I would like to introduce people who are here on behalf of Habitat for Humanity. They include Lynn Fergusson, Brooks Barnett, Jackie Isada, Harvey Cooper, Allyson Schmidt, Hope Lee, Zachary Day and Jonathan Tsao.

Welcome to your House. I hear you are having a reception at 5 p.m. today in the dining room. I look forward to attending.

Yes. It is something that I’m sure the corporate real estate lobby and the big development sector has been advocating for, for a long time, and it seems like they got it in this bill.

I am already hearing from housing advocates and tenant advocates that this is a very concerning measure. Carolyn Whitzman, who is a housing expert, who is a long-time researcher at the CMHC, said that this could have a disastrous impact on net affordable housing. Canadians lost 15 homes renting at $750 or less for every one new affordable home created at that price point between 2011 and 2016, and most of this net loss was due to demolition and renovation of residential rental properties. So these affordable private-market apartments are in these purpose-built rentals. I see no value in increasing housing supply at the expense of the affordable homes that we already have, and this bylaw will do exactly that. I’m very concerned about it. I strongly urge you to remove that schedule from the bill. There’s no other way to describe it; it’s extremely concerning.

The next thing that I want to raise is changes to conservation authorities. We are getting some feedback on this. I just want to summarize: The role of conservation authorities is to work with municipalities and the province to try and make sure that we protect the wetlands, the precious green space that we have, and also to make sure that homes aren’t going to be swept away in a flood or fall over the Scarborough Bluffs. It’s a way to ensure that homes aren’t built on a flood plain.

This has become even more crucial because we are facing a climate crisis with an increasing number of extreme weather events that are increasing in frequency and strength. We just saw this with the hurricane that swept from Florida to Atlantic Canada. It has gotten so bad. I mean, every day there’s new disturbing news about the impact of the climate crisis. It’s our new horrible reality for today. But even just this week, the Insurance Bureau of Canada put out a press release stating the urgent need for the housing industry and governments to more openly consider and disclose natural hazard and climate risk “because of the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters.” The reason why I’m bringing up that quote is that the insurance industry is essentially telling you that conservation authorities have a really important job. Their job is to make sure that homes and developments are not built on flood plains. Their job is to ensure that we build in a sustainable way and that we protect our natural green space and our natural environment. It’s extremely important.

When I read this bill and I read statements about what this bill means, it seems that the government is giving itself more power to review and change any conditions that a conservation authority might place on a new building permit. That’s a lot of power. That’s concerning.

It is also concerning to hear that the ministry is looking at asking conservation authorities to evaluate their lands to identify areas of development, possibly with the goal of building more development on green space, natural habitat and areas that we should be protecting because they’re on a flood plain or they’re critical to natural wildlife. That is very concerning, and we are looking more into this and getting feedback from stakeholders.

I want to move on. The other measure that we are getting some feedback on is around the zoning reform pieces in this bill. This is mainly referring to the changes to schedule 9, which is the Planning Act. I want to be clear: During the election, we called very clearly for an ending to exclusionary zoning to allow more missing-middle housing—the duplexes, the triplexes, the townhomes in existing neighbourhoods—as well as higher density and transit. And there’s a good reason why: If we build in areas that are already zoned for development, then we get to protect farmland, which we’re losing at a very rapid rate, and our natural green spaces. It is a sustainable way to build more homes and more affordable homes for current and future Ontarians.

There are changes to the zoning laws to allow three homes on one lot: three in a primary building, or two in the primary building and one in a laneway suite, provided the square footage of the property essentially remains the same. And the changes would apply across the board to any urban residential area that has sewage and water services, so we’re not saying yes to new developments on areas that rely on septic tanks that don’t have the infrastructure necessary to enable a huge increase or a big increase in population.

Changing zoning laws to allow more homes in existing neighbourhoods is a good move. This is a step towards ending exclusionary zoning, and there are a lot of benefits to it. That’s one of the measures in this bill that we look at and we say, “Okay, this is interesting. There are some benefits to this.”

We are actually hearing from some stakeholders to move further, to look at expanding missing middle to allow for increased height, as well as stakeholders that are very interested in measures this government is interested in doing to enshrine affordability requirements in any missing-middle changes. I’ll explain that in a little more detail.

I want to quote an individual called Cherise Burda, who wrote a very interesting op-ed today about the need to increase density, allow for missing-middle housing—the need to ensure that there are affordability principles enshrined in that so that we’re not just building more homes; we’re also ensuring some of these homes that we’re building are also affordable. It’s a really interesting area of research that I’m following very closely.

Here is her op-ed—I want to clarify: It’s Karen Chapple from U of T School of Cities and Cherise Burda from TMU. They write:

“Most Ontarians know that we are in a housing affordability crisis, but the province is reframing this as a housing supply crisis to justify construction wherever developers want to build.”

She digs into the need to make sure that the housing that we do build also meets affordability requirements as well.

They write: “To that end, we laud one of the province’s proposed tools: Eliminating exclusionary zoning across municipalities to build missing-middle housing in existing neighbourhoods. Early evidence, however, suggests that ‘missing middle’ homes are being delivered at market rate costs, even pushing up land values and making these neighbourhoods more exclusive. Policy, programs and funding from all levels of government should focus on creating affordable and equitable missing-middle homes.”

That is a really interesting analysis. They’re looking at what is happening across California and the west coast, as well as Oregon, about the impact of the missing middle on affordability and how many more affordable missing-middle homes we can get around increasing density. I encourage this government to look into this, to meet with these stakeholders to make sure we don’t miss out on this opportunity where we build more non-market homes but we also build more affordable homes at the same time.

The second piece that I would very much like to see in this bill, when we are talking about moving forward with ending exclusionary zoning, is the need to ensure that renters are protected when homes are renovated. That gets back to this very issue of renters and how we can do everything possible to not force a renter to be evicted and to move into a more expensive apartment and to keep as many affordable units as we can. I encourage this government to look into some of the measures that other municipalities are moving forward on as well as what stakeholders such as ACORN are advocating for, which is to provide stronger protections for renters who need to be moved out of a home because it is undergoing a renovation of some kind.

Right now, let’s say a single-family home is going to be turned into a duplex. The Residential Tenancies Act, in theory, ensures that a renter has a right to return. So once the renovation is done, the renter can then move back into that home with the same square footage and at the same rent. That is their right to return.

The challenge is that the enforcement components of the Residential Tenancies Act are not strong. We have renters in University–Rosedale who have been evicted from their purpose-built rentals because the property manager wants to renovate, and two, three years later they’re still waiting to move back into their units, even though, when they walk by the purpose-built rental, they see moving trucks with people’s belongings parked outside and students and young people moving in. So they know these units are being filled, but the property manager is not giving them the right to move into the units even though they’re supposed to under the Residential Tenancies Act. That is a concern. There needs to be better enforcement.

When we’re looking at zoning reform—and this bill does move forward on that—I encourage this government to also look at how we can enshrine the creation of affordable housing units into the missing middle and how we can ensure that renters don’t suffer as a result of these changes to density. Their homes need to be protected as well. And there are examples of where that is being done, and I look forward to communicating with you in committee about how this could be a valuable change.

The next thing I want to address—and I’m not going to get to all of the bill; it’s too comprehensive, so I’m pulling out some of the biggest highlights that I’m hearing from stakeholders and that we saw ourselves. The next change that we noticed, and it’s significant, is around the Development Charges Act. That’s schedule 3. There are a lot of changes here. I’m going to summarize them. One is that there will be development charge exemptions for secondary units that are built into a home as well as the third unit that is built into a home. There are some benefits to doing that. There’s also a development charge discount for rental housing, and how this is spelled out is: There will be a development charge discount of a 15% reduction for one-bedroom units for purpose-built rentals, a 20% reduction for units where there’s a two-bedroom unit and a 25% reduction if there’s a three-bedroom unit.

I should go back for a minute. Development charges pay for all the services that the new residents will need when they move into that building: the sewage, the water, the transit, the daycares, the parks—all these necessary services. The development fees don’t cover all the costs of that. They only cover a portion of the capital costs. But they cover a lot of it, and then the city also contributes, and then there are operating costs as well that overwhelmingly the city contributes.

The challenge with the rental housing piece and the discounts to the development charges to the rental housing piece—I can see the logic; you want to make sure the development sector is building these bigger, more family-friendly units. But one of the issues that I’m concerned about here is that the rental housing that will be created is not affordable. So you can have a situation where you’ve got a three-bedroom unit—in my riding, they rent for about $3,000 or more a month. Maybe it will be a 1,000 to 1,100 square feet, because they’re really good at creating good design to get those three bedrooms in a small square footage, but it will cost $3,000. Why would we want to give a developer, who is not building rent-controlled units, that are priced at $3,000 a month, a discount on development charges? That seems like a concern to me. So we’ve got some red flags there.

Another piece where we have red flags is around the provincial government’s decision to change the definition of “affordability”—