This petition is titled “Bring Back Rent Control.” Rent control existed for all units occupied by tenants regardless of what year they were built until this government came into power in 2018 and rent control for buildings built after 2018 was removed. As such, many renters in Toronto and across Ontario who are living in these units built after 2018 do not have protections of rent control. When you don’t have any cap on rent increases, it puts tenants in precarious housing. Massive, unpredictable rent increases also take away stability and predictability to build a life and to plan a life.

As such, this petition is calling on the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to pass my bill Rent Control for All Tenants Act so that we can ensure all tenants can live with rent control protections in safe, affordable homes.

My question is to the Minister of Housing. We have an affordability crisis, and housing is a big part of it. Tenants across Ontario are experiencing drastic rent increases simply because they live in buildings built after 2018. For example, in Livmore High Park, last year, rent was raised by 14%, and this year, rent is going up by 13%. With stagnant wages and rents skyrocketing, the cost-of-living crisis is pushing people out of their homes.

Why won’t this government provide stability to tenants in the midst of an affordability crisis?

Minister, will you reinstate the protections you removed and protect tenants from unlimited rent increases?

The cost-of-living crisis is getting worse. According to a recent report from Feed Ontario, 23% of food bank clients spend 100% of their income on housing. That’s all their income on housing. Without real rent control for all tenants, people are paying a larger and larger percentage of their paycheque towards rent, leaving little for all other expenses.

Premier, will you bring back real rent control measures that not only help keep people housed, but also help keep food on the table?

Under your watch, more and more children are going hungry. What are you going to do about it?

My question is to the Premier. Data recently released by the Landlord and Tenant Board shows that applications for personal-use evictions are up 77% in Toronto. Disturbingly, the data also show that the Landlord and Tenant Board has only issued 11 fines for bad faith evictions in nearly four years. Tenant lawyers are saying that number is staggeringly low and reflects a failure by the province to protect tenants. Tenants are losing their homes in record numbers.

What is this government going to do to end bad faith evictions and keep tenants housed?

What tangible actions will you take to put an end to bad faith evictions and keep tenants housed?

Ontarians are struggling to afford the rising cost of living in this province, including the extreme high cost of rent. Rent has now skyrocketed to over $3,000 a month in Toronto for a one-bedroom. That is $36,000 a year—unaffordable for the majority of tenants, including the 58% of people in my riding who rent their homes. That $36,000 is far more than anyone on OW, ODSP or who earns minimum wage can afford, all of whom, by the way, have their income level set by this government.

In 2018, the Conservative government amended the Residential Tenancies Act to exempt any unit built after November 15, 2018, from rent control. So in 2020, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. reviewed this regime of rent control exemption and they found that this regime specifically increases rent.

As well, we know that without rent control between tenants, people across the province will continue to experience unlawful evictions, including renovictions, all so that rents can increase without limit. Beyond making rents unaffordable, the removal of rent control has historically not increased the supply of rental housing in Ontario, despite what the Conservative government claims. We also know that supply alone won’t address the housing crisis, especially if fewer and fewer working-class and low-income Ontarians can afford to rent.

Any new rental supply must come with rental protections. Tenants need affordable rents and predictable, limited rent increases that they can plan for without fear of being priced out of their homes. They need stability in their lives, and housing stability is a key component of that.

Right now, people cannot afford their housing. Toronto alone has 10,000 people who are homeless and more than 30,000 households that are in rental arrears. Immediate action must be taken to address this.

Speaker, housing is a human right, and that means real rent control for tenants. Without it, the dual crisis of unaffordability and housing will continue to spiral out of control.

The NDP’s motion today addresses that. It restores rent control for all units, including in between tenancies, and thereby protects every Ontarian’s human right to housing by keeping rents affordable.

This Conservative government can and must do better. Ontarians need real rent control now.

I thank the member opposite for his question. I apologize; I don’t remember your riding name right now. I don’t have my cheat sheet.

But here’s the thing: If, truly, in good faith, the government wants to bring in legislation that addresses this question, then yes, we can talk about it. We can look at it and examine it more closely at committee. However, this bill, combined with the major changes that the government is making to the provincial policy statement, is expanding sprawl, is paving over farmland. I would imagine—and we are hearing from farmers too that they are worried about farmland loss. This bill is accelerating farmland loss.

So I would say to the member that there are tidbits in this bill which are helpful. As I mentioned, there was another one where AC bans are not in leases anymore. There are tidbits that are helpful, but overall this bill fails to address the issues that we are facing around housing affordability and around housing supply.

The solution, the proposal, is one that actually has been before the House. Last session, the government actually voted it down. It’s a bill that I tabled, called the Rent Stabilization Act. The member from London North Centre was a co-sponsor of this bill. That bill, the Rent Stabilization Act, which has been reintroduced and is before this House this session, will close the biggest loophole in the Residential Tenancies Act, and that’s the vacancy decontrol loophole. It will ensure that rent control is tied to the unit and not to the person, meaning new tenants will pay what the previous tenants paid, rents are not allowed to be increased to whatever amount it is, and it will ensure that housing remains affordable.

Speaker, just a couple of days ago, I shared with members of this House how in the High Park neighbourhood, rent for a one-bedroom increased by 46%—46%. Do you think that that is manageable? No one can live with such unpredictable increases to cost of living. It’s very important we close the vacancy decontrol loophole.

Speaker, I don’t have much time, but I will say this: The government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force has released a report. Start there—

I rise today to speak to Bill 97, Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act. This is the government’s fourth housing legislation in four years. That means four out of four times the government has failed to address the affordable housing crisis meaningfully and it’s taking, once again, the wrong approach to addressing housing supply issues. Now, this bill makes changes on two key fronts: on development policy and on tenant protections. I’ll talk about the development policy first and then get to tenant protections.

Speaker, this bill fails to eliminate exclusionary zoning and allow construction of more affordable housing options—such as duplexes, townhomes, walk-up apartments—everywhere that single detached homes are allowed. This was a key recommendation from the Housing Affordability Task Force report, and it is an idea that the official opposition, the NDP, supports. It was, in fact, part of our housing platform.

The government’s previous housing legislation, Bill 23—the infamous Bill 23—included allowing secondary and tertiary suites as-of-right within existing structures, which we support. But according to the government themselves, they expect that this change will deliver only 50,000 new homes over the next 10 years, which is barely 3% of the 1.5 million homes that are needed. Instead of eliminating exclusionary zoning, Bill 23 preserves restrictive zoning rules like two- or three-storey height limits, maximum floor space indexes or minimum setbacks that effectively prohibit what we call missing middle forms of housing. That bill fell far short of what the Housing Affordability Task Force recommended, and now with this bill, Bill 97, it still does not address the shortcomings.

Instead this bill, once again, relies almost entirely on deregulation and tax cuts to incentivize the for-profit private market to deliver 1.5 million homes over the next decade. Speaker, this narrow-minded approach is failing, and we know it’s failing because the government’s own budget revealed that the projected housing starts in Ontario are going down instead of going up.

Now we in the NDP, the official opposition, have called for a strong public sector role to deliver new affordable and non-market housing that the for-profit private sector can’t or won’t deliver. There is no provision in Bill 97 to facilitate new non-market housing. This bill, combined with some major changes that the government is making to the provincial Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe and the provincial policy statement—what the government is doing is further accelerating farmland loss and unsustainable sprawl.

Speaker, doubling down on sprawl is going to make it so much more expensive for municipalities to provide the basic services that these developments are going to need. From roads and transit to electricity and sewage, all of these services are going to cost more, because it costs more to service low-density single-family-home subdivisions than it costs to provide these services and infrastructure in areas that are already zoned for development.

And since it is much more expensive for municipalities to provide these services, Ontarians are not only going to see property tax hikes—in fact, Speaker, folks all around the province and many municipalities are already getting these higher property tax bills now, but they’re going to see the tax hikes year after year, coupled with service cuts, because it is so expensive to build this infrastructure and to maintain the infrastructure. Low-density suburban sprawl is a costly and backward approach to planning. It is not going to address the housing affordability crisis or the housing supply crisis.

Let me remind the members of the government once again that the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force said that the 1.5 million homes needed to be built in the next decade can be built within current urban boundaries. There is no need to pave over the greenbelt. There is no need for sprawl. That’s what I want to cover on the development policy changes.

In the remaining time I have, I want to get into tenant protections. Now, the tenant protections in this bill fall so short of what the NDP and tenants in this province are calling for. It’s like the government knows they have to do more to protect tenants and asked themselves what the least is that they can do that will not disrupt the status quo. That’s what the changes are in this bill: the slightest of slight improvements simply to be able to claim that the Conservatives are doing something for tenants.

Speaker, I want to talk about the AC use. That’s in this bill. Last summer, in the midst of the heat wave, tenants in my riding at 130 Jameson Avenue in Parkdale received eviction notices for using their ACs. Many leases forbid the use of ACs. Their corporate landlords at 130 Jameson said that AC use is prohibited under lease agreements, so either the AC goes or the tenants have to go.

The Residential Tenancies Act mandates a minimum temperature of 20 degrees during the winter, but there is no law on maximum temperatures. Municipalities in Ontario are asking the province to mandate maximum temperatures, including the city of Toronto. So given that there is no maximum-temperature legislation for protection of tenants, the tenants organize in order to be able to keep using their ACs because, in the hot summer months, this is a serious health and safety issue.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission was very clear. In fact, they issued a statement, and the opening line of their statement read, “Access to cooling during extreme heat waves is a human rights issue.” Their statement talked about the obligation of housing providers and specifically referenced the case of the tenants at 130 Jameson. They also stated that the current Residential Tenancies Act “leaves many Ontario tenants without protections against extreme heat” because air conditioning is not considered a vital service.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission called on this government to “include air conditioning as a vital service, like the provision of heat ... and to establish a provincial maximum temperature to make sure that ... tenants are protected against threats of eviction” simply for “using “safely installed air conditioning units.” That’s the background. This is what has led to what’s in Bill 97 today around AC use.

So what does the Ford government do? They prohibit the ban of AC in leases, which is helpful, but it still puts the onus on the tenants to install their own ACs to ensure that apartments don’t get dangerously hot in the summer, and they’re allowing rents to be increased for installing the AC. That’s why I say that the measures that the government has put in place for tenants fall so short. It does the absolute bare minimum.

It’s also a contradiction of an explicit ban that’s already in the Residential Tenancies Act on the use of seasonal fees. So I will flag with the government right now: When the bill is before committee, there has to be an amendment to ensure that seasonal fee ban continues on and that there are no extra charges for AC use. Just as the Ontario Human Rights Commission has called for, we need maximum-temperature legislation. This will also be consistent with the long-standing, already set-out principle that all tenants have the right to reasonable enjoyment of their unit. The temperature of the unit that they live in is an absolutely important factor.

Speaker, there are some other measures in it. I do not have time to go over all of them. All I want to say at the end of the day, when it comes to housing and tenants, is that housing is a human right, and so we need to be able to ensure that every Ontarian has decent, affordable housing that they can call their own, something that really meets the needs of the tenant.

My question is to the Premier.

Over 550 tenants of Livmore High Park signed and delivered a letter asking their corporate landlord, GWL Realty, to stop rent increases of up to 14% this year. GWLR responded, saying that the building, being new, is not subject to guideline rent increases and pointed out that rent for a one-bedroom in High Park has gone up 46% compared to last year.

Does the Premier believe that a 46% increase in rent is manageable by tenants?

This is over 550 tenants and their families impacted in just one neighbourhood in my riding. Imagine how many tenants are impacted across this province.

There has to be some predictability in how much one can expect to pay in rent year after year. No one can manage unpredictable cost-of-living increases.

Minister, will you ensure that all tenants, regardless of when their building was built, can have stability in their rents?

I table this petition and stand in solidarity with the tenants of 55 Brownlow and also tenants from all buildings in Toronto that are soon to be demovicted. It reads:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas demolition evictions are becoming commonplace across Ontario in the middle of an affordability crisis, this practice displaces tenants from their communities, diminishes the supply of affordable housing, causes environmental waste, contributes to the growing number of people experiencing homelessness province-wide, and disrupts the lives of fixed-income seniors, families, and low-to-middle-income tenants;

“Whereas displacing tenants from their homes has a negative impact on their livelihood, social supports, sense of community, and mental health, the protection of housing as a human right in the middle of an affordability crisis is vital to guaranteeing their quality of life;

“Whereas development is important to build the stock of housing in Ontario, the practice of needlessly demolishing buildings is counterintuitive to this goal and does not consider the long-term ramifications for current tenants, the broader community, or the environment;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to stop the needless demolition of rent-controlled buildings across Ontario, reinstate universal rent control, ensure rental housing replacement protections for all tenants, ensure that people are housed in the middle of an affordable crisis, and that Ontario is growing the stock of affordable housing, not destroying it.”

I couldn’t agree more with this petition and affix my signature to it.

This petition is titled, “Real Rent Control Now.” It reads, “To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas average rent has increased by over 50% in the past 10 years;

“Whereas average monthly rent in Ontario is now over $2,000; and

“Whereas nearly half of Ontarians pay unaffordable rental housing costs because they spend more than a third of their income on rent;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to pass the Real Rent Control Act to establish:

“—rent control that operates during and between tenancies, so a new tenant pays the same rent as a former tenant, with allowable annual rent increases calculated by the government of Ontario and based on annual inflation;

“—a public rent registry so tenants can find out what a former tenant paid in rent;

“—access to legal aid for tenants that want to contest an illegal rent hike; and

“—stronger enforcement and tougher penalties for landlords who do not properly maintain a renter’s home.”

On behalf of all of the tenants in Parkdale–High Park and across Toronto, I fully support this petition and will affix my signature to it.

Report continues in volume B.

The Globe and Mail has reported that based on the province’s own numbers, in 2022, the Landlord and Tenant Board received more than 5,550 N-12 applications where landlords sought units for own use, a 41% increase from 2019. The board also received nearly 1,113 eviction applications for renovations in 2022, almost double the volume from 2019.

Tenant advocates say this spike in evictions filings is hardly a coincidence, because when a tenant is evicted, rents can increase by any amount. As a result, we’re seeing tenants being forced out of their units in bad-faith evictions and rents skyrocket.

Will the Premier make rents affordable and end bad-faith evictions by passing the NDP’s Rent Stabilization Act?

Will the Premier remove the incentives to evict tenants simply to raise rents?

Two weeks ago, I shared with the government that about 1,000 tenants in my riding are facing major rent increases—some as high as 14%—all because the Premier made unlimited rent increases legal for new buildings in 2018. I have introduced a bill to extend rent control protections to all tenants in the province.

Will the Premier give tenants the stability they need and protect them from rent gouging by passing the Rent Control for All Tenants Act?

My question is to the Premier. Tenants in two buildings in my riding, 55 Quebec Avenue and 50 High Park Avenue, are facing rent increases of more than 11%. That’s almost five times more than the provincial rent increase guideline for 2023. Speaker, this impacts over 1,000 tenants in High Park alone, including seniors and young families. Many are worried they will be forced to move out.

The Premier made these increases legal when he ended rent control on new buildings in 2018. Will he fix his mistake and extend rent control protections to all units?

I’d like to give a warm welcome to members of ACORN and Parkdale People’s Economy, who are at Queen’s Park today to advocate for tenants’ rights.

We have a cost-of-living crisis, and housing is a big part of it. Rents are becoming unaffordable, especially in cities like Toronto.

The Rent Stabilization Act amends the Residential Tenancies Act to end vacancy decontrol, a mechanism that allows rents to be raised with no limit when a unit is vacated, which is being used to unfairly evict tenants and drive rents skyrocketing.

The bill also requires the Landlord and Tenant Board to create and maintain a rent registry so tenants can be confident in knowing that they are not being gouged on rent. This bill will stabilize rents and end the incentive for unfair evictions by ensuring new tenants pay what the last tenant paid.

Ms. Bell moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr6, An Act to revive Nextblock Inc.