied after 2018.

When I think about the laws that we can introduce in Ontario that would really directly make Ontario more affordable and address the housing crisis, I cannot think of any two stronger or better pieces of legislation than ensuring that there is rent control on all new homes and that we bring in vacancy control so there is a cap on how much the rent can be raised if a tenant leaves and a new tenant comes in. There’s no more effective way to solve a housing affordability crisis than that.

When I think about the value of those laws, I think about the latest reports that came out by rentals.ca and Urbanation. These are big macro studies that look at how expensive rent is, and every month they come out with a report showing that rent for available apartments is going up and up and up and up. The numbers are scary: It now costs more than $3,000 to rent an average rental home in Toronto today for available units—$3,000. You need to earn well over $100,000 a year to afford that, and there are people who can’t afford it. They’re living two people to a bedroom; they’re spending $1,500 just to rent one room in a shared house—or two families in a unit. They’re maxing out their credit cards. It’s not working for a lot of people, and we’re starting to see that with a rise in delinquencies; we’re starting to see that with an increase in the number of small businesses that are going under. People are struggling. We’re seeing that in the increase in the lines at the food banks. People are struggling, and it’s really rent that’s people’s biggest expense.

I think about Nikki. She came and spoke at a press conference that we did recently. She pays $600 for a 600-square-foot basement apartment. She earns six figures. She works in the finance sector. But that’s all she can afford, as a single person. Because her basement is new, she just got a $250 rent increase, and she’s like, “I live in a basement.” And that’s typical.

I think about Kara. We raised Kara’s story in question period. She moved into a townhome in St. Catharines, paying about $2,000 a month. She didn’t realize that her unit wasn’t protected by rent control, because even the government’s own pamphlets don’t talk about how new units are exempt. She was slapped with a 17% rent hike. How on earth can you afford a 17% rent hike just like that? People can’t.

That’s why we introduced amendments to bring in strong rent control, in order to clamp down on the escalating rent hikes we’re seeing in Ontario—and the government voted that down. That is very concerning.

It’s not just about supply; it’s about affordability too, and there’s no one who’s hurting more in Ontario than renters when we’re talking about the housing affordability crisis—no one. Renters are not rich.

Then we really addressed the issue; we brought in a bunch of amendments to provide some clarity around the government’s decision to listen to the Human Rights Tribunal and make it a right that tenants can have an air conditioning window unit in their home, provided they meet certain conditions. We see this as a good move. We’ve been advocating for tenants to have the right to have an air conditioning window unit for some time. We’ve been working with tenants who have received an eviction notice from their landlord saying, “Either take out your AC unit or we’re going to try to evict you.” Can you imagine the fear of that? Just because you want to stay safe in summer—we don’t want to be miserable in summer—and you put an air conditioning unit in. So we’ve been advocating for that. The Human Rights Tribunal ruled and they said that access to an air conditioning unit is a right. And the government has done the right thing with Bill 97 and has introduced that right into the Residential Tenancies Act.

But there’s something that the government didn’t do, and that is, the government chose not to set a maximum temperature. Just like we have a minimum temperature in winter for units, the Human Rights Tribunal and we, also, have been calling for a maximum temperature to be set in summer as well. It’s something that many municipalities already have on their books. Ajax, Mississauga, Toronto—it’s 26 degrees. It was established in consultation with public health. Many states and cities in the US have this too—especially in the southern states and the southwestern states, because it gets so hot. So we called for that too. The Conservatives have not introduced that into Bill 97.

But one thing they did introduce into Bill 97 which I have a lot of concerns about is that they’re allowing a landlord to bill a tenant for the increase in electricity. I think this opens up a slippery slope—that the Residential Tenancies Act already bans. The Residential Tenancies Act says that seasonal fees are not allowed. This opens up this door which allows seasonal fees. It’s very concerning.

Rent has gone up over 30% over the last 10 years. It is more than enough to cover electricity costs and maintenance costs already. And it’s concerning when a choice was made to bill tenants when there are two choices that could have been made there. There are some tenants who will pay it, and then there are some tenants who won’t. These are the tenants on a fixed income who can’t afford an air conditioning unit and can’t afford an increase in their electricity. My guess is, they’re the ones who are most vulnerable to suffering from heatstroke, or even death, if we face a heat wave, which we inevitably will.

I was on the phone to some people that reported on the heat waves in BC last year, when over 600 people died. The vast majority of them lived alone; they were old. Some of them had mental health conditions. Almost all of them lived in apartments that didn’t have an air conditioning unit or any air conditioning at all. They’re going to be hit first and worst by the climate crisis.

This is about keeping people safe. I fear that these changes in this bill are not going to be able to help those people.

So we introduced some amendments to bring in a maximum temperature bylaw, to provide some clarity around ensuring that tenants don’t have to pay extra in order to install an air conditioning unit, and the government chose to vote them down. That’s very concerning.

It’s already hot. It’s May—it’s 30 degrees this weekend. We’re already starting to get calls from homeowners who live in condos, because their property manager hasn’t turned on the cooling yet, and from tenants who are worried, because they know it’s going to get hotter and they don’t know what they’re going to do. Unfortunately, Bill 97 doesn’t help them.

We introduced an amendment requiring a landlord to get a building permit into the Residential Tenancies Act, to see if we could get it in that way. You rejected it, which is a pity.

We also introduced some amendments around the issue of illegal eviction. I want to spend a bit of time talking about this as I near the end of my presentation.

The government—this is twice now, with Bill 184 and now with Bill 97—has said, “Illegal evictions are a problem, and we’re going to fix it by massively increasing the fine that an individual or corporation would pay if they illegally evicted a tenant or break any section of the Residential Tenancies Act.” No question, these are big fines—it’s going up over $100,000 for a fine. The challenge, however, is that the Landlord and Tenant Board doesn’t fine bad-actor landlords who illegally evict a tenant the maximum amount of money. What we’ve also found is that a tenant, if they’re illegally evicted, never gets the right to return to their apartment; it’s unheard of. We’ve talked to legal clinics. Legal clinics came in—ACTO; Don Valley; FMTA, the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations; ACORN. None of us could think of an example where a tenant actually gets into their home if they’ve been illegally evicted. It doesn’t happen. What’s also concerning is that landlords really don’t get fined very much and very few of them get fined.

I asked the Attorney General to share some statistics. Because you’re doubling the fines, you might want to provide some evidence into whether they work or not. The Attorney General refused to do it.

So ACTO did a bit of a deep dive, and they looked at Landlord and Tenant Board decisions to see how much fine landlords are getting if they illegally evict a tenant and how many are getting fined—and it’s pretty low. I’m going to read this out so we are all aware of how the Residential Tenancies Act is not protecting tenants. They did a deep dive and they found that there were just 74 applications that tenants made for illegal eviction, and the reason why is because most tenants know the Landlord and Tenant Board is not a place for them. It takes more than two years just to get a hearing; they don’t get their unit back, so why bother? So many of them don’t, but 74 of them did. And what they found is that of the times when the board issued a fine, the average fine was between $500 to $3,000—that’s it. Even though back then they could issue a fine of up to $100,000, they don’t. So a landlord knows that if they want to illegally evict, the odds are a tenant is not going to take them to the Landlord and Tenant Board; the odds are a tenant is never going to get back in; and the odds are they’re just going to get a small fine, if any at all, so they may as well illegally evict, because there’s every reason to do so—they’re going to make a whole lot of profit—and there’s very little reason not to. That’s what is happening in Ontario today.

So we introduced some amendments to strengthen the eviction protection process. We introduced some amendments allowing the Landlord and Tenant Board to ask a landlord, “Do you have another vacant unit in your building? If so, the tenant should be able to go there.” It’s pretty simple; there are lots of big buildings where there are multiple vacant units, so there’s one available fairly quickly. No, you rejected that.

We also introduced an amendment to increase the amount of money that a tenant actually gets. If a bad-actor landlord is fined—let’s say they’re fined $100,000 in this imaginary world—it’s the government that gets the money; it’s not the tenant, so the tenant has no incentive to spend up to two years volunteering their time. They’re never going to get their home back, and they get barely any compensation. So we introduced some amendments to say that if a tenant is going to do all that work, they should get some of that compensation; we are proposing $35,000. The government rejected that too, and that’s a shame.

We are also calling for the government to get serious about illegal eviction activity by strengthening the Rental Housing Enforcement Unit. It’s a department that already exists. A tenant should be able to call them up and say, “I fear I have been illegally evicted. Can you help me?” and there should be a bylaw officer available to help them to ensure they get back into their unit or the landlord, if they are breaking the law, is properly fined. If we started enforcing the laws we have, the number of illegal evictions would decrease. We introduced these amendments, and the government voted them down. It’s very concerning.

We introduced a lot of amendments to improve Bill 97. We heard from a lot of stakeholders who had a lot of very good and useful feedback to the government on how to address some of the issues that we face in the housing sector. By and large, the Conservatives think they know best.

What is very clear, though, and I urge you to consider this, is that this government—you’ve had five years to fix our housing crisis. You can’t blame the Liberals anymore. While housing supply starts have gone up, the cost of buying a home has gone up too, and the cost of renting a home has reached levels that we have never seen before. It’s at record highs. So it can’t just be about supply—it’s got to be about supply, but it also has to be about bringing in strong protections for renters so that they can live in this province, but based on evidence.

This government also needs to get serious about clamping down on investor-led speculation—because investors are the number one purchasers of homes right now—so that first-time homebuyers can get that home, so they can have the home that they love, that they can raise pets and kids in, and garden in, and send their kids to the local school in, and retire in. That’s what people want. And this government knows—you know what you can do, provincially, to clamp down on speculation, and you should be doing that. I don’t see that in this bill.

Finally, this government needs to get serious about building and buying affordable housing because the private market is not equipped, is not able, to build homes that are affordable for people on low income, on fixed income; for seniors who are on fixed income. They’re not going to do it. It doesn’t pencil; it doesn’t work. It’s going to require government investment, and we’ve presented many ideas to this government on how to move forward on that: build homes on public land at cost, invest in co-ops, invest in affordable housing, build affordable private-market rental and buy it. There’s a lot you can do, and my hope is that in future bills you do it, because Ontario should be affordable for everyone.

So many. If you open up an act, I’m going to try to introduce an amendment to change it. That’s how it works. That’s my job. There are a lot of things I would like to change with how this government approaches housing and the real estate sector to ensure that our housing sector provides homes to people first. That’s the goal. And they should be affordable homes that meet their needs.

Another measure we introduced was around “use it or lose it.

This is how it works: If a developer gets all the approvals that they need to build and they don’t build within a fair and reasonable period of time, and they don’t have a good reason for not building, then there should be penalties imposed, because that will stimulate the construction of homes so we have enough homes for current residents to move out of their parents’ basements and for newcomers who are moving in who want to call Ontario home. Maybe they’re studying at the University of Toronto or the University of Waterloo and they need a home. It makes a lot of sense to me, and it’s something that municipalities are recommending. Unfortunately, the government chose to reject that amendment, which is interesting, because you’re A-okay with targeting municipalities, fining them, but you’re not okay with looking at developers who are choosing to sit on properties and sit on building permits for no good reason. I can imagine that if a municipality was going to move forward with this kind of amendment, there would be some reasonable conditions that we’d set up. Maybe it’s an affordable housing project; maybe it’s a project that’s in the public interest; maybe the developer had a really good reason and they’ve come into financial difficulty and they can’t get the financing that they originally thought they could. That’s a reason not to impose a penalty. But then there are some who sit on permits and they don’t build. This could be a very effective way, and a very cheap way, to increase supply. That was rejected.

This was an interesting amendment—I would say of all the schedules in Bill 97, schedule 4 is a complete and total mystery to me. It seems to be a mystery for the Conservative members, as well, because I’ve asked numerous questions in committee to the Minister for Municipal Affairs and Housing, to the committee members present, even to people who came in and spoke. I asked, “What does this actually mean?” People couldn’t really give a straight answer. I’ll explain it for the people listening. Essentially, schedule 4 of Bill 97 allows the minister to appoint a facilitator to give advice and recommendations “to the minister in respect of growth, land use and other matters,” and to “perform ... other functions”—not specified—“as the minister may specify.” So we don’t even know what they are. They can sign agreements with landowners. We don’t know what they are. Are they transparent? There’s no requirement here. Where’s the accountability? I have no idea. Could a facilitator, through the ministry, sign an agreement and bypass elected officials? Maybe. I don’t know. Does this apply to the divorce that’s happening between Brampton and Caledon and Mississauga? I don’t know. No one knows. So we thought, “Let’s introduce an amendment. Let’s keep it real simple. We’ll say that if the facilitator is making an agreement with a landowner or giving advice to the minister about growth and planning, then that needs to be transparent. Put it on a website, all the decisions and recommendations, so we all know what’s going on.” That makes a lot of sense, but you rejected that. I thought Conservatives were for transparency and accountability, but I guess not.

So that was a pity. The thing that disappointed me most about that is that no one really could answer questions about what that actually means. That’s really what surprises me about that one.

These are amendments all about helping renters who are in buildings that are facing demolition. We introduced a bunch of amendments—because we had the City of Toronto Act we needed to introduce amendments to, and then also the Municipal Act. So we got busy there.

Then, we introduced an amendment that really looks at the issue of renovictions. This amendment is focused on making sure that if a landlord is going to evict, they have a good reason to evict; that the renovation that is needed actually requires a tenant to leave. Right now, with Bill 97, you can get any kind of report, and you can say, “Oh, the tenant needs to leave. These renovations are significant.” And that’s it.

I looked at what other municipalities have done that have really effectively clamped down on illegal evictions. The example I’d like to use is New Westminster, BC. They brought in this interesting new law that says that if a landlord is going to renovict a tenant, they need to show that they have got the building permits necessary to prove that they’re actually going to do the renovation. It makes a lot of sense, because if a landlord is going to do the renovation, they have to get the building permits anyway. So why not make sure they do their due diligence so that we stop illegal renovictions, where some landlords say they’re going to renovate, but really, they have no intention of doing so; they just want to move in another tenant who’s going to pay the higher rent. This is simple. Landlords are doing it already. Get a permit, show us that you got a permit, put it in your application to the Landlord and Tenant Board in your application to evict. Conservatives didn’t like that, so that was a no, which is a real pity. But hopefully we’ll see that in future bills.

Then we had 4.2—we’re in schedule 6 now; this is the Planning Act. With the Planning Act, with Bill 23 and also with Bill 97, the Conservatives have brought in a whole lot of measures to really transform how we plan and build. One issue that’s particularly concerning to me is that Bill 23 changed the definition of what affordable housing is, which is really concerning. Bill 23 changed the definition of affordable housing so that it’s based on the market: A house is affordable if you can rent it for about 80% of average market rent, and a home is considered affordable if it sells for 80% of the sale price. That’s the new definition of affordable housing for the Ontario government. It’s different than what it used to be. It’s different than what the federal government has. It’s different from what the city of Toronto is looking at doing. The Conservatives decided to create their own. And why that’s so messed up is because they’re looking at giving upwards of $100,000 in development fee discounts to any developer that meets this new, completely unaffordable definition of affordable housing. So you could build a home in Brampton, sell it for $800,000, and you still get that affordable housing development fee exemption, and it’s taxpayers who are going to have to make up the difference. I don’t know how on earth that is fair for anyone, because $800,000 for a home in Brampton is not affordable for a middle-income person, for a moderate-income person, for a low-income person.

As a result of those development fee discounts, municipalities all across the GTHA have imposed a Ford tax, a property tax increase, to pay for the infrastructure that we need to build—because if we’re going to give developers a discount, someone else has to pay for it, and it’s Ontarians. I’m just going to review this again: Durham region, 5% tax hike; Pickering, 6% to 8%; Clarington, 4%; Waterloo region, 8.55%; Burlington, 7.5%; Niagara region, 7.58%—I had a wonderful co-op student help me gather this information, and I’m very grateful for them—York region, 3.9%; Newmarket, 7.67%. It goes on and on and on. And what’s hard to stomach with these property tax increases is that residents are not going to see improvements in their services. Most regions are going to see cuts in their services, and they’re going to see a delay in the rollout of infrastructure and the improvement of infrastructure because of these tax hikes. It’s a shame.

So we proposed to bring in an affordable housing amendment that goes back to the original definition that Ontario has for affordable housing. And the definition of affordable housing that we are proposing is that it’s based on what the resident can pay—not what the ever-increasing market is, but what the resident can pay, and that is 30% of gross annual household income for low- and moderate-income households; they shouldn’t pay any more than that on rent or the carrying costs of a mortgage for it to be affordable. And for a home to be bought, it’s essentially the same thing: They shouldn’t be spending more than 30% of their income. It’s standard. It’s what all levels of government are aiming towards. It’s what we had, and the government rejected it. I think that’s a shame.

I am waiting for this government to release what the actual affordable housing definitions are going to be—I know you’ve put 80%, but we’re actually waiting for the release of how much the rent will be and how much the home prices will be in each region, because the Conservatives said they’d release that every year. I am eagerly waiting for that to come out, because that’s really going to show how unaffordable this government’s definition is. I can’t wait for that template to come out.

So then we move to 5.1; this was a government amendment. There’s nothing I look forward to like seeing the amendments that the government makes to bills, because that’s when we realize what you’re going to change and what you’re not. I found this really interesting.

With Bill 97, the government is moving forward with making changes to converting lands that are zoned for employment into housing, and it’s being done very quickly. We had some stakeholders come in to express their enthusiasm and their concern for opening up employment lands to housing—their enthusiasm and some concern. I want to read out a few, because this is a big deal.

We had the Toronto Board of Trade express some concern. They asked the Conservatives to press “pause.” They liked the idea in principle, as do I, but they asked the government to press “pause” and think carefully before proceeding, because right now we have a housing supply crisis, but in 10 years’ time we could have an employment lands crisis.

How we’ve designed all our employment lands is that that’s where all the transit nodes are. If we’re going to turn downtown Toronto and much of that area into housing instead of commercial, then how is that going to affect employment trends and commuting patterns? Does that mean we’re going to have to change our transit systems? What’s it going to look like, exactly? People have some genuine concerns.

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture also had some concerns. They said to reconsider this amendment: “The resulting impacts of reduced protections for employment lands could result in increased pressure to utilize ... prime agricultural lands and specialty crop areas for employment uses in the future.”

You’ve introduced some amendments—I’m interested to see what this is going to look like. My request to you, and what I heard from stakeholders, is to just tread carefully. If we’re going to convert employment lands, do it carefully.

That was a government amendment, so you passed that one.

Oh, this is one of my favourites—we’re also in the Planning Act now, and we introduced an amendment to really improve the Conservatives’ position on allowing missing-middle housing. We introduced an amendment that would allow townhomes, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in areas zoned for development, in neighbourhoods people want to live in, in order to increase housing supply and also to increase a more affordable housing supply.

When you look at how much homes cost, a semi-detached home is usually half a million dollars cheaper than a single detached home, and a townhome is cheaper than a semi-detached home. If you’ve got a duplex and you sever it, those two homes are cheaper. So when you’re a family who wants to start out or you’re a couple who wants to start out—and you want to increase the supply of more affordable homes, there’s a real benefit in gently increasing density in municipal areas. It makes a lot of sense to me. It’s about the missing middle.

So we introduced this motion and, surprisingly, the government chose to vote that down, which is a pity. It’s a pity, because Bill 23 makes some modest improvements to missing-middle housing but not enough. We gave the Conservatives the opportunity to do the right thing, to walk and talk, and instead the Conservatives just chose to focus on talking. That’s a pity. You voted it down.

The next amendment we introduced was really about moving forward with density and intensification, and the reason we introduced this amendment is because in the new provincial planning statement, the Conservatives are looking at getting rid of all mandatory density requirements for municipalities, and the Conservatives are looking at getting rid of all mandatory density requirements for new subdivisions. What that means is that if a developer wants to come along—maybe they bought some greenbelt land or some farm-belt land—they’re not required to build for density so that we can efficiently provide services, provide transit and schools and daycares and roads in an efficient way. They can build single-family homes on quarter-acre lots and then have the municipality pay for that servicing. It is incredibly unsustainable, it is incredibly expensive, and it really jeopardizes our precious farmland.

You heard from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture that we only have so much farmland in Canada, and Ontario is so unique. We have some of the most productive and precious farmland in the world. We should be doing everything we can to protect it, but we’re not. Once it’s paved, it is gone. Eliminating density requirements and intensification requirements makes it even easier for land to be paved over, and it will make it harder for us to meet our housing supply targets, because we’re building less homes per acre than we could and we should.

We called for an amendment to go back to the 2018 density targets and intensification targets—pretty standard, part of the growth plan. The government chose to vote that down, which says a lot about this government’s interest in building expensive sprawl and this government’s disinterest in protecting farmland and building homes for Ontarians to meet supply. It’s a real concern.

We introduced an amendment that would allow inclusionary zoning in municipalities that want it. This is a really important amendment. The reason why this is important is because other cities have brought in inclusionary zoning. In the case of Montreal, for example, they have built thousands of affordable housing units at minimal cost to government since 2005. Municipalities in Ontario also want that right to move forward on inclusionary zoning. Inclusionary zoning is this: If there’s a new development that’s going to be built, then there’s a requirement that a percentage of those homes are affordable.

The city of Toronto spent years and years studying, listening to people, developing bylaws. They came up with a compromise: a fair inclusionary zoning law. The inclusionary zoning law said we’re going to exempt purpose-built rentals for a while. We’re going to focus on condos. For any new condo that is 100 homes or more—so these are the big buildings—we are going to require developers to have a percentage of them be affordable. It would be phased in over time. They looked at how much profit developers make. They looked at it very closely. They concluded that developers could continue to make the profit that they need to make it viable and build these affordable housing units. The law is on the books. It’s ready to go. However, the Ontario government, the Conservative government, is refusing to allow the city of Toronto to move forward with this new law. You’re refusing to allow them—they’ve made dozens and dozens and dozens of requests to the government, and you refuse to allow them—

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. We are working with tenants across the city of Toronto whose purpose-built rentals are slated to be demolished. They’re terrified because they’re worried they’re never going to be able to get back into their homes once the construction of the new, bigger building is complete.

This government is looking at creating new rental replacement laws, and this is my question: When I look at the Residential Tenancies Act, there’s no guaranteed right of return for a tenant who’s evicted because of demolition. There’s no guaranteed right of return. In this government’s new rental replacement bylaw, are you going to allow cities to guarantee a tenant’s right to return to their home?

My question is to the member for Mississauga East–Cooksville. We have been contacted by many prospective homeowners—people in Durham region, in the Ottawa West–Nepean area, in the area of Stayner—who bought homes at pre-construction, put up hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases in deposit money, and years later, they’re waiting for their home to be built. The developer isn’t building it unless they turn around and pay a whole lot more. They have contacted the Home Construction Regulatory Authority again and again and again, and they’re not getting the answers that they want. They’re stressed. They’re worried they’re going to lose their life savings. They want this government to take action. What is this government going to do to ensure these people get the homes they purchased at the price they agreed to?

In committee, ACTO, the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, summarized how broken our illegal-eviction protection laws are. They did a review of how many tenants get back into their home after a bad-faith eviction: essentially none. And then they did a review of what the average fine is that a bad landlord gets if they illegally evict a tenant: It’s between $500 and $3,000. How do you expect Bill 97 to be effective if the Landlord and Tenant Board is not issuing significant fines to landlords that illegally evict?

Thank you very much for that question, member for Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas. On paper, the Residential Tenancies Act requires a landlord to properly maintain a home, but in practice, many tenants are living in abysmal, unsafe, unsanitary living conditions where there are rodents or bed bugs. And unfortunately, the Landlord and Tenant Board has not been a place where tenants can seek redress. It takes upwards of two years for a tenant to have their case heard at the Landlord and Tenant Board. Who’s going to wait two years to get a bed bug issue addressed? And often, the Landlord and Tenant Board is not able to provide the necessary enforcement. They’ll do a rent abatement, but they often don’t properly enforce and require a landlord to fix a unit to a standard that’s acceptable. It’s a big problem.

Thank you to the member for Perth–Wellington for your comments. Yes, we have been very clear that the Residential Tenancies Act needs to be strengthened to ensure that renters are not illegally evicted, either by a landlord claiming own use or by a landlord claiming that they’re going to renovate the apartment, but then once the tenant has moved out, they don’t do renovations or they do modest renovations, and then the tenant can never get back in.

What I am asking this government to do is to listen to stakeholders and what we are telling you, and to fix the massive loophole of enforcement. The government can raise the fines however much they want, but the reality is that landlords are not being fined in Ontario today, because it’s the responsibility of a tenant to become a good Samaritan and a private investigator and to volunteer their time in order for that eviction protection law to be enforced. So please fix that loophole.

Manitoba has similar rent stabilization laws, Quebec has similar rent stabilization laws, and their economies are very healthy. So it is very important that this government look seriously at vacancy-control legislation, so people can afford to live in this province.

And tax—thank you, member for Waterloo. I know that your constituents care about that.

A few other changes: This government is looking at changing development fees. It seems like, once again, you have realized the error in your ways. You’ve just been rushing this legislation through so quickly. You’re not doing the necessary due diligence. So you are choosing to respond to municipal concerns, and you are allowing municipalities to gradually refund zoning bylaw and site plan application fees if a municipality fails to make a decision within specified time periods. You were originally going to require municipalities to refund fees starting on January 1, 2023, but you’re extending that to July 1, 2023. So you’re giving municipalities the six months’ reprieve. It’s a small change, but the reason why I want to bring it up is because it really does speak to the need for this government to be more diligent, for this government to do proper stakeholder feedback, especially with AMO. It speaks to the need for this government to be more organized in how it introduces bills and just the lack of coordination. You represent 14 million people, so it’s extremely important that you do the necessary research and the public consultation so that you get it right, so we don’t see this process where you’re heading here one way, here another way, here another way. It has led some commentators in the news to muse that this government actually doesn’t know what it’s doing when it comes to housing—that’s a TVO reporter who just said that. Let me tell you, that’s not praise.

There are a few other changes here. One, there are some changes to farm properties. Additional residences will be permitted on farm properties, up to two additional on one parcel and up to three additional residential parcels. We’re still reaching out to residents and groups to see what people’s take is on this. We can see some pros; we can see some cons. So I’m curious about that. What does it mean? What do people think about it?

There are some proposed changes to employment lands as well. It looks like the government is looking at making it easier to convert employment lands, like retail or commercial, into housing.

And the definition of employment areas: It looks like you’re looking at changing it, in both the Planning Act and the new provincial policy statement as well as with Bill 97. It does look like new employment focus will be on uses that cannot be put in mixed-use areas such as heavy industry, manufacturing or large-scale warehousing. So essentially, my take is that this government wants to make it easier to convert retail and commercial office space into housing. That’s my take on that.

We’re also securing stakeholder feedback on this. I can see some pros and cons to this. I’m very open-minded about it, because the need for housing is great. Housing supply is a real issue, and employment patterns have certainly changed. Vacancy rates in offices, including in downtown Toronto, are still very high. There is a lot of vacant space there. My caution is that it is important that we think about what employment land is needed, not just now but 20 years from now, 40 years from now, because the pandemic certainly is an unpleasant chapter, and as we move away from it, it will be in the history books. That’s the goal, and it’s very important that we don’t make any rash decisions now to get rid of large chunks of employment land if, as our population grows, we need to return, we need some more employment land in the future. So I urge caution there and a need to ensure there’s balance there.

In conclusion, I do want to say a few things. One is that it is good to see that the government is acknowledging that we have a housing affordability crisis and that it’s not just a housing supply crisis. We certainly have a housing supply crisis; we do need to build 1.5 million homes in 10 years. There are people who are living in their parents’ basement. There are families who are two, three families living in a rental apartment. And we know immigration has reached record levels. So there is absolutely a need to build more homes, but it is also essential that we are very mindful and ensure that government uses the right kind of incentives and regulations and rules to build the kind of homes that are for Ontarians and ensure that the homes that we build are in line with what people in Ontario—not just investors, but people in Ontario—need.

That means more two-, three-, four-bedroom homes and apartments in areas people want to live in, in areas already zoned for development. It means ensuring that there are good services—transit, schools, daycare, community centres, supermarkets, nearby jobs, places of faith—that are near where people live. And it is important that we really focus on the segments of our population in Ontario that are really struggling to find that home that they can afford: low- and moderate-income people; seniors who are looking at downsizing; students and families that can’t make it work in a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom apartment anymore but can’t find anything else. That’s really the shortfall here. It’s not investors that want to buy their fourth home. That’s not what our housing sector should prioritize, and I fear that the government is really focusing on that.

The other thing I also want to emphasize is that it can never just be all about supply. This government has had five years to show that supply alone will address the housing affordability crisis, and it hasn’t. Housing has never been more expensive. It has never been more expensive to buy a home. It has never been more expensive to rent. Our homelessness crisis has spread across Ontario. The number of people who are homeless in Toronto right now is through the roof; it’s well above 10,000. It’s just getting worse and worse and worse, even though, as the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said, we have a record number of cranes. It’s not just about supply. It has to be about affordability as well.

And when we’re talking about affordability, it’s going to require a bunch of things. It is going to require a definition of affordability that’s not based on the market, which is what this government is choosing to use; 80% of average market rent is not affordable, and 80% of average sale price for a condo is not affordable. It’s not affordable for even middle-income families, let alone moderate-income families and low-income families. It’s just not. It doesn’t work. It needs to be rent based on income, because that’s the definition of affordable. It’s based on the person—what they think is affordable, what they see as affordable.

It’s going to require acknowledging that the amount of money in the budget for addressing homelessness and affordable-housing construction is just woeful. It’s not enough, and it is a cut from the previous budget, the 2022-23 budget. I know you slapped a new name on it, and you’ve used these figures a lot—$202 million over, you know, $202 million and then $202 million. But it’s a cut; it’s a cut, cut, cut. And the amount of money in the previous budget was woeful, so now you’ve just made it even harder. That is not where we need to go, especially at a time when the cost of everything is going up and people can’t afford the rent. It’s just going up. Food bank use in Ontario has increased by 300%, and shelters—at least in Toronto—are at 100% capacity or more. That’s what we’re facing right now. I’m not seeing this government take that seriously. I’m really not.

And what I’m also seeing—and this is a real tragedy—is that as interest rates go up and the effect of Bill 23 is starting to take hold, we are starting to see affordable housing projects that were viable no longer being viable.

We’re seeing this in Peel. Peel had a plan to build 2,400 affordable homes. It’s at risk because of the $200-million loss in development fees, which means they’ve lost the CMHC’s matching money, which means the entire program is at risk.

It’s the same with the city of Toronto. I’m going to quote Gregg Lintern: “In the absence of the city being fully reimbursed by the province for the lost revenues related to the above legislative changes”—he’s talking about Bill 23—“plus provided with additional financial and policy tools, it will not be able to provide the services and infrastructure essential to support growth over the long term, deliver existing housing programs”—these are affordable housing programs—“to scale up supply, and achieve complete communities overall.”

What Gregg is trying to say is that Toronto’s affordable housing program is also in jeopardy because of this government. It’s in jeopardy. It’s terrible.

What this government is doing is clearly not working. We are proposing real solutions to Ontario’s housing affordability crisis and housing supply crisis, and that means committing to building 1.5 million homes by ending exclusionary zoning, which means allowing triplexes and fourplexes as of right. It means increasing density along transit stations. And it means protecting farmland by holding a firm municipal boundary line so we can protect one of our most important economic drivers in the province.

It also means spurring a career in the trades and recruiting skilled labour to join the trades. And it means making sure that developers pay their fair share. It means bringing in inclusionary zoning so there are more affordable homes being built. Montreal has been doing it for 20 years. Rent is $1,000 less a month in Montreal, and their economy is booming.

Developers need to pay their fair share, and I’m not seeing this government take that seriously. I’m really not, because the city of Toronto has had an exclusionary zoning law on their books for some time now, and this government refuses to let them implement it. That’s a shame, because it’s a massive lost opportunity.

So we need to build these new homes. We need to build these affordable homes. We need a public builder who can build homes at cost on provincial public land so that we can build the kind of affordable homes we need and the size of homes that Ontarians need.

We also need to get real about rent. It is unfathomable to me that we have a situation where there is no rent control on buildings built after 2018. We constantly get calls from people who are being economically evicted because a landlord knows they can get more rent. It is essential that in Ontario, we bring in real rent control and vacancy control so that people who rent have stable, affordable rent, so they can live good lives in this province. It’s essential.

We also need—and this is absolutely essential—to clamp down on investor-led speculation. It is shocking to hear the minister talk about how he believes in home ownership, but you’ve created the market conditions that allow 25% of all new purchases to be purchased by investors. Those homes should be going to first-time homebuyers so that they can live in them, they can raise children in them, they can retire in them, they can go home at night and have dinner in a home they own where they’re paying off their own mortgage and not someone else’s mortgage.

That’s what we stand for. Our housing sector is about providing homes for Ontarians first. Our position to build more affordable homes, to build 1.5 million private-sector homes, to clamp down on speculation and make life more affordable to renters will ensure that we get there.

I am looking forward to committee for Bill 97. My hope is that you take some of the recommendations and concerns that you’re going to hear from stakeholders and us so that we can make life more affordable for renters and we can ensure that our housing sector puts Ontarians first.

You should speak to the OFA; I hope you do.

Interjection: Once you pave it over, you can’t go back.

What is also changing—and I’ll just go into this before I go into the consequences of sprawl—is the new changes to the PPS. It will require municipalities to have enough designated land available for 25 years of growth or more, instead of up to 25 years, which was the previous standard. Essentially, this government is saying, “You need to plan for growth for a really long time out so we can open as much land as possible to our developer friends.”

And there’s no longer any requirement for a municipal comprehensive review. It’s just no longer required anymore, which is, wow, radical. Municipal comprehensive reviews involve municipalities reviewing and updating their official plans so that they’re in line with the growth plan. It’s all about planning right and using the land that we have and the resources that we have in a cost-effective and useful manner. That’s what it’s about. And you’re saying, “No, let’s just do urban sprawl. It’s fine.”

I want to talk a bit about the cost of sprawl. There are a few things. One, I’m going to talk about how it’s expensive to service. When I was preparing for this speech, I looked at a recent study done by Hemson. They were paid by the city of Ottawa to look at the cost of building and maintaining services and infrastructure for low-density homes built on undeveloped land, and to compare that to the cost of maintaining and building services and infrastructure in infill development, such as apartment buildings or duplexes and triplexes—so building in areas already zoned for development. This is what they found. I hope you’re listening, because I know that you like to talk about cost-effectiveness. It costs $465 per person each year to serve new low-density homes built on undeveloped land. It’s a net loss to municipalities. Compare that to servicing homes in areas already zoned for development. It’s actually a net gain. When you factor in the property tax revenue and all that, municipalities actually gain $606. They gain when you build in areas already zoned for development, and they lose money when you service areas that are about single-family homes and suburban sprawl. When we’re talking about providing services in a cost-effective manner, sprawl is bad—just to make it really simple—and providing services to infill housing is better. This is particularly relevant right now because across the GTHA and across Ontario homeowners are opening up their property tax bills, either by email or in the mail, and they’re seeing big tax hikes. We actually did a little bit of a survey to look at what kind of tax hikes are coming. And it’s because of Bill 23 and your tax cut giveaway to developers that these hikes are coming. Durham region, 5% property tax hike; Clarington, 4%; Waterloo region, 8.55%—

Burlington, 7.5%; Niagara Falls, 7.4%; Niagara region, 7.58%; Newmarket, 7.67%—these are big tax hikes—and Toronto, 7%. There’s a whole range. I read out the higher ones, but almost all of them are seeing a property tax hike. At the same time, they’re also seeing service cuts. So you get a property tax hike, and you get service cuts, and you’re seeing delays in necessary infrastructure maintenance. When you all get in your cars or walk down the sidewalk or take the TTC, you’re going to see more potholes, because cities no longer have the money available to maintain our services to a standard that we expect.

Interjection.

This is happening in Waterloo. The member for Waterloo has raised this. There is a development at Beaver Creek Road and Conservation Drive. It’s a large subdivision, and they are delaying approval because the municipality in the region cannot afford to service it.

Interjection.

What you’re doing is actually hurting your own goals of improving housing supply. You don’t care about affordability. But on your own goals of supply, you’re failing.

I’m not going to spend tons of time on this because sometimes environmental messaging doesn’t work so well with the Conservatives, but I’m going to bring up one thing: It is so environmentally destructive to create the kind of housing development system that we’re going to create, because it locks people into soul-destroying commutes to get to where they want to go. When you’re building single-family homes, the density is not there to provide a bus or a streetcar or a train to provide transit to these areas. What that means is that when Ontarians buy these homes, they’re going to have to have one car or two cars to get wherever they want to go. It’s so expensive, and it’s going to blow our greenhouse gas targets out of the water, because transportation and building are the leading contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. This kind of approach to planning and building will lock us into unbelievably unsustainable development patterns. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that, because I think it’s going to be not necessarily the message that’s going to convince you—but the cost thing, at least think about that. I know your constituents—

Interjection.

It’s good to be standing here today to speak about Bill 97, the government’s Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act. This bill was introduced last Thursday, the Thursday before, and it came as part of a flurry of announcements and proposals and decisions that the government introduced. Not only did we get this bill, which proposes eight regulatory changes to Ontario’s renting and planning laws, but it happened at the same time as this government’s decision to begin the process of merging the growth plan with the provincial policy statement to create a new provincial planning statement, and also to rewrite and redraw six new municipal official plans. So it was really a big week for the government’s insistence that doubling down on sprawl is the way out of our housing crisis, and I’m here to tell you loud and clear that it is not.

How I’m going to take up my hour today is that I’m going to give you my initial thoughts about what this bill means, what these proposed regulatory changes mean. Then I’m going to go into the proposed changes into some more detail, especially around Bill 97, and a little bit around the growth plan and the provincial policy statement, because they really are twinned with this bill and they’re very much related to the “helping homebuyers” statement in the title. And then I’m going to talk a little bit about some of the solutions that we are advocating for, which really focus on helping Ontarians get that home they can afford and a lot less on the Conservatives’ plan, which is really to help their developer donor friends make a whole lot of money—from renters, in particular.

The Conservatives have introduced and passed many housing bills and the take-home message for me is that what this government is doing right now is not working because buying and renting a home in Ontario has never been more expensive. It’s never been more expensive. And for a period of time, when your government got into power, it would have been very easy for you to turn to the Liberals and say, “Oh, look, that’s on you.” I get that. But now this government has been in power for five years and so those claims of blaming another party are ringing hollow, because this government has had five years to fix the housing affordability crisis and you haven’t. It’s never been more expensive to rent and it has never been more expensive to buy a home.

In this bill, the title is “protecting tenants,” and when I read through the details of the proposed changes that are being made, my initial thought was that this is certainly better than the status quo—and the status quo is pretty hard, is pretty bad for renters right now. But I would summarize it as saying that these changes certainly don’t go far enough. And when I really look into the details, the proposals that this government is making to protect tenants from illegal eviction are so flimsy to the point that they would not be effective at all. It’s not just me saying this; it’s leading housing stakeholders—ACTO, FMTA, housing advocacy groups—because you really don’t deal with the issue of enforcement, and I’m going to get to that when I go into the details.

The other thing I noticed here was around this government’s decision to look at what the Human Rights Tribunal ruled, to allow tenants to have an air conditioning unit so that they’re not miserably hot or at risk of heat stroke in our increasingly hot summers. And only this government could concoct a move where they could turn a Human Rights Tribunal ruling into a rent hike for renters. Only this government could think of a clever way of doing that, so well done for you.

My other key messages before I get into the details, the other key thoughts I had are that the decision to double down on sprawl and upend our planning, how we plan and how we build in this province, is just going to make it so much more expensive for municipalities to provide the services that these new developments are going to need, from daycares to roads to electricity to transit. All these services are going to cost more, because it costs so much more to service a low-density, single-family-home subdivision than it does to service and to provide the necessary infrastructure when you build in areas that are already zoned for development.

What this means on a practical level is that the tax hikes that Ontarians are seeing in their property tax bills—they’re getting these property tax bills now. They’re going to see another tax hike and another tax hike and another tax hike, coupled with service cuts, because it is so expensive to build this infrastructure and maintain this infrastructure for this low-density suburban sprawl, this very backwards approach to planning that you’re moving forward on in this misguided hope—it’s becoming very clear now—in a way that it’s not going to address the housing affordability crisis and not even the housing supply crisis.

The final note before I get into the details is that I was troubled to hear the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing refuse to admit that he will not commit any further encroachment to the greenbelt. He did that in question period, he did that in the press conference that took place immediately after the introduction of Bill 97, and that is a real shame, because Ontarians have been very, very clear—thousands and thousands of emails and calls and rallies have been organized on this—that they want this government to keep their promise and keep the greenbelt whole and to protect farmland. The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing cannot even commit to not encroaching on the greenbelt further, and I think that’s a shame.

We need real solutions to address our housing crisis, and that means not just talking about housing supply, which is absolutely essential, but also talking about housing affordability. I’m not seeing this government take housing affordability seriously or look at the relationship between housing supply and housing affordability. Sometimes I think the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has difficulty saying the words “housing affordability.”

What I want to see this government move forward on is a commitment to build more homes by ending exclusionary zoning in a serious way—you’ve taken some half-hearted steps there, but need to go further—investing in the construction of affordable homes, clamping down on investor-led speculations so first-time homebuyers can buy the home, and making rent affordable again, making it so that people who rent can afford to live in this province, because right now they can’t, and they’re leaving. The trends for interprovincial migration right now are through the roof. It’s masked because immigration trends to Ontario are going up very fast, but young people, skilled people, people who work in these high-need sectors like construction and health care—they’re looking at our province, they’re looking at the cost of buying a home, they’re looking at how much it costs to rent, they’re realizing they’re not even able to save, and they’re saying, “I’m moving to Saskatchewan, I’m moving to Alberta. I’m getting out of here.” That’s a shame because they’re taking their talents with them.

That’s my overall assessment of the bill, and now I’m going to go into the details, and there are a lot of details. The first thing I’m going to talk about is municipal rent-protection laws. When I read this bill—it was very interesting—I noticed that schedule 2 and schedule 5 of Bill 97 allow the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to eliminate, weaken and alter municipal rental replacement bylaws. I must say, this is a slight improvement from Bill 23, which just gave the Conservatives the power to weaken or eliminate rental replacement bylaws, and now the Conservatives, the government of the day, is giving themselves the power to improve rental replacement bylaws as well. I would call that a step in the right direction.

I want to take a step back for those who are listening just to explain what rental replacement bylaws are. Essentially, these are the laws that govern what developers must do if they demolish a rental building and replace it with a condo. I heard the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing talk on and on about how developers are going to come in and they’re going to look at these mid-size rental buildings, they’re going to demolish them and then they’re going to replace them with big purpose-built rentals. That is not what is happening in Ontario today. What is happening is that developers are looking at these purpose-built rentals—some of them are mid-sized; some of them are really big—and they don’t want to turn it into purpose-built rentals. Some of them might be, but the vast majority of them are going to be condos. That’s what they are, so I’ll make sure to communicate with the minister about that fact.

There are a few municipalities that have these rental replacement bylaws—Mississauga, Hamilton and Toronto—and other cities were looking into it as well, such as Ottawa, although the minister has gutted Ottawa’s rental replacement bylaw in the rewriting of Ottawa’s municipal plan, which is a shame. Toronto’s is one of the best. Toronto’s bylaw requires developers to return that tenant to an equivalent rent-controlled apartment at about the same rent, after construction of the new, bigger condo is complete, and also compensate the tenant for the period of time they are out of their unit while the construction is taking place. That can take two, sometimes three, years—sometimes more.

The amount of money a tenant receives varies depending on what the city negotiates with each developer, and it is our position that a tenant shouldn’t be losing any money. That top-up should match what the tenant paid in the building that’s being demolished and what they have to pay for an equivalent unit in the nearby area while they’re waiting for construction to be complete.

We didn’t pull this out of the sky. This is what’s happening in Burnaby, BC, right now, and Burnaby, BC, has one of the highest rates of construction in the country—just to make that point.

So this is a very important bylaw, and when people, renters, are discovering that the Ontario government is wanting to gut this rental replacement bylaw, they are terrified. They are scared. They are losing sleep because they are fearful that this government is going to gut these rental replacement bylaws and make it very difficult for them to get back into their unit that they’ve held on to for many years.

I participated in a recent protest organized by tenants in some of the buildings that are slated for demolition in the city of Toronto, about two weeks ago. Those buildings include 25 St. Mary, 145 St. George and 55 Brownlow. These are big rental buildings. Over a hundred people came out, and they spoke one after the other about how scared they were, how long they’ve lived in the area, how they don’t know if they’ll be able to find another affordable rental apartment if they have to move out.

One person we’ve been working with for a while: Her name is Pat. She’s in her eighties. She’s on a fixed income. She has worked her entire life. She is terrified that if she is forced to move, she will never find an affordable unit in the Annex community that she calls home. I don’t want her to have to move out and never get back into a unit, and I don’t want her to say goodbye to her friends and family who live in the area, as well.

And it’s not just them. We asked the city of Toronto to give us an understanding of how many units are at risk right now, and there are 3,441 properties in the city of Toronto right now that are at risk of being demolished, and if this government doesn’t come up with strong rental protection laws, at risk of never being replaced. That’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders, because these renters want to keep their homes.

What I also find concerning is that the number of deals that developers are making with the city to demolish these units under the city’s current strong rental protection laws have been stalled, because many of these developers are sitting back and saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We shouldn’t make a deal now, under the city of Toronto’s really strong rental protection laws. We’re going to wait and see what happens with this provincial law, because maybe we’re going to get a good deal. So we’re going to wait and see, because maybe we won’t even have to move these tenants back, or we will, but the enforcement laws will be so weak that for all intents and purposes—ehh—they’ll have permanently lost their homes.”

That is exactly what’s happening. Since the passage of Bill 23, just one demolishing approval has been approved by the city of Toronto—just one. So you can imagine these tenants are pretty worried.

And it’s not just these 3,441 units that are at stake. If the Conservative government chooses to gut these municipal rental replacement bylaws, it will mean that this government is choosing to declare open season on these tenants who live in purpose-built-rental areas that are already zoned for height, because it means that it’ll be cheaper for developers to come in, knock these purpose-built rentals down and build very expensive condos that renters will not be able to afford. Someone like Pat is not going to be able to afford a $700,000 condo. They’re just not, not on a fixed income. These people will be priced out of their neighbourhoods.

That means so much is at stake. The future of private market affordable housing in the city is at stake. The affordability of our province is at stake. And there are so many private market affordable homes that are at risk because of this government’s enthusiasm to just listen to developers and not listen to what it’s like to be a renter in this city, in this province, and how they need to have affordable housing as well. I urge you to look hard at that and really come up with a provincial rental replacement law which is strong.

When I go and look at the regulation that the government has set up to get in feedback for what this provincial rental replacement bylaw will look like—which is where I think you’re going—I see some concerns. The one concern I see is that the government wants to give developers some flexibility on what kind of home a renter can return to, likely one that still has the same number of bedrooms but is likely smaller in size than the original. I think that’s concerning, that there is a move by this government to listen to developers but not to listen to renters.

It is a concern, because developers can get very creative when they’re looking at meeting the requirement of a two-bedroom unit. There are units that are being built in my riding of University–Rosedale right now that are three bedrooms plus a den, but they’re only 1,000 square feet. You need to be very careful about giving developers flexibility, because a renter might find out—if they get to move back into these units—that the unit is far smaller in size than the kind of unit they lived in in the purpose-built rental before it was demolished. I’m a little worried about that.

I want to be very clear, before I move into the next piece, about what we are advocating for. We look to what Burnaby, BC, is doing as a model. Like I said, housing construction in that area is extremely high. What we want to see is a strong commitment that renters can return to their rent-controlled unit after construction is complete; that there is a rent top-up equal to the difference in rent they paid at the home that they had—a home that they’ll have to find in the same area, during construction; and that there is a very firm commitment to guarantee that a tenant can come back into their rent-controlled unit. Renters didn’t cause this housing crisis, so renters shouldn’t be the victims of this housing crisis.

Interjection.