Everyone in Ontario deserves a safe and affordable place to call home, but the cost of rent in Ontario is not affordable. In fact, in Toronto, the average cost of rent is approaching $3,000 a month. The cost of rent has increased to more than 50% of take-home income for many Ontario households.

When businesses upcharge people for essential items, we call that gouging. What’s happening to tenants in Ontario right now is no different. Housing is a human right.

To pay their rent, many individuals and families are being forced to take on a second or third job. To pay their rent, people are having to cut back on groceries and all other spending. Still others are being forced to move farther and farther away from their families, their jobs, their children’s schools.

This is making the affordability crisis even worse. People are barely treading water. Many are drowning. But when we, the NDP, raise these concerns here, the government responds with insults and jokes.

The government knows this problem isn’t just about supply and demand; it’s much more than that. They know it. They know that there’s more that can be done to help tenants right now, more that can be done today.

I want to remind the minister that Toronto has led North America in construction cranes for years before they took office. After five years of Conservative government, rent has never been so high.

Families don’t have years to wait for a market adjustment. Many don’t even have months. They need relief now. The status quo is destroying families and leading some landlords into bad-faith evictions to charge even more. There are families out there right now who don’t have time to wait. They need us. They need you to act right now, and that means implementing real rent control.

Again, under this government, rents are by far the highest they’ve ever been, with no immediate relief on the horizon. You can’t just sit on your hands. Do the right thing. Support this NDP motion to bring in rent control and give tenants across this province the relief they need, the relief they deserve. They are counting on all of us to help them, so do it. Support this motion.

[Inaudible] a single vote that the mayor of Toronto has not won, not a single vote. Mayors I have read out from the city of Toronto, who represent half of the last 50 years, have spoken against it, and here you are citing the board of trade. The mayor already has the control to be able to do what it needs to do. The city of Toronto has 43% of all cranes in North America and approves, year after year, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of new housing units that they carefully consider with all parameters.

We have already demonstrated that this, other than the title, has nothing to do with housing. It is about giving more power to already powerful mayors. I have noted in the speeches made by government members that they tend not to group the words “affordable” and “housing” together. What they have said a lot of is “market housing,” and we are facing an affordable housing situation. Governments have the ability to create non-profit housing, co-operative housing—there are many solutions to this, like implementing rent control. They are not interested in any of those. Not at all. Not one.

What I’m going to say—and I’m going to say it again: This is a government obsessed with control, not just of its own members, not just of everything that happens here, obviously, in the province of Ontario or here in this House; this is a government of control that extends all the way down to municipalities. They are tabling legislation where—we already have mayors who have power through appointments and other ways. We have a mayor in the city of Toronto who has not lost a single important vote. These mayors have not asked for this legislation whatsoever.

We’ve reviewed the legislation, and it shows nothing to do with building new homes. I’ve shown that the city of Toronto builds thousands of new homes. We have 43% of all the cranes in North America here.

What exactly is this legislation about if it is not rewarding mayors who listen to your bidding?

There is no interest by this government to give any sort of power to those who dissent from them. They’re not interested in consultation. They’re interested in affirmation of everything they do. That is the interest of this government. We saw it for the last four years, and at some point it has got to stop.

Last session, we saw member after member leave this government. We had probably one of the largest groups of independents because they could not take the amount of control imposed even internally on them. And they’re now trying to control all the municipalities in Ontario. It has to stop.

The mayor of Toronto has lots of power and has won every single vote. That’s just simply the facts. Don’t take it from me; take it from the many mayors I read in my submission today.