Tenants and landlords in my riding of Don Valley West are concerned about the unreasonable delays at the Landlord and Tenant Board caused by this government’s bad decision to fire qualified, experienced adjudicators and appoint their friends. Just like with the $8.3-billion greenbelt giveaway and the gravy train in the Premier’s office, this government takes care of their friends at the expense of Ontarians. According to Tribunal Watch Ontario, the backlog of cases is over 53,000—almost four times worse than when they took office. The average wait for a landlord needing an arrears eviction hearing has risen to 342 days—10 times worse.

Speaker, the delay for tenants is even worse. Their average wait is 427 days, versus 70 days in 2018. Tenants are waiting over a year for their day in court about a problematic above-guideline rent increase or unlawful eviction—just one more way that life is worse for tenants under this Conservative government.

Today, my colleague from Kingston and the Islands will be debating his Bill 179, the Fewer Backlogs and Less Partisan Tribunals Act. The government has a chance to fix the LTB mess of their own making by voting for this bill. Voting against it is one more sign that this Premier is happy to be the conductor of his very own gravy train.

Thank you to the member from London for the question.

I would say no, that is not good business practice, of course. I think that was a nice friendly question over here, so thank you.

Again, that’s the crux of some of our questions about this bill.

Certainly, the Auditor General had some strong recommendations for Infrastructure Ontario and how it does its procurement, how it manages its suppliers—and that their tenants are not getting the services they need on a timely basis or perhaps in a cost-efficient way.

I’m still trying to understand why this bill is specifically only focusing on one particular recommendation, which was number 10, where the Ministry of Infrastructure says they will undertake a review of the realty operating model and associated financial model in order to study and implement improvements to the management of government properties, and that they will work closely with Infrastructure Ontario and all ministry tenants to examine different options for effective service delivery and the management of government properties—so again, I would say that that is really what the focus should be, as opposed to a recommendation to immediately seize control over these properties.