That is a minister who ran under a Premier who, in public, said he wouldn’t touch the greenbelt, and then in private, to his buddies, said that he absolutely would.

This is a government that says one thing and then absolutely does another. This is a government that promised to fix the housing crisis but has the worst record in history in this province.

Certainly, Bill 185 is a sterling example of this government’s failure on every single major policy issue that matters to Ontarians.

Whether it is housing, whether it is health care, whether it is affordability—this government is keen to blame everything on everyone else except for themselves, and that is what I call arrogance.

There’s no mistaking it; if we want to address the issue of affordable housing, first we need to settle on a definition of affordable housing. For far too long, we haven’t been able to get a definition that makes sense from this government. They have also been persistent in perpetuating some sort of other phrase called “attainable housing,” for which they refuse to provide a definition.

I think I heard you say that in the definition you cited of affordable housing, it’s 30% of income—the definition that I’m aware of is 30% of average household income. I think that is a definition that I would support. That is actually something that I believe has a chance of making housing relevant and accessible to the people of Ontario.

As it relates to what that housing looks like, I think it needs to reflect a wide variety of kind of housing. Far too often, we talk about people’s ambition to own a home, and they deserve to do that. We need to have rental options, co-op options and affordable housing with wraparound community supports as well—

This government could make life affordable and they could actually look serious on the environment if they took the right steps. Instead, they’ve gone ahead, they’ve imposed their own carbon tax—emissions performance standards—have failed to have any sort of environmental plan of substance, and is happy to distract from things that could actually make a difference, such as waiving HST on home heating, which is something well within their capacity that could improve affordability in homes—

So, no, regrettably, I have not seen that element in the legislation, nor do I see a government that is serious in wanting to make any changes in that area.

I want to be clear: I do support increased density around major transit station areas, including in my riding. I’m on the record. My Twitter handle is @ShamjiAdil. Go check it out. It sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time there already. And to be clear—

Interjections.

Now, I will say that I believe the development that he’s referring to is one that was opposed by the city of Toronto, the Toronto District School Board, the Aga Khan Museum, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, and justifiably needed significant improvements before it could be supported. But where there are actual, sound—

It’s a quote.

Say that to the millions of Ontarians who work in cities across this province. Tell them where they want to raise their kids.

This is the out-of-touch prevailing attitude amongst decision-makers in this government. The housing sector has had enough.

So who does this bill let down? In short, everyone—all those currently without homes who can’t keep waiting, young people stuck living in their parents’ basements, the seniors who want to find an apartment or condo to downsize to, couples looking to start a life together. For more reasons than I can count, Bill 185 is a failure for the people of Ontario—a massive missed opportunity.

If this government had any hope of meeting its 1.5-million housing target, they lost it when they tabled this bill instead of a much, much more ambitious one.

Bill 185 plays it safe. It misses the mark. Playing it safe on housing is quite dangerous, and it is a letdown to the people of Ontario.

It’s a pleasure to rise in the House today to debate the issues that matter most to Ontarians.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the issue that matters most to Ontarians is—

Interjections.

Interjections.

The scale of the suffering across our housing sector is enormous. We have people living on the street; leaving the province, with out-migration to the tune of 70,000 young people per year; others living under precarious and unsafe conditions; and more people delaying major milestones in their life—things like families having kids, young people moving out from their parents’ basements, or seniors downsizing into smaller homes. This catastrophe is happening in the midst of an out-of-control housing crisis. Home prices are at never-before-seen levels, rent is out of control, and the Landlord and Tenant Board has become virtually inaccessible—all of this within the backdrop of a government that cancelled rent control, that tried to pave over the greenbelt, that can’t make a single decision without subsequently walking it back because they never do their homework. Amidst that, one might expect that we would have a government that would try to finally take action, that would try to do something. But their record over the last six years has been abysmal.

Construction began on only 5,589 homes in Ontario last month—the lowest that it has been in over six years. Anthony Passarelli, CMHC’s lead economist for southern Ontario, said, “Over the rest of the year, we expect [housing starts] to continue to trend down in the province and particularly in the GTA.” So, of course, cue the excuses, right? Number one: It’s someone else’s fault—probably the federal government, because of high interest rates. But British Columbia is building two and a half times more homes per capita than we are and yet are subject to the same interest rates.

The government will say that they’re making progress despite the fact that they are falling well behind their target of 1.5 million homes per year and subsequently are being forced to change the goalposts to have a hope of being able to save face. They will try to argue that the government is on track, but they would have to build 38,000 homes per quarter to meet their annual housing target, and last quarter, which just ended a few months ago, they only built around 15,000—not even 50% of what they need.

This is the kind of bill that could have been forgiven if it was introduced in year one of their mandate, not year six. For all their talk about housing supply action plans, this bill is big on talk and so small on action. Two years after their own Housing Affordability Task Force report came out, they’re still consulting, essentially kicking the can down the road so they can say they’re doing something without actually doing literally anything. And when the Premier tweets about his government’s accomplishments, it’s telling that addressing the housing affordability crisis usually doesn’t make it on the list.

So let’s talk about this bill. I want to begin by explaining what has been neglected in this legislation.

There is nothing beyond a line in the preamble in Bill 185 that directs municipalities to actually plan for 1.5 million homes. I’ll say it again: This government is talking about but not planning for 1.5 million homes. It’s hoping for 1.5 million; it’s praying for 1.5 million, but there is absolutely nothing in this bill that requires municipalities to actually plan or build 1.5 million homes. That’s a bold goal—1.5 million homes by 2031. Mike Moffatt would say that number is already out of date and should be higher. Anyway, 1.5 million—that is a target that this government set, and that is a target that this bill abandons. It does not direct municipalities to plan for that. It does not fix zoning laws to make those homes possible. It does not legislate the necessary infrastructure to support those homes. For this reason alone, this legislation is unworthy to be presented before this House. But it’s worse: Bill 185 neglects the power, the responsibilities and the duty this government has when it comes to building homes.

The Premier and Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing are keen to blame their lack of progress on everyone and everything else, but they won’t make the major policy changes needed to drive real change. Their neglect amounts to an abdication of duty, and here’s how:

The government convened the Housing Affordability Task Force; they have since completely ignored it. Bill 185 does nothing different. The government benefited from mountains of consultation, but they are now killing time by doing more consultation instead of enacting the recommended policies.

Bill 185 overlooks the opportunity to end exclusionary zoning. It refuses to legalize fourplexes as-of-right province-wide. It does not directly strive for greater density around major transit areas. It does not make converting commercial real estate into residential real estate easier—something many stakeholders are begging this government to do. It does nothing to address the myriad of problems bogging down the Landlord and Tenant Board. It does nothing to address the many roadblocks standing in the way of getting more housing built, like angular planes, setbacks and minimum lot sizes. Does the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing even know what an angular plane is, or has he neglected to learn that too?

Bill 185 neglects those who have used the appeal system in good faith by entirely banning third-party appeals in one fell swoop, as opposed to reforming the system to proactively prevent abuses.

Furthermore, all the developers and home builders who have spent years working on housing projects and finding ways to make those projects pencil—Bill 185 neglects them all, by flip-flopping over and over again, going back and forth to no end on whether or not there will or will not be a five-year phase-in period on development charges.

The Premier and Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing have neglected to secure an environment of predictability and long-term stability in the housing sector. That is very clearly resulting in fewer housing starts.

Lastly, we are now seeing this government’s wilful neglect of our health care system—particularly rural hospitals like Durham hospital, resulting in developers cancelling their housing projects.

The extent of this government’s action has really been limited to simply printing novelty-sized cheques to give to municipalities, but this is not a substitute for real planning backed by actual laws and regulations, and the Minister of Housing knows it.

Also missing from the bill is a commitment to make municipalities whole after Bill 23 pulled the rug out from under them, particularly for infrastructure. Sure, the provincial budget has offered a paltry $1.6 billion as an olive branch, when the projected shortfall is significantly closer to $5 billion. Municipalities are now left on the hook while the Premier’s gravy train instead spends just over a billion dollars for the sole purposes of delivering beer in convenience stores just about one year early—priorities, right?

The final thing that’s missing from this bill and, frankly, from this government is common sense. They could have committed billions in infrastructure funding. This government could have committed a billion dollars for securing primary care, keeping hospitals open, expanding home care, or even building homes. Instead, they prioritized beer—$1 billion.

Anyway, to touch very concretely on the details of this bill—I’m going to touch on the four major areas, titled euphemistically as follows:

(1) Building homes at lower cost;

(2) Prioritizing infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects;

(3) Improved consultation and greater certainty for more homes built faster;

(4) Building more types of homes for more people.

I’ll dive into each of these.

So let’s talk about building homes at a lower cost. This includes things that indicate just how out of touch this government is. For example, it removes minimum parking restrictions around MTSAs, which is a bare-minimum policy and one that doesn’t have much to give at all in places that are already highly car-centric, as developers will still build parking in these places. But that’s not actually the question that home builders and developers have been asking. The real question they have is, how much density can go around MTSAs? That answer is not in this bill.

The minister will say that he’s consulting—so let’s look at the draft PPS. But why is he still consulting two years after the Housing Affordability Task Force already answered the question? And to make things even more infuriating, the government has already been stalling on that by saying they’ve been consulting with municipalities.

This is where life gets really bizarre. In related announcements, the government just said they will allow mass-timber construction for up to 18 storeys, but the development community is not clamouring for that. They’re clamouring for clarity on restrictions that make it difficult to build that tall in the first place, such as clarity around angular planes. Similarly, there’s a promise of consulting with fire safety stakeholders about single-exit stairs in small residential buildings, but this was something that Bill 109, two years ago, under the last Minister of Housing, had promised to do. So why are we still consulting?

The next major area of this legislation is prioritizing infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects. This is where I really begin to feel bad for builders, developers and municipalities. The lack of foresight, planning, coordination and courage of this government has led to an environment in which no one can plan and, therefore, no one can build. First, development charges were off the table, throwing municipalities province-wide into chaos, causing property taxes to skyrocket and resulting in developers planning their construction accordingly—now an unexpected walk-back.

Interest rates are affecting housing, admittedly, from coast to coast, but it’s telling that new construction is falling the fastest and hardest in Ontario compared to places like BC and Nova Scotia. As a result of all of these walk-backs, there is now a complete and utter lack of confidence in this government. When hundreds of millions of dollars are on the table, people don’t know what they can expect next month, let alone next year, in terms of policy continuity and clarity of direction. No one can make investment decisions in such an environment, and certainly not municipalities planning for infrastructure.

The next section of this bill is improved consultation and greater certainty for more homes built faster. I’ll say, where do I even start here? As I’ve already said, they’ve been consulting for the past two years and seem caught up in this as a way of delaying.

I’ll also say that included in this section, the bill institutes a near-universal ban on third-party appeals that is simply heavy-handed. There’s no mistake that the current system of appeals is problematic, between long waits at the Ontario Land Tribunal—because it’s underfunded and the significant number of political appointees, it has become a process creating more barriers to reasonable housing than are necessary. But a blanket ban that ignores the root causes? Clearly a more nuanced and calculated approach is necessary, which the Housing Affordability Task Force called for. But where a scalpel was required to address this issue, this government came with a machete.

I’ll skip ahead a few moments just to touch on why this bill will not make a dent in the housing crisis. It won’t get us close to 1.5 million homes, because it has nothing that will make a material difference to our housing efforts. We needed a major home run on housing, and all we got was a swing and a miss.

I’ve been talking to stakeholders, and they were ready for a big housing bill from this government. A new minister, a fire under his feet—the housing sector had its hopes up. But the lack of audacity from Bill 185 has resulted in some of the most profound disappointment I have ever seen from stakeholders since my time in office.

We have government MPPs getting up on stage at conferences, touting their out-of-touch vision for housing in Ontario. The Associate Minister of Housing was recently caught stating that he just wants “everyone to be able to have a detached house with a yard” and that “no one wants to bring up a child in downtown Toronto.” Well, say that—

Thank you very much for the question. Regrettably, we do not see anything that addressed the root causes of the housing crisis in our midst right now. We do not see anything that will increase affordability for our constituents across the province, nothing to increase supportive housing for people across the province.

While there is a pillar of this plan that purports to build more kinds of housing, the foundation for that simply isn’t there. It’s merely words and lacking in any sort of substance whatsoever.

We’ve already seen—as we face in our health care sector. We have a shortage of health care workers. We have hospitals that are now being forced to go into the business of development, and we have now a government that wants colleges and universities to go into that business as well. If they want and feel equipped for that, that’s one thing, but the reality is that we have an underfunded post-secondary sector right now that is barely keeping afloat, and making this an option for them when they can barely keep afloat is really not fair and will be a drop in the bucket for a major crisis.

Interjections.

Interjection.

In any case, I welcome the opportunity to work with the other members. Evidently, there’s a proposal that needs a bit more review, and I absolutely will advocate for my constituents. That being said, there are many reasonable recommendations coming out of the Housing Affordability Task Force report that I have zero qualms in defending in this chamber to my constituents, because I know that when build more housing we are building it for our friends, for our neighbours and for our families.

I’ve been very clear, as I mentioned in my remarks, that one of the really important things that we could be doing is, when provincial lands are sold off for development, that a commitment to 20% and 30% be set aside for affordable housing, once we have clarity on what that definition is. Only if we can do that, ensuring that we have that kind of affordable and supportive housing in place, can we ensure that we get to the root cause of the housing crisis here and help those amongst us who are the most vulnerable here in the province of Ontario.

I would implore the Minister of Housing to do something like that, but I suspect he’ll remain with his ideological blinders and all of Ontario will suffer as a result.

It saddens me to hear the minister say that, because I have never made a statement to that effect. I have made statements to the effect that we need—

Interjections.

It’s always a pleasure and an honour to rise in this august chamber to discuss the issues and the challenges that are facing Ontarians that they are struggling with the most. Many will know that I come from a clinical background. I’m an emergency doctor, but for many years, I’ve also had a number of leadership roles in homeless shelters here in the city of Toronto. And so, I’ve seen first-hand the critical importance of addressing housing affordability, making sure that we’ve got supportive housing environments and ensuring that we do everything possible to get housing right in this province, lest people end up having no choice but to turn to shelters.

Over the course of my remarks this afternoon, I’m going to touch a little bit on the scale of our crisis right now, what we really needed and were looking for in this legislation, what we actually got, my reaction to that and then where to go from there.

Currently, as I alluded, we have a housing and homelessness crisis. The scale of the suffering is difficult to describe. We have people sleeping in tents. We have fully employed personal support workers who cannot afford rent or a home to call their own, so they go to sleep in shelters. We have hospitals that have gone into the game of development because as they try to attract nurses, they don’t have anywhere for them to live. In our colleges and universities, we’ve got students living 25 people to a home because they can’t find anywhere else to live. And we have a massive out-migration from our province because young people cannot afford to live here after they finish their education.

Now, amidst that background, we have a government that purports to be ambitious. It says it will build 1.5 million homes by 2031. My first question is, is that even the right number? Mike Moffatt came out last week with a study saying we actually need 1.7 million homes. Regardless, even if we accept that “1.5 million homes” number as gospel, the government is failing even to keep up with that number. They’re falling thousands of homes behind on an annual basis, so much so that they’re forced to scramble to redefine what a house is in order to save face. We’ve got dorms and long-term-care beds now that are getting redefined as new housing construction—anything to distract from mismanagement and to pad the numbers.

Call it incompetence, call it self-interest, call it cowardice—call it what you want, but at the end of the day, housing starts have declined for the last three years in a row, missing provincial targets by 70,000 in 2022 alone. For six years now, we have had a government that has been driving in reverse. What we have needed is one that takes serious action. Instead, this is what we got.

Every few months, this government comes out with a new piece of housing legislation that usually walks back something that was in the last piece of legislation. Take it for the greenbelt, urban boundary expansion, development charges, and then, outside of housing, even looking at Bill 124 and Bill 28. Even if some of those ideas were good—and to be clear, there have been many bad ideas that have deserved to be walked back—within the context of housing, how are builders and municipalities supposed to have any confidence or ability to plan their construction whatsoever?

And so, with so much incompetence and inaction, you can imagine my excitement when a new housing minister was announced. Some of you may not know, but last time, the housing minister stepped down as a result of the greenbelt scandal.

The Premier tasked a single staffer, who quickly and quietly started removing lands from the greenbelt owned by his developer friends, and the housing minister—the last one—says he didn’t notice. So now he faces an RCMP criminal investigation, and that housing minister was forced to resign.

Now, thankfully, with this greenbelt giveaway, the people of Ontario were able to stop that. They looked at the evidence. The evidence showed they could build the homes that were needed without threatening our greenbelt, and here we are. So, a greenbelt flip-flop—with so many other flip-flops and failures, we have been left billions of dollars in the hole and years behind.

Anyway, thankfully, we have a new housing minister, and I am genuinely very excited. This was an opportunity to right some wrongs, to get things right. But regrettably, we have been let down. This bill could have been a shining debut, a moment to introduce landmark legislation to leave an indelible mark on the future of our province. But instead of courage, we have cowardice; instead of ambition, we have apathy; and instead of foresight, we see failure.

This is the kind of bill that could have been forgiven if it was in year 1 of this government’s mandate, not year 6. For all the talk about housing supply actions plans, this is being touted as a red tape reduction bill, and that’s not surprising because this government has never been about action. Two years—two years—after their own Housing Affordability Task Force report came out, they’re still talking, essentially kicking the can down the road so that they can say they’re doing something without actually.

I’m going to take some time now to reflect on the bill within the broader context of many of the other housing announcements that have come at the same time. I want this government to be successful because my constituents in Don Valley East and Ontarians across the province need it to work.

This bill purports to cover four areas, euphemistically titled as follows: building homes at a lower cost; prioritizing infrastructure for-ready-to-go housing projects; improved consultation and greater certainty to get homes built faster; and building more types of homes for more people.

I’ll dive into each of those four pillars, if you will.

Let’s start with building homes at a lower cost. This section includes things that indicate just how out of touch the government actually is. For example, it purports to remove minimum parking restrictions around major station transit areas. But if you listen carefully to municipalities and the building and developer network, the question that they’re asking isn’t about minimum parking requirements. The question they’re asking is, how much density can go around an MTSA? There is no answer.

Now, I understand that the minister will say that he’s consulting and will refer me to the draft provincial planning statement. But why are we still looking at consulting two years after the Housing Affordability Task Force already answered the question of density around MTSAs? And to make things even more infuriating, the government has already been consulting on that recommendation for the last two years as well with municipalities. So yet again, we’re repeating an announcement, kicking the can down the road to create the impression of action when none has been taken and there is no intention of doing so.

But on this, on these repeated talks of announcements that have already been getting announced, already getting consulted upon, this is where life really begins to get even more bizarre.

In related announcements, the government has said they will allow mass-timber construction up to 18 stories. All right, it’s not a bad idea. It’s good for supporting our forestry sector in our province, allows for more housing options, great, but the development community isn’t asking for 18 storeys for timber construction on that kind of construction. Instead, they are clamouring for clarity around restrictions that make it difficult to build that, like guidance around angular planes. None of that is in this legislation.

Similarly, there’s a promise to consult fire safety stakeholders about single-exit stairs in small residential buildings, but this was something the last housing minister said he was consulting on two years ago, around the time of Bill 109. So yet again, we’re announcing more consultations on things that were deemed to be a priority literally years ago.

The second pillar of this housing ambition was around prioritizing infrastructure for ready-to-go housing projects, and this is where I really begin to feel bad for builders, developers and municipalities: The lack of foresight, planning, and courage of this government has led to an environment in which no one can plan and no one can build.

First, development charges were off the table, throwing municipalities province-wide into chaos, causing property taxes to skyrocket and resulting in developers adjusting their construction accordingly; now, an unexpected walk-back with no warning whatsoever.

This government is introducing a complete and utter lack of confidence through precisely the kind of circular thinking that leads the housing community to have zero confidence in this government. When hundreds of millions of dollars are on the table, and people don’t know what they can expect next month, they cannot get in the business of constructing.

The third pillar of this is improved consultation and greater certainty for more homes built faster. Where do I even start? As I’ve mentioned, we’ve already been consulting. The government has already been consulting for the past two years and seems caught up in it as a way of delaying, but they certainly don’t consult with these stakeholders when it counts, on things like development charges or whether they’re going to walk back on that.

One of the most worrisome elements of all of this is that the bill institutes a near-universal ban on third-party appeals. That is heavy-handed. Make no mistake about it. We do see abuse of the Ontario Land Tribunal. We do see that there are long wait times—of course, it’s infected by political appointments—but a blanket ban that ignores the root causes of the appeals process in the Ontario Land Tribunal? That is heavy-handed, and what we need is a nuanced and calculated approach, and the Housing Affordability Task Force gave us that approach. Whereas this government is taking a machete when a scalpel is needed, the Housing Affordability Task Force made some great recommendations to prevent abuse of the land tribunal, like waving appeals on affordable housing, like having to show merit in a case that is intended to be brought to the tribunal, and increasing filing fees.

I want to take a moment to explain why banning all third-party appeals is dangerous. Sometimes developers appeal other developers because one plan can actually stop them from building even more housing. So we need to be careful that appeals, which can absolutely be important—we need to make sure that they are allowed to function in a reasonable manner and, if done so, we can protect our environment and actually increase the number of houses that we have in our province.

And finally, the fourth pillar of this intended legislation and plan is to build more types of homes for more people. And here, one of the landmark elements of that is to exempt universities from the Planning Act to accelerate student housing and put them on a level playing field with publicly assisted colleges. But here’s the thing: Colleges are suffering too, and putting them on a level playing field doesn’t necessarily solve the problem for universities nor for colleges. What might actually help is funding them properly.

There is much more to be said, but with my time waning and only 90 seconds left, I will reflect briefly on what others have said.

John Michael McGrath points out that this legislation is “broad but shallow, covering many different areas but not pushing too hard in any one place. It does not enough of too much.”

Martin Regg Cohn from the Star points out this collection of anti-climactic legislative proposals made news only because it “codifies a series of climbdowns over screw-ups of the past.”

So how could it have been better? Because I believe firmly we must be, on our side, a group of proposition, not just opposition. Well, in keeping with the legislation I introduced weeks ago, this government could have allowed construction of at least four units and buildings on any residential lot—by-right, province-wide multiplexes, exactly as the Housing Affordability Task Force recommended; introduce minimum height and density requirements around MTSAs; invest in the Landlord and Tenant Board; and require home builders to include at least 20% long-term affordable units as a condition of sale of all provincial surplus lands for housing development, but none of these things.

It saddens me that we have a government so allergic to the concept of real action on housing and on gentle density that they are willing to forgo billions of dollars from the federal government because they are ideologically opposed to fourplexes. We are in a housing affordability crisis. The current situation demands strong leadership and courage, but this government is flying by the seat of its pants. We deserved a bill that would solve our crisis, and we didn’t get it.