Speaker, London tenants got some good news last month, when the city of London moved closer to joining Hamilton in preventing bad-faith renovictions.

My office hears regularly from London West tenants about unethical landlords who use illegal renovictions to remove low-income tenants and jack up rents. In the face of a dire shortage of affordable housing options, the renoviction notice can be devastating.

Tenant advocacy group ACORN reports a 300% increase in renovictions between 2017 and 2021. Those numbers continue to grow, just like the average cost of rent. Meanwhile, vacancy rates in London are at record lows.

Municipalities like London are stepping in with bylaw protection because, unlike the Ford government, they recognize that illegally forcing low-income tenants out of their units when there is nowhere else for them to go is both inhumane and bad public policy.

According to ACORN, London ranks fifth in the province in the number of renoviction notices, but it’s not only renovictions that are squeezing London tenants. Above-guideline increases, or AGIs, also create huge pressures for tenants with low or fixed incomes, and London ranks fourth in the province in the number of AGI applications, typically made by big corporate landlords.

Speaker, almost one third of Londoners are renters. Why is this government doing so little to protect them?

I’m very proud to rise in support of the NDP motion to implement rent control on all units.

Speaker, this government’s decision to remove rent control from units built after 2018 and to stand by as tenants are pressured to move out of their units so that landlords can jack up rents by any amount they want is making life difficult for many in London West, but especially for those on fixed incomes, like seniors and people on social assistance.

Patricia Jones is a senior who called my office because her anxiety about rent increases is keeping her up at night. She currently pays over $1,400 per month for her apartment, which is unaffordable on her fixed income. She has looked for cheaper alternatives, but with the average one-bedroom rent in London almost $1,800 per month, she cannot find any rentals in decent condition to move to. Without real rent control, Patricia says she will not be able to afford more rent increases, and she doesn’t know where she will live.

Another senior, Dave Clark, contacted my office to say that seniors do not get pay increases: “I have not received a raise on my company pension since I retired in 2011.... It’s very unfair to have some buildings under rent control and not the latest-built units.” Dave has done everything he can to reduce his housing costs, including selling his house and moving to a newer apartment, but the lack of rent control on that unit means that his budget is uncomfortably tight every month.

London West constituent Anita Zahn has a son on ODSP who pays 98% of his monthly budget on housing. She says, “There is no money for food, bills, medications, clothing, transportation. Nothing. He is always 25 cents away from being homeless.”

Speaker, rentals.ca just reported that rent for a one-bedroom apartment in London has increased 27% year over year. It’s the second-biggest jump in the province. How can Londoners living on fixed incomes be expected to absorb that increase? The reality is that they can’t, which is a big part of the reason that London has found itself in a very deep and serious affordable housing crisis. There is a real lack of housing options that meet the needs of seniors like Patricia and Dave, and others living on fixed incomes, like Anita’s son.

Speaker, housing is a human right. Londoners need housing they can afford. They need real rent control so they don’t have to live in fear of losing their home when the next rent increase comes.

I call on all members of this House to support our motion today.

I appreciated the comments from my colleague and her perspective on the Toronto housing crisis. I wondered what would be the one thing she would like to see the government do that would actually protect tenants in this province—

My question to the member across the way is around protections for tenants. One of the issues that I hear about most frequently in my constituency office is from tenants who are pressured by their landlords. They feel that they have to move out. The landlords use unethical means to get them to move out, because the landlords know that once that tenant is gone, they can increase the rent to whatever they want.

I also hear from tenants who are living in buildings that were constructed after November 2018. There’s absolutely no rent control on those units. So why, if this government was genuinely interested in protecting tenants, did they not do something to scrap vacancy decontrol and to remove the exemption of the rent control for post-2018 builds?

I listened to the minister and the government members talking about this bill, and I wanted to share with them a report last week from rentals.ca that showed London was second only to Brampton in terms of the rate of year-over-year increases in rents. There was a whopping 27% jump in one-bedroom rents compared to the last year. London is also the fastest-growing city in Ontario. This has nothing to do with permit fees. This has to do with the number of people in our city who need housing. Any new housing that is being constructed doesn’t have any rent control whatsoever.

So what exactly is this government doing to protect the tenants in London who are facing these huge rent increases and who are looking at getting into units with no rent control at all?

My question is to the Premier. Ryan and his family live in a two-bedroom apartment in London West that was built in 2021. He pays $2,015 a month and just received notice of a $350 rent increase, which is more than 17% and seven times the provincial rent increase guideline. That’s an additional $4,200 a year that Ryan will somehow have to find, at a time when groceries, utilities, insurance and other bills just keep rising. If he can’t make it work, Ryan will have no choice but to move out, and this could keep happening year after year.

Speaker, will the Premier act now to prohibit the exorbitant rent increases that tenants like Ryan face annually in buildings that were constructed since 2018?

Can the Premier explain why he is allowing landlords to use unaffordable rent increases as a way to effectively evict tenants from their housing?

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas there is overwhelming evidence to show that paid sick days significantly reduce the spread of infectious disease, promote preventive health care and reduce health care system costs; and

“Whereas 60% of Ontario workers do not have access to paid sick days, and cannot afford to lose their pay if they are sick; and

“Whereas low-wage and precarious workers are the most likely to be denied paid sick days; and

“Whereas enabling workers to stay home when they are sick without losing pay helps limit the spread of illness in the workplace and allows workers to recover faster; and

“Whereas during an infectious disease emergency, it is unreasonable and dangerous to public health to make workers choose between protecting their communities and providing for their families; and

“Whereas legislating paid sick days through the Employment Standards Act, with transitional financial support for struggling small businesses, will ensure that workers have seamless, uninterrupted access to their pay;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately pass Bill 4, the Stay Home If You Are Sick Act, to provide Ontario workers with 10 annual employer-paid days of personal emergency leave and 14 days of paid leave in the case of an infectious disease emergency.”

I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature and send it to the table with page Eric.

I appreciate the comments from the member for Windsor–Tecumseh. You know what I would like to see? I would like to see the government say yes to the proposals that the NDP has put forward to really meet this crisis that we are facing, to meet the challenge head-on to actually achieve the 1.5 million homes target that we must meet if we are to serve the needs of the people of this province.

As I said, yes, we need intensification, but we also need much stronger protections for tenants. Why is there no rent control on post-November 2018 builds? Those tenants deserve protections, and the tenants who will be affected by the removal of the rent replacement provisions that is set out in this legislation will be deeply affected by the lack of protection—

As I was saying this morning, I really appreciate this opportunity to join the debate on Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act. As every MPP in this chamber is hearing from their constituents, we are in a dire housing crisis in this province.

I just want to set the stage a little bit in terms of what’s going on in my community in London. London recently achieved a number of firsts, and they are not firsts that we are proud of. Rentals.ca just reported earlier this week that London experienced the biggest average rent increase in Canada, a 33% increase in average rents over the last year. Tenants in London are being hit hard by having to deal with a 33% rent increase, and the reality is that many may be financially evicted from their units because they can no longer afford the rent.

That’s especially the case for tenants who are living in buildings that were built after November 2018, because one of the earliest things this government did on the housing file was to remove rent control off of new builds, or post-November-2018 construction. That is causing huge pressures in our housing market, when tenants are facing that kind of rent increase and struggling to try to afford that in the face of all of the other affordability questions or pressures that Ontarians are experiencing.

Two other firsts: The latest census data that was released earlier this fall showed that London is the fastest-growing city in Canada. There was a 10% increase in population over the last decade, and that, of course, exacerbates the pressure that we are experiencing in our housing stock. And London is a destination that embraces newcomers, that has really put a focus on welcoming newcomers to locate in our city, and so that is another issue that is putting pressure on the housing stock, combined with our post-secondary institutions and the need to ensure that there is housing available for all of the students who come to study in our city.

The third first that we recently became aware of—again, from Statistics Canada—is that London’s homeownership rate is dead last among major Ontario cities. So actually, that is not a first; that’s the opposite of a first. We have the fewest percentage of homeowners in our city compared to other cities in Ontario. The Ontario average is 68.4%. In London, we’re four points below that: Only 62.6% of our population own homes.

As we all know—I have young adults in their twenties; many of us are in that same demographic. It is particularly challenging, disheartening and frustrating for these young adults to ever imagine a future where they will be able to afford a home. We hear that a lot about Toronto, but it’s the same reality in communities like London. That was corroborated in the data that show that in London, only 50% of young adults aged 30 to 34 in London own a home. That’s down from 56.3% in the previous census, and there was a four percentage point decline for young adults aged 35 to 39. So the housing crisis is real. The housing crisis is affecting both tenants and people who want to own a home, particularly young people who are looking to get into the housing market, and we collectively have a responsibility to do something to address this crisis.

The bill that is before us today attempts to do that, and that is important. We need to see more homes built faster, as in the title of the bill. But we also need a whole swath of other strong measures and bold actions to be taken.

The intensification provisions that are in this bill, the changes to the Planning Act, will take some baby steps to increasing that stock that we know we need to achieve. The government’s task force before the election had shown that Ontario will need 1.5 million new homes built over the next decade. It was sad to hear that the government’s own background papers estimate that the intensification provisions in this legislation will add about 50,000 new units over the next decade. That is far, far short of the 1.5 million homes that are necessary to meet the needs of our growing population. In terms of supply, we need purpose-built rentals. We need non-market options. We need co-op housing. We need supportive housing. We need so much more than what this bill is going to deliver.

And when we have a population that is so reliant on rental housing, we need to strengthen protections for tenants. What does this bill do? We see in schedules 1 and 4 that this bill weakens protections for tenants. It allows the minister to impose limits and conditions on rental replacement bylaws that require that any affordable units that are demolished or converted during redevelopment are replaced. This bill eliminates those rental replacement provisions that are in place through municipal bylaws in Toronto and Mississauga, but it also prohibits any municipality from having those kinds of provisions.

Former Toronto city planner Jennifer Keesmaat said this is going to this is going to make it open season on low-income tenants who are living in purpose-built rentals that, like many of the purpose-built rentals in our province, are deteriorating in condition and are demolished. Those units will be gone. Municipalities will no longer be able to require that tenants can move back into a new building that is constructed at the same rent. Once again, it is going to displace thousands of vulnerable tenants across this province and increase the pressure on other communities that perhaps have lower average rents versus Toronto and Mississauga, where those bylaws are in place.

We need to ensure that there is a strong public role in new housing investments to make sure that those new builds that are constructed actually are affordable. This legislation defines affordable as 80% of market rent, but when market rent is over $2,000, 80% of that is far from affordable for many, many, many people in this province. We need to increase the supply of deeply affordable housing as well as those supportive homes that are so, so lacking in supply in our province.

We also need to take stronger regulatory measures, like a speculation tax, a vacancy tax. We heard earlier this week that the government is increasing the non-resident speculation tax, but there is so much more that can be done on the regulatory side to really spur the construction of those 1.5 million homes we need.

This bill is a step forward in some senses. As the government has estimated, it will increase our supply by 50,000 units over 10 years, and the difference between the 50,000 units that will be spurred by this bill and the $1.5-million target that we know we have to meet—the difference, this government has decided, will be made up by municipalities. So the legislation requires municipalities to have a housing pledge with a specific target that they are supposed to meet in terms of new home construction. But as the Globe and Mail has pointed out and as various commentators have pointed out, a housing pledge without any kind of penalty for municipalities that don’t meet that pledge is not going to produce those units that are necessary.

Before I reach the end of my time, I want to raise some very significant concerns about other measures that are proposed in this bill, in schedule 2 and schedule 9. Those relate to the Conservation Authorities Act and, in schedule 9, the Planning Act. Specifically, I’m referring to the changes that the government is proposing to the role of conservation authorities in planning matters. The changes that are set out in these two schedules of the bill limit or, as some would say, gut the oversight role of conservation authorities in the planning process.

In schedule 2, the role of conservation authorities in reviewing and commenting on planning and development matters within their jurisdiction will be strictly limited to matters falling under their core mandate, so that would be flooding, erosion or drought. The bill would prohibit conservation authorities from reviewing or commenting on specific proposals under a prescribed act. Conservation authorities will no longer be allowed to prohibit certain activities relating to the use or modification of water courses, wetlands, erosion and other matters. This is of grave concern to many people in this province, not just environmentalists, but of course environmentalists have sounded the alarm. We are in a climate crisis. We just saw the impact of Hurricane Fiona. These are not just 100-year severe weather events; these are 500-year severe weather events that we are experiencing on this planet. There was just a recent report showing that we’re going to be nowhere close to meeting that UN target of reducing global warming in the amount of time that we have to unless we take stronger measures. Undermining the role of conservation authorities, limiting the role of conservation authorities is exactly counter to what we should be doing.

Interestingly, the federal parliamentary budget office had recognized the work that Ontario’s conservation authorities had been doing to keep losses associated with flooding in Ontario lower than losses seen in other Canadian provinces. The last thing we want to do is to limit and undermine the role of conservation authorities in sound and sustainable development planning.

I just want to close by saying that this government has given us no confidence that it is committed to housing. We just saw in this year’s estimate a $100-million cut to the provincial government’s housing program. They have to do a lot better than what’s in this bill.