My question is to the Premier. There are many landlords across Ontario who owe tenants a lot of money—money in the thousands of dollars. Big landlords regularly ignore the requirements to reduce rents when above-guideline rent increases expire, so tenants everywhere are paying illegal rents.

Will the Premier take steps to ensure landlords follow the law and reduce rents for tenants so they can pay their bills?

Speaker, $10-a-day child care is under threat in this city and, I imagine, in this province. Recently, parents in my riding whose children attend Blossoming Minds child care were informed that, as of the beginning of September, $10-a-day child care wasn’t going to be offered by that centre. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of desperation on the part of parents. I’ve been contacted by people at Jackman daycare, I understand the YMCA and a variety of operators are finding that the current funding formula does not work, and that causes huge problems for those operators but even more profound problems for the parents and the children who are looking at complete disruption of their lives.

We’re in a situation where people are facing huge pressures around the cost of groceries, around the cost of housing. They do not need yet another headache—actually worse than a headache—huge disruption in their lives.

I’m calling on the Premier and the Minister of Education to take steps immediately to address the funding formula so that parents and children can have child care they can afford, so that people can continue to go to work and so that they can hopefully continue to try and keep their heads above water when it comes to cost of living.

“Whereas tenants are finding it difficult to pay constantly rising rents; and

“Whereas consecutive Conservative and Liberal governments sat idle, while housing costs spiralled out of control, speculators made fortunes, and families had to put their hopes on hold;

“Whereas every Ontarian should have access to safe, affordable housing, whether a family wants to rent or own; live in a house, an apartment, a condominium or a co-op, they should have affordable options;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately prioritize the repair of Ontario’s social housing stock, commit to building new affordable homes, crack down on housing speculators, and make rentals more affordable through real rent controls and updated legislation.”

Speaker, I agree with this petition. I’ve signed it, and I’ll give to the page Bhavneet.

“Whereas Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones say they’re planning to privatize parts of health care;

“Whereas privatization will bleed nurses, doctors and PSWs out of our public hospitals, making the health care crisis worse;

“Whereas privatization always ends with patients getting a bill;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately stop all plans to further privatize Ontario’s health care system, and fix the crisis in health care by:...

“—licensing tens of thousands of internationally educated nurses and other health care professionals already in Ontario, who wait years and pay thousands to have their credentials certified;”

—bring in “10 employer-paid sick days;

“—making education and training free or low-cost for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals;

“—incentivizing doctors and nurses to choose to live and work in northern Ontario;

“—funding hospitals to have enough nurses on every shift, on every ward.”

I agree with this petition. I have signed it and I give to it page Korel to submit.

I have a question for the minister. She references the transit-oriented development at Gerrard Street, in my riding. As far as I’ve been able to tell, so far there is no allocation of affordable units in those towers that are planned; the city of Toronto councillor I deal with can’t find any evidence of it. I know that in my riding people support more housing, but if they can’t afford it, if they are simply going to be locked out of it—it doesn’t really help the people who are right now stuffed into basement units, not being able to afford anything else. So I want to know—in case that information is incorrect—how many of the units in those developments are going to be affordable, what is affordable defined as, and when will people be informed that they can buy or rent a unit in those places?

Speaker, it’s my pleasure to welcome parents and children from Pape Avenue Junior Public School: Jaclyn Greenberg and her child Isaac Greenberg; Yue Lisa Li and her child Nathaniel Kan; Cara McCutcheon and her children Everett Trudel and Reed Trudel; Mattias Saavedra and Emme Saavedra; Daniel Miller; Amrita Takhar and her child Max Lee; Ling Teoh and her children Daniel Lam and Abigail Lam.

Welcome to Queen’s Park.

Speaker, as you know, there are many parts to the housing crisis that people face in this province. I want to talk this morning about the soaring rents that people are facing and the crushing burdens that it places on them. Landlords right now can reset the rents at whatever the market will bear when a person leaves a unit, and that means that they do set those rents as high as they possibly can. What’s the impact? It means that young people can’t move out of their parents’ homes when they want to. It means that parents who have a new baby can’t afford to rent a new unit, because the new units will be far more expensive than the one they’re in. It means that there is a huge incentive for landlords to push out tenants so they can put in place huge rent increases.

Speaker, I call on the government to bring in real rent control, to bring in a system so that rent levels are retained at the point they were set for when a tenant was there and are not increased when someone moves out. The province needs this. People need this. The government needs to act.