Thank you to the member from Essex. A concern with the government’s changes to the lands tribunal, again, about third-party appeals is that citizens and environmental groups just don’t have the right to appeal at all, yet the government has carved out the right for major industry, developers and airports to appeal. So you’ve got this small group of people that must have lobbied you real hard in the last few weeks, and they can appeal, but everybody else can’t appeal.

I do want to emphasize, the lands tribunal, the adjudicators already have the authority to throw out appeals that are frivolous or that have limited chance of success. So they already have the option to say, “Look, we’re only going to be hearing concerns that are valid.” Those are my concerns about this bill.

I hope that in the next bill the government introduces, there is a commitment to improve the situation facing renters in Ontario today. Strong rent control is needed, vacancy control is needed and strong enforcement of rental protection laws, including clamping down on illegal eviction activity.

Just to point out and respond to the comments that the associate minister said: Unfortunately, in the provincial planning statement, now municipalities don’t need to demonstrate that prime agricultural farmland is at risk before they approve a development, so we’re very concerned about the potential loss of prime agricultural land and the government’s decisions to do that.

I want to speak about third-party appeals. This government did some last-minute dealing where they’ve banned third-party appeals to the lands tribunal except for a few key players, including developers, major industry and companies near a site. Why bias the lands tribunal in that fashion?

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Erwin Long lived at 73 Cartwright Street in London for five years until a company bought his home. After the sale, he was given two weeks to move out. When he couldn’t find a new home, the landlord changed the locks, boarded up the windows and forced Erwin into homelessness. He slept in a parking lot. Despite the Landlord and Tenant Board ordering the landlord to pay $6,700 for the illegal eviction, Erwin has never been compensated and he’s never been able to return to his home.

Ontario’s eviction laws are weak enough; without enforcement, they are useless. Renters want to know: When will this government begin to enforce its own eviction laws?

Today, Erwin’s home at 73 Cartwright Street has been renovated and listed on Airbnb for $110 per night, plus taxes and fees. I don’t believe—we don’t believe—investors like Erwin’s landlord should be kicking out tenants and converting properties into pricey, short-term rentals. It is contributing to Ontario’s housing shortage and driving up the rate of illegal evictions.

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing: Will this minister crack down on short-term rentals and investment properties, so that these homes can be returned to the long-term rental market?

We recently had a tenant contact our office to raise a very concerning issue. The tenant had read about the recent court decision that forced a tenant to pay his landlord’s delinquent tax bill to the CRA, the Canada Revenue Agency, and he was concerned that this rule could affect him.

Since his landlord was refusing to tell them if they were paying their taxes, the tenant contacted the CRA and asked them what he should do. The CRA told him to withhold 25% of his rent and pay it directly to the CRA.

Now, if a tenant doesn’t pay on time, the CRA’s website says they will pay interest and they may be fined. The tenant went back to the landlord with the bad news and the landlord said, “If you withhold your rent to pay this tax bill, I’m going to evict you for arrears.”

Okay, so this tenant is now caught between a rock and a hard place, between having the CRA go after him for someone else’s tax bill or risking eviction. And this renter isn’t alone. Every renter who is living in a property owned by a non-resident landlord could be in the same horrible predicament.

No tenant should have to risk eviction for paying their non-resident landlord’s delinquent tax bill. This is fundamentally unfair. In this incredibly expensive housing market, renters have it hard enough.

We are requesting the following measures to resolve this situation: The province should direct the Landlord and Tenant Board to deny any landlord’s application to evict a tenant if the tenant is withholding rent to pay the landlord’s own tax bill, and second, the CRA should work with the federal government to reverse this rule immediately and not force tenants to pay their landlord’s delinquent taxes ever.

What I noticed about the Get It Done Act is the move to make it easier to expropriate farmland to build new transportation projects. I think about Highway 413, a $6-billion highway that will be travelling through some of the most fertile, productive farmland in North America. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. And studies show that it might save people a minute in their commute times.

If we’re looking at helping people get from A to B, what other transit or transportation solutions would you like to see in Bill 162?

Thank you to the member opposite for your presentation, from Mississauga–Lakeshore. My question is about this government’s decision to once again redraw urban boundaries in areas that are abutting prime farmland. I’m talking about Halton, Waterloo, Peel, York and Wellington county.

The government’s own housing affordability task force said very clearly that we do not need access to new land to meet our housing targets. Given that, why is this government moving forward with redrawing municipal boundaries to open up farmland to unnecessary development?

Back to the minister: This is a very serious matter. It is the difference between buying groceries or not for a renter, the difference between keeping up with your bills or not. Tenants should not be paying illegal rents to big landlords, but in Ontario today, they are.

My question is to the minister: Will you take action to curb AGI abuse, and protect tenants and get them the money that they are owed?

My question is to the Premier. Ontario can now fine landlords that illegally evict up to $250,000, but it never does. A Toronto Star analysis found that the Rental Housing Enforcement Unit and the Landlord and Tenant Board issue very small fines to guilty landlords, fines the landlord can quickly recoup by hiking the rent on the next tenant.

My question is to the Premier: Will this government start enforcing its own illegal-eviction laws?

Rental protection laws are useless if they’re not enforced. We have presented practical solutions to this government to help renters stay housed. We have introduced amendments in committee. We have introduced bills in this Legislature. When will this government start taking effective action and do its job and start enforcing its illegal eviction laws?

Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

So that’s the good.

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

Interjection.

Successful tenants almost never get their home back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Minister, your own experts have said very clearly time and time again that we don’t need to open up more land to meet our housing targets. While this government has backed down on opening the greenbelt, this government continues to force municipalities to expand their boundaries and pave over 35,000 hectares of farmland, even when municipalities from Hamilton to Waterloo are telling you they can build the homes they need with the land they’ve already got.

Minister, can this government reverse course and stop paving over farmland?

What we’re also seeing now is that housing starts in Ontario are starting to go down; they went down by 20,000 in July, and they went down another 13,600 in August.

To build the homes we need for Ontarians, we have been calling on this government time and time and time again to do more to increase density in towns and cities so we can build homes in neighbourhoods people want to live in. What is your plan to do that?

My question is to the Premier. The Conservatives want to open up an area of land as big as the size of Toronto on greenbelt land and farmland, even though experts have been telling you loud and clear—even your own experts have been telling you—that there is more than enough land already available in areas zoned for development.

Well, get this: Land speculators are reading the tea leaves and they are buying up protected farmland. Farm prices have gone up by 20% in the last year alone. New farmers and young farmers can’t compete with these land speculators, and they’re worried they’re never going to get into the housing sector and the farming sector.

To strengthen our farming sector, can the Conservatives commit to not opening up any more greenbelt land to needless development?

Thank you to the member for Newmarket–Aurora.

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

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

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

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

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

Great question: Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My question is to the Premier. Over 100 residents in the town of Rossmore are being threatened with a blatant renoviction by their new corporate landlord, Bedford Properties. Resident Keith Maybe said this: “It’s not humane what they have done. You’ve got people who have been in these apartments right from the time they were built 37 years ago. Some people are in their eighties and their nineties. It’s not right.”

Premier, what are you going to do to help these residents keep these homes?

For the sake of these residents, can you say yes to our amendments in Bill 97 to strengthen Ontario’s eviction protection laws?

My question is to the Premier.

Kara Petrunick lives in St. Catharines, Ontario. Her landlord just hiked her rent by $350 a month; it’s a 17% rent hike. If Kara had known she was going to receive a rent hike like this, she would never have moved in.

But even the government’s own brochure for tenants and landlords fails to explain that rentals first occupied after November 2018 are exempt from rent control.

Premier, do you think it is acceptable for renters living in new rental homes to receive 17% rent hikes?

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?

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

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

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

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

My question is to the Premier. This month, the government doubled down on expensive sprawl. They’ve forced municipalities to open thousands of more hectares of farmland to development. They’ve eliminated density requirements in new subdivisions. And they’ve eliminated targets to build more housing in areas already zoned for development.

My question is this: Why is this minister doubling down on sprawl when there are better ways to build more housing?

Across Ontario, homeowners are seeing their property taxes go up and their services get cut. These tax hikes are going to continue if this government continues to build spawl, because sprawl is much more expensive for municipalities to service than building more homes in existing neighbourhoods.

My question is to the Premier: Why double down on sprawl when there are cheaper and more affordable ways to build the housing that we need?