This bill calls on the government to establish a committee to come up with a plan to make the Union Pearson Express affordable, to integrate it into the TTC so it costs a TTC fare to ride; to increase capacity; and to electrify the line. This would be the cheapest mass-transit line Toronto could ever get. It’s very sensible, and that’s what this bill proposes to do.

Mr. Shamji moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 203, An Act to amend the Commitment to the Future of Medicare Act, 2004 with respect to payments to nurse practitioners / Projet de loi 203, Loi modifiant la Loi de 2004 sur l’engagement d’assurer l’avenir de l’assurance-santé à l’égard des honoraires à verser aux infirmières praticiennes et aux infirmiers praticiens.

This petition asks that the rates for Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program be doubled in order to address poverty in Ontario.

I support this petition, and I will be affixing my signature to it and giving it to page Sophia.

My question is to the Premier. Yesterday, the government introduced a housing bill that is both unambitious and underwhelming. The government has chosen to ignore the top recommendations from its own Housing Affordability Task Force, including legalizing fourplexes in towns and cities.

What is stopping this government from showing leadership and doing more to build homes in neighbourhoods people want to live in?

When I read this bill, I’ve got to say, I think this government is a sucker for punishment, because the Conservatives are once again looking at making it easier to build sprawl on farmland. The last time the government did this—they launched a criminal RCMP investigation into your own activities.

My question is this: Why do you keep trying to find new ways to pave over farmland?

The worst thing about yesterday’s bill is what is not in it. There is nothing in this bill for renters. There is nothing to lower rent. There is nothing to stop illegal evictions. There is nothing to fix the Landlord and Tenant Board.

My question is to the Premier. Why does this government keep leaving renters behind?

When I look at this budget, my first impression is that it doesn’t make it much easier for people to get a doctor. It doesn’t make it easier for our kids to get a good education. It doesn’t make it easier for people to rent or buy a home that they can afford.

To the member for Guelph: When you’re looking at how this budget is going to impact the residents of Guelph, what’s missing?

My question is to the Premier. We have learned the Conservatives are failing to build affordable housing along the Ontario Line. Of the 13,000 homes scheduled to be built along the line, only 213 of them are required to be affordable.

My question is very simple: Can this government commit to building more affordable housing near transit?

Back to the Premier: Toronto has submitted over 104 requests to this government to require developers to build some affordable housing in big buildings near transit. The Conservatives have not approved any of these requests—not one of them. If the government had approved these requests when asked, we’d be on track to build 6,000 affordable homes. This is a massive wasted opportunity.

My question is very simple: When is this government going to require developers to build some affordable housing in big developments near transit?

My question is to the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills. Bill 23, just to be clear, has removed the fee that developers have to pay to affordable housing projects. Every development no longer has to pay the fee for affordable housing projects, and that part of Bill 23 is in force. What that has meant is that municipalities have lost funding for affordable housing and shelter at a time when we have a homelessness crisis. The city of Toronto has lost $200 million in funding just for affordable housing and shelters.

My question to the member for Mississauga–Erin Mills is, what is this government going to do to make municipalities whole so there’s funding available for affordable housing?

Back to the Premier: It’s like “affordable housing” is a little bit too hard, so let’s try “attainable housing.”

Speaker, 18 months ago, the Conservatives said they would come up with an exact definition of “attainable housing” in order to further construction of attainable homes. It’s 18 months later, and the law is still not enforced. The government still cannot decide what the definition of “attainable” is going to be, and not one home has been built under this new program either.

Why on earth is it taking the government so long to get these programs off the ground?

Interjections.

My question is to the Premier. For nearly two years now, the Ford government has refused to give Toronto the green light to move ahead with inclusionary zoning, which would require developers to build some affordable homes in new big developments.

This feels like a double standard. We’ve got the government letting lobbyists quickly rewrite official plans to benefit their speculator friends, but at the same time this government is dragging its heels on making sure developers do their part to solve the affordable housing crisis.

So this is my question to the Premier: When will this government stop blocking Toronto’s inclusionary zoning law and allow the construction of much-needed affordable homes?

When will this government give the green light to build these supportive housing homes in Willowdale so we can house people who have no home at all?

My question is to the Premier.

A new report by the National Bank of Canada shows that home affordability in Ontario has reached alarming levels. In Toronto, you need to earn $235,000 to buy a home. In Hamilton, you need to earn $220,000 a year to buy a home.

The Conservatives are not fixing the housing crisis; they’re making it worse. It has never been more expensive to rent or buy a home.

How expensive does housing have to get for the Conservatives to recognize their plan is not working?

Not only has the dream of home ownership gone up in smoke, but Ontarians can’t even find an affordable place to rent. The latest report by rentals.ca has just come out, and rent for available apartments continues to skyrocket. In North York, rent is up 24% year over year; in Scarborough, rent has gone up 30%; in Brampton, it’s up 30%; and in Markham, it’s up 30%. There is nowhere affordable left for people to live.

Once again, this is my question to the Premier: How bad does it have to get for the Conservatives to change course and seriously address the housing affordability crisis that we have in Ontario today?

Interjections.

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.

My question is to the member for Ottawa Centre. Thank you for your speech. I know you very much care about the residents of Ottawa Centre.

My question is focused on housing. When you look at this budget, do you believe this budget adequately addresses the housing affordability crisis that you see in your riding?

My question is to the Premier. Nikki has lived in a rental home for two years. She pays $1,995 for a 600-square-foot basement apartment. Earlier this month, her landlord slapped her with a $200 rent increase, and now Nikki can no longer afford to pay the rent. This unaffordable rent increase is allowed because this government scrapped rent control on new units.

As more and more people in Ontario are struggling to pay the rent, what is this government’s plan to make rent affordable now?

I’m proud to be standing up today to speak to the budget bill. It was released last week. Quite frankly, this budget doesn’t meet the moment.

Ontarians are struggling with affordability. When I think about my riding, I think about the food bank line I have to pass on the way to work, on College Street at Spadina, for the Fort York Food Bank. Every time I go by, week after week, it’s astonishing how many people are waiting for food because they can’t make things work anymore.

I think about the people I meet who cannot afford to pay the astronomical amount that they’re paying for rent. Even when they have good-paying jobs, earning $80,000 and up a year, they’re astonished that they still cannot find a place that works for them and their family in my riding that’s affordable, especially with rent upwards of $2,500 a month if you’re looking for a new one-bedroom apartment in our riding.

I also think about the hospitals in my riding as well: Toronto Western, Toronto General, SickKids. When I look at the emergency room wait-lists in my riding and in hospitals across Ontario, I hear that it takes 22 hours. The average wait is 22 hours when you go to the emergency room right now.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this budget does enough to help people. Those examples that I gave explain how people in my riding are not going to be adequately met by this budget.

There was a Toronto Star editorial, “An Ontario Budget Without Vision.” There is a sentence in here that I think really summarizes nicely what this budget is about, and I’m going to read it: “If this budget were a Christmas present, it would be a three-pack of white socks. Not entirely useless. But an exercise in going through the motions.” That’s not a round of applause there, folks.

Especially at a time when we have record inflation of 6.8% and we have a budget that, overall, increases spending by 1%, what we are going to see is cuts in services. On a real level, we’re going to see cuts in services. I want to spend my time going through some of the ministries and some of the sectors to look at the specifics.

The first one that I want to touch on is health care. Health care funding is essentially the same as last year. There’s some COVID money that you’ve stored on to and you’ve put onto the budget for this year, but essentially funding is the same as last year. That is especially concerning given that emergency rooms across Ontario are closing on weekends—that’s unheard of; I’ve never heard of that before—and when we’re seeing that wait time in emergency rooms, and we’re also seeing, according to the Financial Accountability Officer, thousands of people waiting for necessary surgery.

I’ve had a lot of parents reach out to me in my riding, because I have SickKids. I’ve spoken to the CEO of SickKids and their staff there to get an understanding of what kind of time period people are waiting there. We have 12,000 kids who are waiting for necessary surgery, and what is also concerning is that many of these children are waiting for surgery so long that they’re beyond the point where they can get best outcomes. I can’t imagine the stress that a parent would be going through to know that their child has moved beyond the window, where they’re not getting their surgery in a time frame where their child can reach their full potential and fully recover. That’s extremely concerning.

What’s also concerning in the budget is that there is a decision to direct more money to for-profit health clinics. I’m deeply disturbed by that. The main reason why I’m disturbed by that is because I have seen what happens when you bring in a two-tiered system, a public health care system and a for-profit health care system that healthier and wealthier people can access. I saw it in Australia, and it is not something to replicate.

We’re also seeing the impact of a two-tier health care system already in the situation that’s happening in the Ottawa Hospital, where operating rooms are being rented out on the weekend to a consortium of doctors for orthopedic surgeries. We are hearing from nurses that the decision to rent out those rooms is resulting in an exodus of nursing staff time going to staff those operating rooms on the weekend, and it has led to a reduction in the number of cancer surgeries that can be done during regular times at the Ottawa Hospital on weekdays, because the private surgery clinic can pay nurses a lot more, and they’re walking with their feet. I’m very concerned about that model because it does seem like there are some unintended consequences with this decision to create two-tiered health care. I encourage the Conservatives to look into that, investigate and make up your own mind on that, because it is deeply concerning. What are the guardrails that are going to be set up to ensure that the kind of issue we’re already seeing does not expand and continue?

When it comes to mental health, I do see that there is $425 million dedicated to community mental health care and addictions. Personally, I see that as a good sign. I would like more, but that is a good sign. The reason why I see it as a good sign in my riding is because we have a horrible opioid crisis in our riding; we have people dying and overdosing in washrooms, Tim Hortons, McDonald’s, and it is extremely concerning. These people need help. It is a step in the right direction. It’s not enough, but it’s a step in the right direction that there is an acknowledgement that funding for mental health needs to increase.

Then there’s transit. When it comes to operations and maintenance, I am very worried about the provincial government’s decision to not continue to fund operating funding in this budget. There was a decision by the federal government and the Ontario government to provide emergency operating funding during COVID, and that was a very good decision, because when operating funding and maintenance funding is provided, it provides this additional revenue when ridership is down, and it ensures that our buses run frequently and our trains run frequently. Now that that money is no longer there, what we are going to see is an increase in the cuts that we’re already starting to see in Toronto. In my riding, we are going to see less service on line 2, which many of you might take to get to work. We’re also going to see cuts to Queen Street and Dufferin Street.

When you look at the cuts that are happening with the TTC, what’s most disturbing is that the worst cuts are happening in the marginalized areas, the lower-income areas, the racialized areas—it’s bus service. That’s a shame, because the lines this government is looking at funding—the Ontario Line, the Yonge line extension—are not going to be in service for upwards of 10 years. What’s going to happen in the meantime? How are we going to build the city that we need, where people can get from A to B at a cheap price and quickly, if we’re not funding operations and maintenance? It’s the lifeblood of our city, and I’m very disappointed by that decision there.

Then there’s the issue of housing. I’m hearing the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing talk on and on and on about how there is an additional $202 million each year for two years for homelessness prevention and Indigenous supportive housing, but do not think for a second that this is new money. When you look at the budget and you go to how much money the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing was allocated in 2022-23, and you compare that to how much they were allocated in 2023-24, you see a $124-million cut. For all practical purposes, municipalities are going to be seeing less funding for supportive housing, affordable housing and shelter services than they did in the previous year, and that is at a time when homelessness is on the rise. You know it. You see it. I’m sure some of you are living in towns where you are seeing the first encampment you have seen in decades, because people can’t afford housing anymore. So it is deeply concerning that there is a cut there.

This is also happening at a time when the Conservatives are moving ahead with Bill 23, which is hampering and curbing municipalities’ ability to require developers to pay their fair share for the partial cost of infrastructure, to pay for what is necessary for the new people who are coming in. Affordable housing, co-op housing—you like to say all this is about that. The vast majority of the cuts in development fee revenue will not be coming from co-operative housing and non-market housing, because most of that housing already gets a massive development fee discount. The city of Toronto has an Open Door program where if a developer is going to be building truly affordable housing, they already get their development fee waived.

The bulk of the cut is going to be taking place with the new market housing that is being built, especially on park services and on the thousand-dollar development charge that’s allocated to housing services and shelter services. I’m urging this government to look at that, because infrastructure is necessary for Ontario to grow, and you are curbing municipalities’ ability to build the infrastructure that is necessary to house new people and make our cities function well.

The final piece I want to talk about is about education. The Conservatives, with this budget, like to say that there has been a historic investment in education. That is not true. The funding increase that has been allocated to the education budget is overwhelmingly a result of the $2.3 billion in federal money that is earmarked to child care, which you have merged into the education budget, then claiming it’s your money and it’s all about education JK to SK. It is not true. It is federal money, and it is going to child care.

We know the full extent of the cuts when we look at what school boards are saying are going to be the cuts. School boards across Ontario are developing their budgets right now, and what we are already seeing with the school boards that have developed their budgets and are projecting into 2023-24 is that they are experiencing cuts. The Toronto District School Board is estimating a $61-million shortfall, with a loss of 522 staffing positions. The Toronto Catholic District School Board is also estimating a shortfall, and the Ottawa-Carleton school board is also estimating a shortfall.

I am very concerned that if this government does not address and increase the Grants for Student Needs funding, then our kids are not going to get the support they need in the classroom that will allow them to reach their full potential.

These are the comments that I have to make about the budget today. I’m looking forward to your questions.

I’m very concerned about Bill 39, and we did vote against it returning to committee. The reason why we are so concerned about Bill 39 is because it consolidates political power in the hands of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the Premier at the expense of everyone else—you, I, the citizens of Toronto, Ottawa, Peel and more. It is a fundamentally concerning bill.

Bill 39 has nothing to do with solving the housing affordability crisis and helping people find a home that meets their needs.

If this government was serious about addressing the housing affordability crisis, we would have seen rent go down over the last four and a half years—but it hasn’t; it has gone up.

If this government was serious about addressing the housing affordability crisis, we would see housing prices go down and be more affordable for first-time homebuyers—but they haven’t; they’ve gone up.

If this government was serious about addressing the housing affordability crisis, we’d see a plan to address homelessness—but we haven’t.

The Auditor General said you had no plan in 2021. Now 2022 has come by, and you still don’t have a plan. The homelessness crisis has gotten worse and worse and worse.

No, this bill is about helping the Premier’s wealthy developer friends. That’s what this bill is about. This bill is about bulldozing local decision-making power so the Premier can wield more raw power. It is an affront to democracy.

I’m going to explain the bill to you. It’s a very short bill—three short sections. They’re all bad.

The first schedule, schedule 1, City of Toronto Act: Apparently, the mayor of Toronto asked for this in secret after Bill 3 was introduced, probably before the election on October 24—and this government gave them the power, which is really abhorrent. The power you gave them is extremely disturbing because it flies in the face of representative democracy and everything that we hold dear about democracy. It allows Mayor Tory to introduce and pass legislation with just one third of city council support—eight votes. That takes away power from everyday citizens. It takes away power from city councillors. It means that we will create and pass legislation which is not as good as it should be, because it will not go through the deliberative process, the discussion that needs to happen in order to create good legislation. It is a shame.

Schedule 2 is also terrible. It’s the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Repeal Act.

Interjection: Shame.

This schedule eliminates laws and gives the green light for the Ontario government to pave over a large section of class 1 farmland.

Report after report after report that is coming out in the media is telling a very disturbing story, and the story is this: A large chunk of this land is owned by some of the PC Party’s wealthiest, highest donors.

When you look at the alignment between what is being carved out of the greenbelt and given the green light for development, and you align that with the amount of land that the De Gasperis family owns, it is—maybe it could be a coincidence, but it really does look like collusion. That’s what it really looks like. And it’s being handed over. What this looks like—or what it could look like—is that this family bought this land, very cheap, that was protected with easements to remain as farmland permanently, and then, maybe, they were the only ones who were given the heads-up that this land was going to be green-lighted for development, giving them the opportunity to make untold profit, because they’re then given permission to sell off and develop this land. That’s what it looks like.

What is so disturbing is that this government loves to wrap themselves in the flag and say, “We’re doing this to solve the housing affordability crisis,” but the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force was very, very clear; the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force says access to land is not the reason why we have a housing supply shortage and why we have a housing affordability crisis. That is not the issue here. The real issue is, what can we do with the land that is already zoned for development? That is the real conversation we should be having here—instead of paving over precious greenbelt land and farmland. It is extremely concerning.

The final part of the bill, schedule 3, is also short but terrible. There are two parts to it. One, the government has decided that democratically decided regional chairs are not so important, and in fact, it’s going to be the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing who gets to hand-pick the regional chairs for Niagara, Peel and York. That’s an absolute consolidation of power. The second thing I find so concerning is that, in the second part of schedule 3, this government gives themselves the authority to extend strong-mayor powers to any municipality they want through regulation. That is extremely concerning. It says it right here: Any mayor that they want, just through regulation, can have the power to pass budgets with just one third support of city councillors.

Interjection.

The government’s Housing Affordability Task Force was unequivocal that access to land is not the reason why we are having difficulty meeting our housing supply targets. Southern Ontario has more than enough land available to build the housing that we need for current and future Ontarians in land already zoned for development.

Environmental Defence has done a study looking at people’s enthusiasm for increasing density, so building more townhomes, duplexes and triplexes in existing neighbourhoods, and mid-rise buildings across transit corridors, and their polling clearly shows that people are pretty in support of that. I also find that in my riding: People want their children to move out of their basement and live in the neighbourhood that they grew up in, and they understand that we have a housing affordability crisis.

When we’re talking about building permits, in the city of Toronto, they approve about 30,000 building permits a year, and about 15,000 are done, so there is a discrepancy there that I think needs to be addressed, at least in the riding that I represent.

Thank you to the member for Oshawa—

Interjection.

Yes, okay—but what you’ve done is, you’ve made it so that the adjudicator can award costs. What that means is, the losing party is likely to pay costs to the winning party. What that means, for all intents and purposes, is that well-off groups can use the land tribunal but citizens’ groups cannot; they’ll think twice, and that’s very concerning. That passed, too, which is very unfortunate.

I have a request of this government. This is the government’s vision for how we should address the housing crisis. This is not going to address our housing affordability crisis. It’s going to harm democracy, public services, our farmland, municipal budgets and rental affordability. We do not need to sacrifice everything we hold dear to help developers and your wealthy developer donor friends.

There are other ways to address our housing affordability crisis. We can say yes to government investment in affordable homes. We certainly say yes to building 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. We say yes to zoning reform so that we can build more townhomes, duplexes and triplexes in existing neighbourhoods. We say yes to increasing density near transit so we can build those walkable, transit-oriented neighbourhoods, those neighbourhoods people want to live in. We can build them too. We also say yes to building on public land so we can build affordable housing on public land, which is something this government is not doing. We should say yes and we are saying yes to real rent controls to make housing affordable, and we’re saying yes to addressing the homelessness crisis and the affordable housing crisis and the supportive housing crisis that exists in all our municipalities by saying yes to rent control and yes to building affordable housing and supportive housing.

Housing is a human right. We should be housing based on need. We should be building housing for Ontarians.

When it comes to reducing and eliminating development fees for co-ops and non-market housing, that is a measure that we support and we are pleased to see that in the bill.

I rise again to speak to Bill 23. I want to summarize my take on the bill, and then we’re going to go into what I heard in committee, and then, in the final section, we are going to go into the amendments that we introduced, that the independents introduced, that the Liberals introduced and that the government introduced, and then I’m going to conclude.

So, in short, the government’s bill, Bill 23, claims that it’s all about fixing the housing affordability crisis. That is categorically false. There is no evidence that Bill 23 will lower home prices. There is no evidence that Bill 23 will lower rent prices. What we do know for sure is that Bill 23 will harm democracy. It will pave over the farmland. It will impact the greenbelt. It will impact public services and the quality of services that we have in our municipalities, and it will make life more expensive for renters in cities. I’m very concerned about it.

This government likes to say that they’re solving the housing affordability crisis. When I look at this government’s track record over the last four and a half years, the government’s record at helping people find a home that meets their needs, that they can afford, is abysmal. I give it an F. During the government’s reign, the cost of buying or renting a home has reached record heights. The Conservatives have betrayed the Canadian dream that a good home can be found if you work hard. In fact, the Conservatives have betrayed the basic human right that if you work very hard, you will find a home that you can afford to rent, and if you did, the government has now made it easier for a developer to kick you out and convert your rental into a luxury condo. That’s what Bill 23 will allow to happen.

In committee, we heard from such a broad spectrum of society, such a broad spectrum of Ontario. We heard from municipalities. We heard from regional municipalities. We heard from renters and housing advocates. We heard from environmentalists and conservation authorities. We heard from citizens who were very concerned about their democratic rights being threatened. And the overall message we heard was, “Stop. Let’s look at the unintended consequences of this bill. Let’s analyze the consequences of this bill, and let’s stop.” There are better ways to address our housing shortage than what this bill has planned.

I’m going to move into what I heard in committee, and I do want to start off by saying thank you to all the people that sent in written submissions; there were hundreds of you. Thank you to the people that signed up to speak. There were over a hundred people that signed up to speak. Not all of them got the chance to do so. We did call for additional days of hearings, so we could make sure this sweeping land use planning bill had the proper consultation that it deserves, and this government turned those motions to extend hearings down.

I do want to summarize some of the submissions that I heard in committee. The first one that I would like to share is from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. They were very concerned by Bill 23. They used the word “radical.” I’ve never heard the Association of Municipalities of Ontario use the word “radical,” but they did in their submission, because they’re so concerned about this bill. They said, “The province has offered no evidence that the radical elements of the bill will improve housing affordability. It is more likely that the bill will enhance the profitability of the development industry at the expense of taxpayers and the natural environment.”

They went on and itemized the financial impact of Bill 23 on municipalities across Ontario, and the analysis is scary. Their preliminary analysis indicates that Bill 23, if enacted, would reduce the municipal resources available to service new development by more than $5.1 billion over the next nine years. That is a huge amount of money, and that’s a huge amount of money at a time when we need to improve and expand upon our infrastructure so that we can have the services we need for current Ontarians and new Ontarians. We’re heading in the wrong direction.

They also talked about this bill’s impact on parks, and the reason why I bring up parkland dedication is that what Bill 23 is doing is it reduces the amount of space that a development needs to allocate to parks, or the funding that will be allocated to parks, by approximately half. As an individual who lives in a riding that is very dense—we have one of the densest ridings across Canada, along with Toronto Centre, Etobicoke–Lakeshore and Spadina–Fort York—the idea of having MPPs that do not represent Toronto decide how much park space is going to be allocated in Toronto is really quite shocking, especially at a time when more and more people are living in apartments, the size of apartments is shrinking and park space is that lifeline to get that break, to walk your dog, to play with your kids, to just relax. That’s being cut by this bill. It’s a shame, and they were very angry that they were not given the chance to speak to committee.

Another submission: This is one of the first submissions and one of the most interesting submissions that we received. This is from Carolyn Whitzman. She has worked with the CMHC before. She’s an expert adviser to the Housing Assessment Resource Tools project. Like me, there were some things in Bill 23 that she likes. She was fairly balanced in her approach. She, like us, agrees that we need to build 1.5 million new homes to meet the needs of current and future Ontarians, but she recommends that we not just focus on homes as a target but have sub-targets so we can meet the actual needs of Ontarians who intend to live in the homes they buy or rent, raise children in these homes, have pets and retire, as opposed to seeing them as a place for profit. She is very focused on ensuring we build homes for Ontarians to live in.

She breaks it down about how this government needs to have sub-targets that focus on homes based on income and homes based on square footage, so we’re not just building those 600-square-foot condos, we’re not just building those 3,000-square-foot multi-million-dollar McMansions on farmland, but we’re really thinking about the kind of homes that students need, that low-income people need, that people who want to downsize need, that families need. In her analysis she estimates that, based on need, we are short about 748,000 homes right now, and overwhelmingly, the people who need homes are people who are poor, people who are working poor, people who are homeless, people who are moderate income and people who are middle income.

When I look at Bill 23, I see a lot of talk about addressing the housing supply crisis. I see nothing about actually drilling into the details to build homes that meet the need based on income and size and who is actually going to live in them. I encourage you to look at Caroline Whitzman’s analysis because it is excellent.

This is another submission we received. This from the Toronto Atmospheric Fund. The minute that Bill 23 came out they immediately sounded the alarm and said, “Oh, my goodness. Bill 23, by eliminating site plan control on buildings 10 units or less, guts green building standards because it means municipalities have very little control over green building standards.”

Green building standards are really important. That is the future for us. That is where our building stock should go. It enables us to build well-made, energy-efficient homes where our energy bills are cheaper, where we can control stormwater runoff, where we can encourage the growth of our tree canopy. It’s our future. But in order for these sustainable design standards, these green building standards, to be encouraged—this is the building industry asking for this. We shouldn’t gut the green building standards.

These are the municipalities that already have sustainable design standards. There’s Toronto, Ottawa, Brampton, Ajax, Whitby, Pickering and Markham. They are very concerned. They are very concerned.

Then there was a submission from the Ontario Alliance to End Homelessness. I found this to be a very good submission because it talks about something that this government never talks about—I never hear them talk about homelessness—when we are talking about Bill 23. A lot of this submission is very rational and factual, but what really struck me was their closing paragraph, where, taking away the statistics, I could see the desperation and the urgency of the person who wrote this.

I’m going to read it to you: “I’ll close by sharing that our member agencies include homeless shelters and outreach organizations that support people living in encampments.” The housing sector does not cater to these people. “It is dire out there. Shelters are appealing to the public for donations of tents to give out when their beds are full. They are seeing people who never dreamed they would one day lose their housing; people who have worked their whole life, recently evicted, terrified, being handed a tent and given advice on where to pitch it to avoid police and bylaw officers. The number of newly homeless people is alarming, and our shelter system is already completely overwhelmed as the inflow into homelessness greatly outnumbers our ability to move people from shelter into affordable housing. We must collectively work diligently to create affordable housing options for all, including people living in our lowest-income households. Thank you.”

I was really struck by that paragraph because that is the reality of not just what’s happening in Ottawa but is happening in many cities all across Ontario. I don’t see that being addressed in Bill 23.

This was a statement from the Ontario Public Health Association. They also didn’t get the chance to speak, and their submission was quite comprehensive. They also talked about the impact of Bill 23 on green building standards and sustainable design for our building stock, which is up there with transportation and building that’s contributing to our greenhouse gas emissions.

They also talked about the impact of this government’s decision to gut the ability of conservation authorities to protect us in extreme weather events. They said:

“As noted in the Independent Review of the 2019 Flood Events in Ontario report commissioned by the government of Ontario, the first core component of emergency management is prevention, which includes ‘... actions taken to prevent flood-related emergencies or disasters from occurring, and includes land use planning and regulatory restrictions to keep development out of the floodplains and other hazardous areas.’”

That is exactly what conservation authorities and upper-tier municipalities do, and this government, in Bill 23, has decided to severely curtail their ability to do our job to protect us. It’s very concerning.

Next up, I have the FONTRA, the Federation of North Toronto Residents’ Associations. They also didn’t have the chance to speak—one of many that were not able to—and they were very concerned about it. They talked about the impact of climate change. They mentioned, and it’s good to mention this, that at the very same time Bill 23 is being debated, the UN Climate Change Conference is happening right now where the UN is sending out dire warnings, saying if we don’t turn the U-boat, we are in for a very difficult future. Green building standards are our future; protecting our natural environment in our greenbelt and our farmland, that is our future. And this bill threatens all of that.

Next, I have ABC Residents Association, which is an association that represents the Yorkville area, an area of huge development. For them, parks really matter because many of the buildings in their area are 20 to 40 storeys high. Most people live in condos. For them, parks are critically important, and the parks there are small, but they’re important. They’re very concerned about the elimination of park space and green space in our natural environment. They’re very concerned about it. They’re also concerned about the restrictions in development fees, which I’ll get to with other submissions.

Next, I have Friends of the Golden Horseshoe. This was another loose organization that was also not given the chance to speak in committee. They are very concerned, and what they said is—I’ll read it out:

“In fact, none of the following elements proposed in Bill 23 would do anything to increase housing supply in Ontario:

“—elimination of upper-tier planning

“—elimination of conservation authority participation in watershed planning

“—forced reductions in development charges

“—cutting developer parkland requirements in half

“—taking lands out of the greenbelt....”

The reason why I bring these up as examples of measures in this bill that have nothing to do with addressing housing supply is that your government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force essentially said the same thing. Conservation authorities are not the issue. The greenbelt is not the issue. Access to land is not the issue when it comes to addressing our housing affordability crisis and our housing supply crisis, and the Friends of the Golden Horseshoe area agree with that.

Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario: Douglas Kwan, one of the leaders at ACTO, came and spoke in committee. I was also struck by what he had to say. He raised an issue which is very important in my riding, which is the government’s decision in schedule 1 and schedule 4 to eliminate the rental replacement bylaw. Now, I heard a lot of talk from the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing that they’re just consulting. I don’t believe that for one second, because you just gutted Ottawa’s rental replacement bylaw. And it looks like you’re going to be gutting the city of Toronto’s rental replacement bylaw, Mississauga’s rental replacement bylaw, and you’re going to stop Hamilton and Ottawa and all municipalities across Ontario to protect renters as well.

Douglas Kwan talked about what is happening in the rental market right now. He talked about how we are currently losing affordable rental units at a much higher rate than we are creating them. He goes on to explain that between 2016 and 2021, units renting for under $1,000 have decreased by 36%. These are those affordable units—they’re usually not very well maintained, but these are more affordable units, almost always in buildings and purpose-built rentals. Yet, at the same time, in this five-year period, there has been an increase in luxury rentals renting for over $3,000, and that segment of the market has increased by 87%.

What we are seeing in our rental market today is a transfer of wealth from those who don’t have a lot to investors who already have a hell of a lot. It’s contributing significantly to income and wealth inequality, and it’s happening right here in our housing sector and the rental market. What I fear when we are talking about this rental replacement bylaw and eviscerating it is that that’s just going to speed up that process of making rent more unaffordable for more Ontarians, because it makes it very easy for a developer to look at a building, a purpose-built rental, in an area that’s already being zoned for height, and say, “I’m going to demolish that building and I’m going to convert it to luxury rentals or I’m going to convert it to a luxury condo.” Because that’s exactly what’s happening in my riding already. The only difference is that renters are given protection and they get their right of return guaranteed, so they can move into that larger building once construction is complete. Some units are affordable, and then there are additional units which are sold off to ensure that the developer can make their profit. That’s all going to change now. Developers just get to make their profit, renters get to lose their homes, and affordable rental units and rental affordability in general is going to decline. It’s very concerning.

Conservation Ontario: This organization represents conservation authorities all across Ontario. In their submission—they’re one of the people that came and spoke, I believe in either Markham or Brampton. They spoke about how the proposed changes in Bill 23 really will make it very difficult for conservation authorities to do their job. They are concerned that this bill places new responsibilities on municipalities for natural hazards and natural resources that may lead to inefficiencies, uncertainties and delays in the development review process—they’re being polite. It weakens the ability of conservation authorities to protect people and property from natural hazards, and it reduces critical natural infrastructure, like wetlands and green spaces, that reduce flooding and protect waters in our lakes and rivers. Next time your basement floods, blame a Conservative. If Bill 23 passes, next time your basement floods because of an extreme weather event, blame a Conservative.

This was an interesting one: the city of Toronto. The city of Toronto is understandably very concerned about Bill 23, and they had some very alarming statistics in their report. This was one of the first reports that I saw, but I have found over the last few weeks that other municipalities have come out with similar reports where they’ve documented the impact of Bill 23 on their finances and their ability to provide infrastructure and their ability to provide services. I’m going to read out a few things that the city of Toronto identified:

It will reduce municipal revenues needed to fund growth-related infrastructure. Development fees partially pay, just partially pay, for the costs of providing infrastructure—the capital costs. They do not provide the operating costs; they provide the capital costs. When that is gone, that infrastructure is going to have to be paid for by someone else, which means there will either be tax hikes or service cuts.

They quote, “Without an offsetting funding source, the proposal would impact the city’s ability to provide servicing such as new roads, transit, water services, community centres, libraries and parkland to support new population and create complete communities.”

Once again, if your library is no longer open on a Friday, blame a Conservative. If there’s a pothole on a main road that is not getting fixed week after week, blame a Conservative. If transit service in your area has been cut because they need to deal with this development fee shortfall, blame a Conservative, because all these roads will lead back to Bill 23. It is that radical and that drastic. And I’m sure you’re hearing it from your municipalities as well. It can’t just be the city of Toronto that’s concerned and is complaining.

What the city of Toronto also was concerned about is the impact of Bill 23 on the city of Toronto’s innovative new inclusionary zoning laws. Now, the city of Toronto passed an inclusionary zoning law recently after years of consultation and talking to experts, doing studies, communicating with developers, working out if it’s worthwhile, if it will impact development, what it could look like, how many affordable homes are required. It was a long, negotiated, careful process with extensive public consultation.

They came up with a proposal that was meant to go into force just a few months ago. And our inclusionary zoning law required developers that were building buildings of 100 units or more to have a percentage of homes in that building that were affordable for 99 years, so affordable for a long period of time. It’s considered—it’s a definition of permanent. They also created a definition of affordability that is based on income, which means a home is affordable based on the income of the individual who moves in, essentially. It’s for the area.

What that means, for all practical purposes, is that a one-bedroom unit—an affordable-to-own one-bedroom unit—would be about $190,000, which would mean a household earning $58,000 per year could afford it. That’s the “own” piece; there’s also a “rental” piece. And it would be permanently. Well, this government has decided to upend the definition of affordability and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, we’re no longer going to base affordability on what the individual who is going to live there can pay; we’re going to base affordability on the market,” which is utterly unaffordable right now. It’s one of the most unaffordable markets in the world.

So the city of Toronto crunched the numbers and said, “Okay, what is the government’s new definition of affordability?” They explain it here: It’s only for 25 years, not 99, so we’re just kicking the can down to the next generation, and the definition of affordability for that one-bedroom unit—it’s different levels depending on the size of the unit and if it’s own or rent—is $444,000 now for that one-bedroom condo, requiring a household annual income of at least $130,000.

Now, the reason why I go into those details is to point out that Bill 23 is going to be giving a development fee exemption for homes to be built that are not affordable for even middle-income Ontarians. They are not affordable for middle-income Ontarians. And at the same time, you’re drastically weakening Toronto’s inclusionary zoning law that already required a much better definition of affordability and a much higher quota for how many homes in a big building needed to be affordable. You’re just saying, “No, no, no. We are going to give development fee cuts to developers and we are going to build unaffordable homes.” That’s the essence of it and it’s a shame. It’s a shame.

The city of Toronto also expressed concern that the province can override decisions on official plan matters now, based on Bill 23, cutting the amount of parkland space available, threatening the city’s ability to protect natural heritage—very concerning; all very concerning.

CELA, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, expressed similar concerns to what conservation authorities raised. They’re very concerned about the impact of this bill on farmland, on our natural environment. Their overall concern is that this is doubling down on very expensive and unsustainable suburban sprawl, and it’s ignoring the kind of solutions that we really need, that we absolutely need, to address our housing crisis. It was very concerning.

Next, I have the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights, an excellent group that does a lot of work helping tenants across Canada now; it’s extremely important. They submitted and they also spoke in committee. They expressed great concern about the province’s decision to gut the rental replacement bylaw, and they also pointed out the level of income and wealth that renters have compared to homeowners, which is also important to point out. Renters, as a whole, earn about half as much as homeowners do, so we are talking about people who are acutely affected by the inflationary crisis we have right now and the affordability crisis we have right now. Bill 23 is going to make their housing costs even worse. It’s very concerning.

We had Hemson Consulting come in and do a deep dive into the impact of the development fee cuts. Thank you very much for that.

We had the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority come in and talk about the impact of the bill. They had similar things to say about the bill—similar to what Conservation Ontario had to say—and they proposed amendments, which I will go into shortly, to take out the worst parts of schedule 2. Stay tuned: The government rejected those amendments, but I’ll get to them in a minute.

Then we had some recent articles and submissions that reminded the MPPs in committee about the reason why we established conservation authorities in the first place. I would like to read this to you: The conservation authorities, which you’re gutting, “were actually created under a Progressive Conservative government, led by Premier George Drew, in 1946. At the time, habitat degradation by settlers was starting to take a toll. Much of it was due to deforestation....

“Then came Hurricane Hazel in 1954, which washed away homes that had been built on flood plains and killed 81 Ontarians.” As a result, “the province expanded conservation authorities’ power, tasking them with monitoring waterways for potential floods....

“Today, the province has 36 conservation authorities, and all but five are in heavily-developed” areas in “southern Ontario.” Their job is to protect us from extreme weather events like Hurricane Hazel, and you’re limiting their ability to do that—a Progressive Conservative government.

Now I’m going to talk about committee. There were a lot of amendments introduced in committee during clause-by-clause. We went through this on Monday night. There were amendments that were introduced by our side and by the independent MPP for Beaches–East York, as well as the government side, because I think they’re very quickly realizing that there are a lot of flaws with Bill 23 and a lot of unintended consequences. I’m going to go through those amendments now.

We introduced an amendment to improve the rental replacement bylaw so we can protect renters—lower-income, moderate-income people in our city, who run our city—not just from demolition and conversion, but also in situations where they’re renovicted. We are in a situation today where there’s been a sharp rise in illegal evictions. It’s very concerning. People living in a home get a notice saying they have to move out—because of a renoviction. Maybe they contest it at the Landlord and Tenant Board, if they want to wait two years, or they give up and they move out because they assume they’re going to lose.

The problem is that maybe they walk by, down that street, a year later, and they realize that the landlord had no intention of renovating that property; they just wanted to move that rent-controlled tenant out and move another tenant in. That’s happening with increasing frequency, not just in Toronto. The housing crisis has spread, as we all know. It’s happening in cities all over Ontario.

So we proposed a bylaw, a motion change, saying that tenants whose building is being demolished or converted or undergoing renovation deserve to have compensation, and they deserve to have their right to return to that unit at about the same rent enforced by municipalities. It would give them protection and make our city affordable. The government turned down that motion, but we will continue to fight for that change, because it’s essential to keep our city affordable.

We also introduced amendments to maintain the green building standards in Toronto and other municipalities. The reason why we felt it was important to introduce amendments to protect the green building standards is because green building standards ensure that we get well-maintained and energy-efficient homes. It means our energy bills are lower. It means that we can protect our birds and our species. We can reduce waste. We can reduce stormwater run-off. We can reduce the heat island effect. It’s very important. It is our future. Government rejected the independents’ motions and our motions.

And then, interestingly, they proposed their own. This took me a minute, because I’m like, “Oh my gosh. Is the government actually going to care about green building standards?” We read this. We sent it out to stakeholders. They had lawyers look at it, and they came back and they concluded that, no, the government’s motions to allow municipalities to regulate green building standards do not go far enough to allow municipalities to do it. We have raised this issue with the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

What these motions do is they will allow municipalities to manage green roofs—oversee green roofs—and it will allow municipalities to oversee landscaping. We are not sure yet whether it will allow municipalities to oversee bird-friendly design; we’re hearing mixed reports on that. But what we know for certain is that green building standards in municipalities cannot proceed in their current form if Bill 23 passes as it is.

I am hopeful that the government will delay proclaiming some of these motions so that municipalities can continue to oversee green building standards, and I’m looking forward to the government, hopefully, introducing a provincial green building standard in the future. I’m very much looking forward to that. Hopeful, I’m going to be hopeful.

We also introduced an amendment to bring in use-it-or-lose-it building policies. This came from municipalities who approached us and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, we’re getting a little sick and tired of being seen as sole culprit for why we’re not moving housing supply quickly, so we would like to have the province introduce a build-it-or-lose-it policy,” which means that if a developer is given a permit to build and they’re given the green light to build, yet they sit on it instead of moving forward on it, through no fault but their own, then over a period of time, if they don’t build, they should lose it. The reason why is because we want building permits, once they’re given out, for homes to be built, and that’s the purpose of the use-it-or-lose-it policy. The government rejected that. You should rethink that.

Then we also introduced amendments just to delay the proclamation of the rental replacement bylaw, because it is so bad. It is so bad. They didn’t like that one either, which is a real pity.

Then we got to schedule 2, which is the conservation authorities piece. Oh my God, schedule 2 is so bad. So we introduced some measures to try to move from horrible to just bad. We introduced two key measures. One, we wanted conservation authorities to retain the right to work with municipalities to engage in land use planning and protect the natural environment, because right now, with Bill 23, conservation authorities are banned from taking a contract with a municipality to do this planning work for them. They’re banned; they’re explicitly banned from doing it, even though municipalities, we’re hearing time and time again, don’t have the expertise to do this work and conservation authorities do, and municipalities for many decades now have relied on conservation authorities to do this work. So we said, “Okay. Let’s at least give municipalities the option to contract with conservation authorities if they want.” You rejected that—very concerning.

Then we introduced some motions saying that, look, conservation authorities should not just have the right to look at a few pieces of land use planning—flooding, erosion, dynamic beaches—but they should also look at pollution and conservation of land, because if you get that holistic approach, then you can actually do your planning job well.

It gets a little complicated, but this is what conservation authorities were asking for. We wrote it up in a motion. You folks looked at it and said, “No, thank you. Suburban sprawl, that’s what we want to do. Flooded basements, that’s the Conservative way. No, we’re not doing that.”

So now we introduced some more motions to bring in a real, strong definition of affordable housing. If we are looking at giving development fee reductions, then we need to make sure that those development fee reductions are for houses that are truly affordable. And this is what many municipalities already do. The Open Door program at the city of Toronto already offers significant development fee reductions for homes that are affordable.

We introduced some amendments calling for affordable housing to be based on income, not just the market; an income-based definition, where the rent does not exceed 30% of gross annual household income, or where the mortgage, if you’re doing a rent-to-own program, doesn’t exceed 30% of gross household income. That’s what we called for. We also called for the affordable housing definition to move from just being for 25 years to being permanent. The government rejected these, even though the provincial policy statement already has these affordable housing definitions. So all we’re really asking you to do is just use the definitions that are already on the Ontario government’s books—nope; didn’t like that, not at all, which is a real pity.

Then we moved into development fees—huge issues with development fees. We introduced this motion calling on the Ontario government and saying, “Look, if you’re going to cut development fees and put municipalities into a financial hole, then come up with a provincial program to fund the loss so that the municipalities can repair roads and make sure that we have transit service; make sure our schools aren’t overcrowded; make sure we have parks nearby; make sure that we can deal with stormwater runoff, because our infrastructure system and our sewage system can handle it.” Nope, nope, nope; they didn’t like that one either. It’s very interesting. No wonder you’re getting tons and tons of emails and calls from councillors right now saying, “What are you doing?” It’s very concerning. That was another one.

Then we introduced a motion saying, “Please, please, please delay proclamation. Give us some time to think about this bill; it’s very concerning.” They didn’t like that, either.

Okay, I’m going to be a little positive for a minute. I’m going to talk about schedule 5. I kind of like schedule 5. Schedule 5 amends the HCRA, which is the Home Construction Regulatory Authority, and this is a regulatory authority that oversees builders and developers who are building new homes. If you’re a first-time homebuyer or a homebuyer and you’re buying that home, maybe in preconstruction—it’s a new home—and you move in and everything is great, you’re not even going to ever want to call the HCRA because you’re going to be nice and happy living in your nice, good home. But if you’ve got some defects—maybe you’ve got mould or flooding or you’ve found out that you’ve actually got a second-hand furnace when you thought you were buying a new one—then it’s the HCRA that you call to seek recourse and to make sure these shoddy builders are held to account.

It is good that the government has decided to increase fines for developers and builders that don’t do the right thing. Good; I’m happy about that. But I also think that we can go further, and the reason why I think we can go further is because consumer advocates are telling us to go further. So we introduced some amendments calling on the government to go further.

We asked for the HCRA, the regulatory authority, to have some citizens on the board so the regulatory authority is not just a developer/builder-run board overseeing builders—you can see the conflict of interest there—but also it has some citizens’ groups there who can look out for consumers. The government didn’t like that. I’m hoping you’re going to put that in another bill, because this is really good stuff.

We called for a ban on people who have a clear conflict of interest sitting on the HCRA board so this regulatory authority can do its job. They didn’t like that one, either. That’s a pity. I think that’s really good.

Then we called for the HCRA to be overseen by the Ombudsman—standard practice for a good regulatory authority. We’ve got this place that people can complain to, the Ombudsman, if the regulatory authority is not doing its job. Nope, you didn’t like that. I actually think this one is really good. It doesn’t cost you money. It means first-time homebuyers—it’s more likely they’re going to get a well-built home; good.

And then we introduced an amendment, and I really like this one too, which is to have, essentially, a builder directory on the HCRA’s website. So if an individual is going out there, looking for a home, they can go to the HRCA website and look to see that builder’s record. If they’re a builder that has a checkered history, they can maybe think twice about buying a home in pre-construction from that builder, and instead, they can buy a home from a builder that has a very good track record. That’s a carrot-oriented approach which would ensure that we’re more likely to get a well-built home. You didn’t like this one either, but I actually think it’s really good, and I do hope that you bring that in future government bills—because apparently you’re going to bring out one a year.

I’m going to keep going on. Then we introduced some amendments calling on upper-tier municipalities to regain their right to plan. The reason why this is so important is because upper-tier municipalities see a much larger area. They’ve got all of these smaller municipalities in their area, and they make sure that there is regional coordination when there’s planning. That means we’re more likely to get sensible, well-planned infrastructure, because they can see the big picture, and we’re more likely to get less sprawl. But instead, this government was like, “No, no, no. We’re going to download responsibility for planning to all these little municipalities.” When we do that, the problem is we’re more likely to get expensive, poorly planned and environmentally destructive sprawl. I’m very concerned about that. You rejected that motion.

Then we introduced a motion taking some of the insight that Carolyn Whitzman had around housing targets. We said, “Okay, so we’ve got this 1.5-million-housing-starts goal. Let’s make sure those homes are for Ontarians who want to raise children in them, retire in them—people who intend to live in them. Let’s also add some sub-targets that really focus on building the kinds of homes that are affordable for different levels of income and building homes of different square footage size, so we’re not just building big and we’re not just building too tiny, but we’re building the missing middle, the 1,400-square-foots, the kinds of homes that were the starter homes in the 1950s and the 1960s that we don’t build anymore.” They’re actually cheaper to build, and they’re what we actually need for students, for people who want to downsize, for families, for affordable homes. Those are the real gaps in our housing sector right now. So we thought, “Let’s put some evidence-based decision-making into those housing targets.” You didn’t like that one either.

We introduced the motion to expand inclusionary zoning, meaning developers do their part and play their fair share in addressing the housing affordability crisis. Right now, inclusionary zoning is only allowed in protected major transit station areas. The city of Toronto wanted it across the municipality. This government came in and said, “No, no, no. We’re just going to shrink it right next to transit stations, because we’re getting a lot of calls.” The city would much prefer to have the authority to expand it so we’d get more affordable homes in big developments. So we introduced an amendment to do exactly that. The government rejected it. That’s a pity.

We introduced amendments to increase parkland dedication to what they currently are. The government rejected that. It’s a real pity.

And then we also identified and expressed great concern that this government is exempting major infrastructure projects from the environmental assessment process. That’s a bit scary. The government is exempting the York region sewage waste plan that you have in this bill from the environmental assessment process—very worrying—and this government is also exempting the Lake Simcoe phosphorus project from the environmental assessment process as well. Why not do one? Don’t you want to know so you can plan? It makes sense; it’s there for a reason.

I’m running out of time, sadly. I want to talk a little bit about the amendments the government introduced. They could also see that there were some flaws with Bill 23. I know you’re getting a lot of calls and emails right now—and you’ve just extended the consultation process so you must be feeling some heat. These are the amendments that this government introduced. This one is really crappy. This one makes it so that the development fee cuts that you are imposing are retroactive. So developments that are already in the works can now go back and say, “We actually want that development fee exemption and the development fee cut as well”—very concerning.

When I think about the development fee cuts, one thing that bothers me the most about the development fee cuts is that the biggest cut, $1,000 a unit, is the funding that goes to help municipalities provide affordable housing and supportive housing. That’s where the bulk of the development fee cut is coming from—the city’s Open Door program; the city’s Housing Now program to build affordable housing on public land; funding that goes to shelters. That’s the funding being cut from Bill 23. There’s nothing about this that will make housing affordable for people who are low-income or moderate-income. I’m very concerned about that. The government got the motion passed to make the development fee cuts retroactive for developers that have already been given the green light to build.

This government loves to talk about how they want to clear red tape. Well, this is like the red-tapiest government motion I have ever seen. What this motion does is, it eliminates the two-year timeout that exists when an official plan is approved. Let’s say Ottawa, for example, creates an official plan on how they’re going to build. Then, there’s a two-year timeout, so that bylaw, that official plan can’t be appealed for two years. It gives staff time to study the rules, enact the rules, know what they do and implement them. Now, you’ve made it so that once an official plan, a secondary plan or a bylaw goes through, immediately someone can appeal them—immediately. So that’s going to create a massive backlog of appeals—crazy, crazy, crazy.

Then, the other thing you did is you changed the land tribunal process a little bit. In the original definition or understanding of Bill 23, you eliminated the ability for individuals, citizens to appeal to the land tribunal. It was only municipalities and developers that could appeal to the land tribunal and have a say over planning that everyday citizens, people who had some concerns about a gravel pit, people who were concerned about water pollution—they were banned from appealing to the land tribunal. Now you’ve changed it a bit. You’re allowing a third-party appeal—MPP for Willowdale, I wonder if you had something to do with that—

My question is to the member for Barrie–Innisfil. The province’s own Housing Affordability Task Force, since we’re talking about evidence-based decision-making, said that access to land is not an issue. It’s not the reason why we have a housing supply shortage.

Why is this government choosing to open up the greenbelt when, before the election, you made a commitment to not open up the greenbelt, given that land is not an issue when it comes to dealing with the housing supply crisis?

I noticed that the Ontario government has made a decision to change the definition of affordable housing. Currently, the city of Toronto has a definition of affordable housing that would put a one-bedroom unit at a purchase price of $190,000; that means you could buy that if you were earning about $58,000 a year. Well, now the Ontario government is looking at changing the definition of affordability so that a one-bedroom unit would cost $444,000, requiring a household annual income of at least $130,000, which is really shocking.

What is this government’s plan to build more affordable housing in Ontario?

I know, right? I started reading this at 5 a.m.

So the definition of “affordability”—this is the definition that they’re looking at proposing: A unit is affordable—which means it would get a reduction in development charges—if it is 80% of market rent or 80% of the purchase price of the average area, and those definitions of affordability will be set by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

There are a few concerns that we’re already hearing about. One is that having developers get a development charge exemption—which is what you’re proposing—by only having an affordable unit for 25 years seems very generous to developers. And to give you an example, in the city of Toronto we just passed an inclusionary zoning law—which the Ontario government is sabotaging—which would require developers to get a development charge discount if the affordable housing units were for 99 years.

There is a move here that I’m seeing with this change to affordable housing where they’re affordable for less period of time and the definition of affordability is linked to market rents, as opposed to what a renter can afford—so based on income—and the discount of fees that developers get has gone from a little bit to completely.

There is a benefit in having lower development fees for affordable housing units, but we have a lot of concerns around this decision to change the definition of affordability. We’re exploring that a little bit more and we’ve got a lot of concerns.

The other piece that we have concerns with when we’re talking about development charges is, how does this impact municipalities? The reason why I say this is because municipalities across Ontario rely on development fees to fund the services that current and future residents use. We’re talking garbage pickup, parks, child care, schools, constructing affordable housing, transit and sewage. When there is a reduction on development fees—some of them are good if it’s for non-market housing, non-profit housing, deeply affordable housing—it means that municipalities are in the hole. And it’s a significant hole.

In the case of Toronto, Toronto has an $800-million funding shortfall. That’s the shortfall that they’re facing right now. We just got a report here. This is the budget that the new city council is going to be debating. They have a deficit of $857 million. What is challenging is that they’re already having to make cuts. The city of Toronto is going to make cuts of $300 million to planned maintenance and repair projects because they don’t have enough money. The provincial and the federal governments have said that they don’t want to pay.

Then we also have the case where interest rates are going up. That means that the ability to access money and pay back money is going to become tougher and tougher and tougher. Matt Elliott, this reporter here, explains it. He says, “As inflation hammers the global economy, interest rates on new city debt have been going up fast. City hall was getting 30-year interest rates as low as 2.4% in 2020. Toronto’s latest 30-year debt issue carried an interest rate of 4.4%.”

So we’ve got this challenge now with this bill where the government has said, “We need affordable housing, we need to reduce development charges to incentivize more affordable housing, but we’re not going to cover the shortfall. We’re going to make municipalities just deal with it”—at a time when we have an inflationary crisis, we have budget shortfalls and we have interest rate hikes, which make these fees, or the ability to borrow, higher and higher and higher.

That is very concerning, that there is not a commitment from the provincial government to help out with this development fee shortfall so that we get the affordable housing but we also have the transit and the services and the child care and the parks and the sewage infrastructure and the electricity infrastructure that is necessary to house current and future residents. That is a big concern.

It’s a concern that AMO shares. They issued a press release—wow, they were quick. They introduced it at 5:51 last night, so maybe they got a heads-up this bill was coming. Who knows? They say, “Municipalities will welcome some of the proposed changes”—like I said, it’s a mixed bag—but are “very concerned about others, such as changes to the Development Charges Act. We will work with the government on the ideas that have the potential to make housing more affordable, and we will oppose changes that undermine good economic and environmental policy.” So they’ve got some concerns about how they’re going to balance their budgets and provide services to residents given that this bill guts their ability to access development fee charges. That’s the concern, and I’m not seeing this government come up with economically wise solutions to that. That’s a concern.

The next piece—like I said, this is a big bill—is schedule 5. Schedule 5 is called the New Home Construction Licensing Act. We heard a lot about this issue in the media because, across Ontario, people are buying homes that, in some cases, are shoddily built. The developer does not build the home to the standard that the homeowner expects: There’s mold, there are leaks, and then the homeowner has to pay the bill because the regulatory authorities are not strong enough at holding developers to account.

We’re also seeing this disturbing trend where homeowners will buy a home pre-construction. They’ll put down the deposit in the hope of getting access to this home, of buying their home and moving into it within two or three years once the home is built. Their dreams, their hopes are all tied up in this; as well their money is all tied up in this future prospect of living in a home. What we have seen as housing prices have risen, changed, and risen again and changed is that developers have turned around, often for no good reason, and said, “Actually, I know we said that we would let you buy this home for $600,000, but we took another look and we think that you’re going to have to pay $800,000 for that home, and if you don’t like it, too bad, so sad. We’ll give you your deposit back and we’ll just cancel the contract.” Then they turn around and sell it to someone else at a higher bid. That is really unethical. If developers sign a contract with a potential home buyer, that contract should be upheld by the Ontario government in a court of law, and the developer has a responsibility to honour that contract.

We have seen the Premier talk a good talk about how he’s going to slap developers on the wrist and fine them and ensure they have consequences if they do the wrong thing, but we have seen very little action—close to none—to ensure that developers build the homes that they say they’re going to build at the price that they committed to in the contract. It’s a huge concern.

In this schedule, the New Home Construction Licensing Act, there has been a decision to increase the maximum fines for developers that break contracts with first-time home buyers, with home buyers who are looking at moving into these homes. That is a good thing. There is also a broader range of actions the developer can be fined on, which is good. They’ve expanded the powers and the number of things that can be fined—good. It gives the minister the power to decide how much of a fine goes to the home owner. This is a bit confusing to me, because Minister Clark says one thing—that he’ll give it to the home owner—but when I actually read the schedule it says something else. I’m trying to get some more information there. It could be good, could be—I don’t know.

The big thing that we’re not seeing and what we’re hearing from stakeholders, such as Canadians for Properly Built Homes, is that there’s no commitment to actually enforce the laws on the books and ensure that developers are actually held to account. Doubling the fines, good, but it’s not worth anything unless you’re actually going to fine developers that aren’t doing the right thing. That’s what people are calling for and that’s what this government needs to do.

As Karen from Canadians For Properly Built Homes tweeted, “Please show us evidence, any evidence, that you’re ‘cracking down on unethical developers.’ There’s no disciplinary action on the website of your regulator, @hcraontario.” That’s what they’re looking for: They’re looking for enforcement. Let’s see if the government moves through on that.

There are other measures in this bill that we are talking to stakeholders about that could have a significant impact. One is changes to the Ontario Heritage Act, schedule 6. Schedule 25.2 gives the minister the power to override any heritage designation on any provincial property or any public property. That’s a lot of power. I welcome feedback from residents and municipalities on these proposed changes because they seem pretty significant.

Interjection.

Back to the minister: Minister, 900,000 people in Ontario are living on social assistance, and they’re living in poverty. Their biggest expense is housing. Upwards of 60% of a person’s social assistance income is going to housing. You cannot afford to live on $733 a month if you’re on Ontario Works or $1,227 a month if you’re on disability payments.

Minister, I am asking you to join us on this social-assistance diet to have a better understanding of what it is like to be on social assistance, and I am calling on this government to double social assistance rates to help people get out of poverty. Can you do that?