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.

I do not believe that public consultation is red tape. I don’t believe that we should be doing away with democratic processes because we want to make things more efficient for some people—many of them might be donating to the PC Party—in order for them to make a whole lot of profit.

Often this is done in the guise of building new homes. This party is very much in support of the commitment of building 1.5 million homes across the province. In fact, a recent report came out by a planner from Waterloo, making it very clear that we already have more than enough land already zoned for development.

I also am not a fan of this idea that just because we want proper public consultation—and I want to respect the fact that we live in a democracy—we do not want to build anything. It’s just a wrong correlation.

I think about this government’s decision to move forward with Bill 23. There are a lot of flaws in Bill 23. I think about this government’s decision to move forward with opening up the greenbelt, even though everyone from local municipalities to the farming sector to citizens who care about their natural environment are telling you, “Hey, hold on. We don’t need to open up the greenbelt for us to build the homes that we need for current or future Ontarians.”

So there is, yes, a lot of skepticism and mistrust when this government starts talking about doing the right thing for the environment.

It’s 30 days. People take the time to write public comments. It’s municipalities that write public comments. It’s expert planners. It’s the cement industry. It’s stakeholders. It’s a whole lot of people who take the time to write, and the reason they do it is because they’re concerned about how this project or this regulation is going to affect them.

You’re government; our job is critics, but I think it’s our responsibility to take the time to read it and give it good thought. Waiving that 30 days entirely gives the attitude that you don’t really care about what people have to say.

The Auditor General’s concerns were very much focused on Infrastructure Ontario’s failure to get a good deal for taxpayers and not properly doing their job, so I’m not seeing this solving the Auditor General’s concerns in that 2017 report.

My point is this: It’s our job to look at this legislation that you’re introducing and moving through the House very quickly, and to say, “Hey, look, we’ve got some genuine concerns with this.” When we’re talking about public consultation, I’ll use Bill 23 as an example. Much of the feedback that we got with Bill 23 was how it would affect one of the biggest sectors that we have in Ontario, which is our farming sector. So when we’re talking about growing our province, improving our industries, taking feedback from key stakeholders like the farming sector is pretty important, and that’s not about saying no; that’s about making sure we make the kinds of decisions that benefit the vast majority of people, so I reject your point a little bit.