Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

MINISTRY OF HOUSING

CONTENTS

Tuesday 8 October 1991

Ministry of Housing

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

Chair: Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South PC)

Vice-Chair: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South PC)

Carr, Gary (Oakville South PC)

Daigeler, Hans (Nepean L)

Farnan, Mike (Cambridge NDP)

Johnson, Paul R. (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings NDP)

Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville NDP)

McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South L)

McLeod, Lyn (Fort William L)

O'Connor, Larry (Durham-York NDP)

Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview NDP)

Wilson, Gary (Kingston and The Islands NDP)

Substitution: Poole, Dianne (Eglinton L) for Mrs McLeod

Also taking part: Rizzo, Tony (Oakwood Ind)

Clerk: Carrozza, Franco

The committee met at 1530 in committee room 2.

MINISTRY OF HOUSING

The Chair: We have assembled today to commence estimates of the Ministry of Housing. We have allocated seven and one-half hours, and before we begin I would like to raise the question, as I always do, in which fashion do you wish us to proceed once the opening statements have been made by each of the parties? If you can give that some consideration, we will arrive at a consensus on how we would like to approach these estimates.

Welcome, Minister, to your first estimates as the Minister of Housing. As you know, our standing orders allow you up to one half-hour to use as you wish. If you have as part of your presentation any members of your staff, I would ask you to introduce them, then we will follow in rotation with the official opposition and the third party, and then we will return to you for final summary, comments and questions.

If there are no questions at this point, I will recognize the minister.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Thank you, Mr Chair. I have not provided copies of a statement to members because I do not intend to make a statement. The ministry has very kindly drafted an outline which I could use for a statement, and I have read it with interest. It helped me understand the ministry and our programs, but I thought it would be more useful just to begin with a few short, introductory remarks. This is a real plunge into untried waters as far as I am concerned, having been with the ministry a total of 10 weeks now. I certainly do not feel proficient in all the programs, the financial mechanisms of the ministry, or anything of that nature. So I am really looking forward as we go along to learning, along with members of this committee, a good deal about ministry operations. I would like to take a moment to introduce the new deputy in the Ministry of Housing, Dan Burns. He says I have twice as much experience in the ministry as he does, except he is not counting the Sundays he has been into the office when I have been back in the riding in Ottawa.

All members here will be familiar with the changes that have taken place within the Ministry of Housing agenda over the last several years. I believe that the last time estimates for this particular ministry were held was about two or three years ago, so it has been some time since there has been a committee review of programs of the ministry, and in that time there has been a great deal of activity within the ministry and an enlargement of the programming and I think an enlargement too of the ministry's concept and the government's concept of what it is that the Ministry of Housing can be called upon to do.

Obviously, at this stage the area in which I have devoted most of my efforts has been to come to an understanding of the points of view of the Ontario community, if I can put it that way, about the rent control legislation which my predecessor, Dave Cooke tabled, Bill 121. Just to bring committee members up to date on that, we are in the process, the final stages really, of considering potential amendments arising out of the hearings which the committee undertook on the bill. I would welcome suggestions from committee members during these estimates if there are areas that you would like to stress, that you feel would be most important to amend in the bill, because we are at that stage where we are down to final considerations.

One of the ways I found very useful to learn about what is important to people in Ontario, about the activities of the Ministry of Housing, has been to read those letters which people have sent to the minister before me, and to me, and to ministry officials about the issues that are most important to them in housing. There is no doubt in my mind that rent control is a major concern of people in Ontario.

I had the good fortune to be invited this morning to give a brief address to the Ontario Association of Non-Profit Homes and Support Services for Seniors. I pointed out to them that in the area of housing the interests of senior citizens in Ontario are much wider than simply matters relating to nursing homes or homes for the aged or indeed, Ontario Housing Corp senior citizens' developments and so on, that a great many seniors in Ontario rent accommodation in the private market and that a great many of those people are at the poverty line. So what we do in the rental market has a great effect on the quality of life of senior citizens in Ontario. That is certainly borne out to me in the letters that have passed through my office written by a great number of senior citizens who, over the past few years, have seen their rents rise drastically and who find it very hard to cope. So my experience at the ministry has confirmed to me the importance of effective rent control.

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We have, over the last few years -- and these were initiatives, really, that got rolling under the previous government -- begun in Ontario to put a lot of effort, energy and money into the development of non-profit and co-op, community-based housing, either undertaken by municipal non-profit corporations or by various community-based groups.

In each of your ridings, I am sure you are aware of projects which people would like to initiate, or have initiated, for which they have received an allocation to proceed to planning, or for which they have received a commitment, or indeed, where their construction has begun, or the units have opened. You will all have sensed, as you joined them at the opening ceremonies, the great pride and feeling of accomplishment that community-based groups have, and indeed whole communities, when they are able to build up a stock of what they know is going to be long-term affordable housing. It will be good for me to be able to talk with you about what you are finding out in your own communities where those projects are concerned.

One other item that I would like to raise as a matter of particular interest to me is what happens with our 84,000 units of public housing in Ontario. Half of those units, as you are well aware, are senior citizens' units, and in most of those I guess we can describe problems which are repetitive across the province; very often they relate to difficulties with old elevator systems and the need to have a bit of accommodation so that community-based services can start doing what I call in-reach to the people who are living in our public senior citizens' developments.

We have got a lot of work to do there, but we have even more work to do, I think, in some of the older, larger family-style housing that Ontario Housing Corp has in its portfolio, much of which developed 20 to 30 years ago often in communities around this province, located on what was then the outside of town which these days, because of urban growth, has often become valuable and near-centre town property.

What we should be doing to make life better in our public housing family areas, and what we should be doing with the land we have there and the investment we have in the housing there, which is still a prime source of affordable housing for people with core needs in housing, all those matters are things that I would like to think we can address without going through 10 years of nudging around the edges of it and dreaming of it and consulting about it. I would like to be able to see us move fairly decisively with input from people who are living in those neighbourhoods, but with a very clear idea about what we are setting out to do.

I do not have clear ideas yet, as minister, but this is an area in which I have a very strong interest, partly out of the experience of my own community and partly learning of the experiences of other communities, particularly here in Toronto.

With those short opening indications of my hopes and expectations for our committee work, Mr Chair, I would be pleased to pass responses and get into our questions.

The Chair: That is an appreciated and refreshing approach, and thank you. I am treading water at the moment until I get to recognize the Housing critic, but perhaps the new deputy would like to offer a few words on this the occasion of his first estimates.

Mr Burns: I do not have any particular remarks I want to add, Mr Chair. I am happy to be here and be part of the discussion.

The Chair: That is also appreciated and novel for a senior civil servant. I recognize Mrs Poole. You have up to a half an hour for your comments.

Ms Poole: Thank you, Mr Chair. It is a pleasure for me as the Liberal Housing critic to make a few comments. First of all, on a positive note, this is my first opportunity to officially congratulate the new minister on her portfolio although, given the history of this particular ministry, I am not sure whether "congratulations" is specifically the right word to use.

Hon Ms Gigantes: You should have seen the last one.

Ms Poole: I think, perhaps, "commiserations" might be a more appropriate word, but nevertheless, we wish you well in your portfolio. Also to the new deputy minister, Mr Burns, whom I have known in the past, I give you my best wishes in your new responsibilities.

I am glad we have the opportunity to have the minister here so that we can ask questions and, more particularly, so that we can get some answers. I guess that is one of the biggest disappointments I have faced in the role as an opposition critic, the lack of information that has been forthcoming from the government. I have always believed that opposition should be responsible, that opposition should try to co-operate, because in the final analysis, we want the best for the people of the province, but I find that increasingly difficult when we do not have the information we need to work with. If we are to have a gentler and kinder Legislature, with the co-operation of the opposition, I would say that we cannot do this unless you share information. I can give you a number of incidents, most of which took place with the previous minister, but it appears the trend is continuing.

There have been very few announcements made in the House over the past year. I can count them on half of one hand. Instead, we get our information through press releases or through a government member asking questions in the House. There is rarely an opportunity for the opposition critics, whether it be the Liberals or the Conservatives, to offer any type of constructive advice, criticism, or anything else, because we are not given that opportunity.

Just yesterday we had another incident where 3,300 non-profit, subsidized homes were allocated through the new 10,000-unit program from the budget, and yet there was no announcement in the House. Instead of a fairly significant announcement being made in the House, we found out partially through a member's question in the House and then subsequently from a press release. I would urge the government and the minister to take a look at this problem, because I feel that if the House is to be effective, we have to have access to that kind of information. We should not have to rely on tracking down media releases, which usually end up at my office some two weeks after the specific event. I think that type of co-operation would be very helpful in getting our constructive advice as to what should be happening.

It does not end there. For instance, I have been sitting for a number of months -- it feels more like a number of years -- on the standing committee on general government as we have dealt with rent control. On August 1, I gave a list to the ministry, a fairly short list, of things that I would like in order to do my job as opposition Housing critic, including a definition of some terms that were mentioned in the act. As of today's date, a substantial number of those items have remained unanswered, and that was some nine or ten weeks ago.

I tabled a further perhaps 15 or 16 items on August 27, which again is, what, six weeks ago? I asked the ministry in particular to please give me whatever information they could as quickly as possible, because much of this information was necessary for the amendments which the minister referred to for Bill 121. Not one piece of information has crossed my desk in spite of several reminders from my office and pleas that we need this information so we can help with the amendments.

The latest incident that I find extremely disturbing is that in the general government committee on a number of occasions, the Conservative critic and the Liberal critic both asked for access to the regulations that were being drafted. There was a commitment from the ministry that certain regulations they were in the process of drafting would be made available to us as soon as they were available. Unfortunately, I have now spoken to three groups, landlord and tenant groups, who a week ago were couriered copies of draft amendments on both the amortization table and the guideline formulas for their commentary. And yet as opposition Housing critic and as a member of the general government committee that is now formulating the amendments, I have not had access to that information. So I guess my plea on the other side is: "Yes, we are willing to co-operate. We are willing to give constructive advice, but we can't do it unless we have the tools to help." It is like tying our hands behind our backs.

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I am beginning to be quite dismayed at the stalling on the general government committee. We were originally to look at amendments for Bill 121 the week of September 16 and we were advised by the government that this was not possible, even though there had been three months' notice given of this date being set aside, because three members of the government party were on holidays that week and had their personal plans. Since then the general government committee sessions on Thursdays have been cancelled for three consecutive weeks, and the word I have received is that the government is not yet ready with amendments.

I find this distressing because I know the minister and the previous minister both expressed publicly and privately that they had a very tight timeline for the rent control legislation, that they really wanted to have it passed by the end of this year so they could have it in place as soon as possible. But the longer it is delayed, and we have no opportunity to go into clause-by-clause, the more difficult it is for us to have any type of meaningful debate, any type of meaningful dialogue on what these amendments should be. I find this whole process extremely distressing because I think we have things we can contribute, things we can do to help make the legislation better, and right now we do not have the full information we need in order to fully participate.

As far as this session of the housing estimates goes, I am really looking forward to not only asking those questions but also to finally getting some answers that will, I think, certainly clear the air somewhat. Perhaps it might be appropriate if I could detail a number of the questions that we would like some answers to during the course of the estimates so that ministry staff could have an opportunity and some time to prepare answers.

The Chair: May I just ask if you have that in written form as well? There will be some mad scribbling going on in this room.

Ms Poole: I have my own notes on this particular one that are in written form, although they have certain information which I am not sure --

The Chair: That is fair, thank you. That is fine.

Ms Poole: But certainly I would be willing to consult with ministry staff afterwards and I will try to speak slowly.

The Chair: If that is an appeal for more time, I would encourage you to get all your questions on the record.

Ms Poole: I will not speak slowly.

First of all, we would like the minister to detail all the expenditures in the ministry that might be affected by the Treasurer's spending cut announcements. Obviously housing is one area where, particularly with the third party over the last year, there have been concerns expressed about spending. We think this might be one of the logical places for the Treasurer to go, so we would like to know from the minister if she is aware of any of her programs that will be cut or discontinued.

Second, relating to the building services program -- and I am trying to more or less follow this in the order of the briefing book for the housing estimates -- I would like to know from the minister what standards issues are to be covered in the code for existing buildings, what the plans are for the enforcement and what the projected costs are for public and private buildings in this enforcement and standards area.

My third question relates to housing operations. From that I would like a commentary from the minister as to the status of the Homes Now program, and particularly the average annual operating subsidy. I appreciate the minister will not be able to answer all these things today, but I would like the minister to let us know if there have been any policy changes in the NDP's administration of the Homes Now program. It would also be very helpful if it could be clarified whether the NDP government has made the decision to fund unit renovations under Homes Now. If there are units that have received that kind of funding, we would be most interested in having an analysis of how many and what kind of funding has been allocated.

Further to the minister's announcement via press release yesterday of the 3,300-plus allocations under the 10,000 non-profit housing units promised in the budget, there is some further information which we would like to receive. How many applications is the ministry working under? When will the first funding flow? When will the first units be constructed? How much of the cost of the new units is covered in this year's ministry estimates, as opposed to moneys that would be forthcoming from an allocation at a later date? Is the minister aware whether any of these 10,000 units have been affected by the Treasurer's proposed spending cuts?

There have been also recent increases in per-unit operating subsidy costs, so it would be very helpful if the minister would explain the reason for these recent increases and project whether there would be any above-inflation subsidy cost increases in the future.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Could you repeat that?

Ms Poole: Sure. We are looking at the operational subsidy funding of non-profit housing units. This has increased recently, not only due to the number of new units covered but also to an increase in the average annual subsidy cost per unit. Under the new units announced by the government, the average annual subsidy is projected to be $15,000. This is a significant increase over the $8,000 and $10,000 subsidies projected under the Liberal Homes Now program. Could we have an explanation for the recent increases in the per-unit operating subsidy costs, and whether the minister might project that there would be more to follow in that vein?

In relation to the housing policy statement, as the minister is aware, I guess it was over two years ago now that the Liberal government announced some changes in this regard, specifically to the implementation of the land use for housing policy statement. Under the policy, municipalities were required to plan for a 25% affordable housing component. My understanding is that the deadline for municipalities to implement the policy statement and have amendments to their official plans was August 1, 1991. My further understanding is that most municipalities have not complied; that some have indicated they will be complying but are in process of it; that others have indicated they have complied, but that the majority have not made such compliance.

As part of this, I have a number of questions for the minister. The first one would be, have you communicated with the municipalities that have not complied? I guess I should back up a step. Does the minister intend to pursue the Liberal initiatives in this regard? Second, if the minister does intend to pursue this policy, has she been in touch with any municipalities to confirm what would be the date of their compliance and to confirm, for those who have not indicated any date of compliance, whether they intend to comply at all? Most important, I guess, what will be the minister's actions in the event of municipalities that have refused to comply or have given her an indication they are unwilling to do so? How far is the minister willing to take the enforcement and what steps will she take?

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Rent review: This probably could take a whole half hour just in itself, even to get the initial comments out about it, but I will try to limit my comments. The projected costs under the new rent legislation, Bill 121: Does the minister estimate that it will be more costly than the current system, less costly, or is she planning to reallocate current resources so that the systems will be quite similar as far as cost?

Another issue under the rent review bill is that there is currently a backlog of applications that have been frozen by Bill 4. Under Bill 121 as it now stands, those applications may be brought forward in a slightly different form. What does the minister anticipate will happen to that backlog? How many applications would there be that would fit into that scenario? How would she think any possible backlog under Bill 4 might affect an overall backlog for the new rent review legislation? Is it going to stall it? Are we going to see the same types of problems that we did under Bill 51 where the enormous changes in themselves and the increase in applications meant that a backlog was built in before they even started?

Can the minister give us any idea how the increased ability of tenant-based applications will affect both cost and again backlog? What is this going to do to the system? Are there other factors in the new legislation which will affect changes to administrative costs, either to lessen administrative costs or, on the other hand, to increase them?

One final comment on the backlog. If it is anticipated -- and I would assume it is -- that there will be a backlog at least initially, does the ministry have any estimation of how long it would take to clear that backlog so that the new system is fully up and operational without that hindrance?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Could I just try to understand that one? Presumably, you are talking about a backlog under Bill 51, because when Bill 121 starts out, it is not going to have a backlog. It will have Bill 4 applications.

Ms Poole: The problematic feature is the rent increases effective as of October 1, 1990. Everything from that date has been frozen. So the ones that are currently in the system will have to be dealt with under the new legislation. There is also a component in Bill 121 which says that --

Hon Ms Gigantes: That is not a backlog; that is a forelog, if you know what I mean. What we are dealing with now, and will deal with for some time, are applications under the existing legislation.

Ms Poole: Perhaps I should phrase it this way. Under Bill 121 there is not a retroactive feature. Thank God for that. The Bill 4 retroactivity was quite enough for us, thank you very much all the same. By the same token, all those applications that have been frozen from January 1, 1990, until this new act comes into force and effect, which is optimistically, I believe, in the spring of 1992, even though they will not be for retroactive increases, the people caught in those situations will be allowed to bring those capital expenditures forward for the future. So we will have a large number of applications coming forward at one time for capital expenditures that under the current act took place between January 1, 1990, and when the act comes into place.

Hon Ms Gigantes: You are talking about Bill 4.

Ms Poole: Yes, I am talking about Bill 4. I am sorry. I thought I had made it clear that I was talking about the ones affected from Bill 4.

Just a couple of other things about rent review: The ministry has a number of educational programs for tenants and landlords and this year the ministry will be spending money to develop a video on the Landlord and Tenant Act. I wonder if the ministry could give us an estimate of what the cost will be for this particular program. We would also like to know how widely this video will be used and where it will be shown. Do they have any estimates, for instance, on how many of the province's landlords and tenants are likely to see this video?

I can appreciate this is a lot of information and we will certainly give every assistance to the Ministry of Housing staff afterwards to help them catch up with what we have asked.

The housing programs branch: Ataratiri has been a fairly controversial issue in the news lately. There has not been a lot of information revealed in the House about the government's intention in this regard. We would like to know the status of planning for Ataratiri, and at the same time, the status of various housing projects on government land. This would also include the status of the ballet opera house at Bay and Wellesley, which was to include a provincial housing development. As the minister is aware, under her government there was a change in direction, so we would like to know what is going to be happening with that housing component.

The status of the Ontario Stock Yards lands: We would like to know what is happening there and whether the Ministry of Housing has consulted with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food about how the lands will be utilized when the stockyards shut down over the next 10 years.

Capital grants: There were a number of Liberal initiatives to fund private sector rental construction and rehabilitation; for instance, the convert-to-rent program. They have been continued by the new government, although some of them may well sunset. Much of the funding that has been continued, for instance, under the low-rise rehabilitation program, convert-to-rent and pilot project funding for the rooming house rehabilitation program has come from the anti-recession program allocation for the ministry.

Basically, I would like to know the status of all capital program funding announced under the Liberal government's assured housing initiatives, and whether funding for the convert-to-rent and the low-rise rehabilitation program is continued to extend into the next fiscal year. We would also like to know if there have been any changes as to how these programs would be delivered or how these programs would work.

The rooming house rehabilitation program: We would like specific information as to how the funding is being allocated, which programs to date have received funding, the total number of units that would be funded and the average cost per unit. We would also like to know if there have been specific areas of the province that have received funding under this project.

Perhaps one thing I could ask the minister to clarify for us is the difference between the Housing First and the housing priority policy. We would like to know whether any government land projects are proceeding while the consultation process is under way in this regard. We would also like a list of all surplus government land under review and the number of possible units for development on each site.

One of the last things I will bring up is the consultation paper the ministry released last spring on the housing supply. When I was reviewing that document I noticed there was very little about home ownership. What I would like from the minister is confirmation of whether she believes ownership housing is an important component of the overall housing supply and whether it is an important initiative not only of her government but particularly of her ministry. In that vein, we would also like to know whether the minister feels it important to increase the affordability of ownership housing and, if so, what initiatives her ministry would undertake to accomplish this.

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One of the things that surprised me was that the consultation paper does not review how co-ops are administered and whether there is going to be any sort of review of the administration of co-op housing. For instance, one thing we would like to know is whether middle- and upper-income residents in co-op, non-profit housing units should pay market rent for their units.

Perhaps the minister would also like to elaborate on whether she feels there is any need for legislation to ensure that co-ops operate in an open, accessible and fair manner. I do know that one of the contentious issues regarding co-ops is the fact that they do not have any kind of common waiting list. If people want to get into a co-op, they have to track from co-op to co-op and get on individual waiting lists. I think it would be to the benefit of tenants across this province to have a common waiting list. It would make it much simpler for them to get into co-op housing, and to be fair about who gets into co-op housing. I would specifically like the minister to comment on that.

One of the things that puzzled me was why allocations of non-profit units were made in the 1991 budget before the review of housing policy under the consultation paper was completed. From that viewpoint, now that the government has announced there are going to be 10,000 units allocated, could these possibly be affected by the results of the minister's consultation paper?

One other question in that regard is when will the consultation paper, the first government answers or analysis of the consultation document, be ready.

I think my time is just about up. I just have a couple of quick questions. We would be most interested in finding out how the Partners in Housing program is intended to work and which groups have received funding this year under the initiative.

One final question about the Seaton development up in North Pickering. Our indications are that the NDP government does intend to proceed with the project. Perhaps the minister could let us know when the chair and the board for the Seaton development will be selected, how the appointments will be selected, what percentage of the Seaton lands will be dedicated to affordable housing and when the construction of any housing will be commenced.

I will provide these written comments. As long as they do not mind a lot of little pieces of paper, I will do a cut-and-paste and provide that to your staff today. I understand this has covered a wide range of issues and questions and we may not be able to cover it all in the seven hours allocated, so I would appreciate the minister's undertaking that, should we be unable to complete the estimates --

Interjection.

Ms Poole: That is right. We have not even gotten to the many government questions, which I am sure are very enlightening, to say nothing of the third party questions.

Could we have answers to these questions in writing, and once they have had a chance to peruse the questions in detail and see how difficult the answers will be, could they give us a time limit on when we may expect to see any written answers that do not get addressed in the estimates procedure?

The Acting Chair (Mr Johnson): Thank you, Ms Poole, for your litany of questions. When the minister answers these questions, they can be given to the clerk and distributed to all members of the committee. Mrs Marland, would you like to continue?

Mrs Marland: Thank you, Mr Chairman. First of all, I too would like to welcome Ms Gigantes as the new Minister of Housing, and Mr Burns as the new deputy. As the Vice-Chair of this committee and the recently appointed Progressive Conservative critic for Housing, I welcome this opportunity to examine and discuss the 1991-92 estimates of the Ministry of Housing.

Before discussing my party's concerns with the Housing estimates in particular and the government's management of the Housing portfolio in general, I would like to thank the Ministry of Housing officials who are present today to help us interpret the estimates and provide further information that we will request. You may have a copy of my comments if that is helpful to you.

I will begin by presenting my party's concerns with respect to the major housing problems of lack of affordability and shortage of supply. I will also outline our views on the roles of the private and public sectors in providing affordable housing. Later, I will discuss some of our concerns in the areas of non-profit housing, rental housing, home ownership, housing for disabled persons, residential intensification, student housing and the proposed Ataratiri housing project.

Most housing analysts will agree that the two major housing problems at work in the province are lack of affordability and a shortage of housing units. It has been effectively argued that these two problems relate to the supply-and-demand dynamics at work in the marketplace. On the supply side, the recession, high interest rates, a shortage of land, high servicing costs, and government policies such as rent control and lot levies, have strangled private sector construction. On the demand side, the need for more housing has escalated as the baby-boom generation has entered the housing market and immigration, both international and interprovincial, has increased.

With demand for housing exceeding supply, prices for both owned and rented housing have grown beyond the capabilities of an increasing number of households. The NDP government, like the Liberals before them, has responded to the lack of affordable housing by becoming almost the sole producer of rental housing in Ontario. As a result, the Housing ministry's budget is skyrocketing. According to the estimates, the ministry's budget will increase to $898 million in 1991-92. This is an increase of $231 million, or approximately 35%, from 1990-91. Taking a more historical perspective, the Housing budget has increased by 270% since 1985-86.

These increases do not even take into account that this government's promise of 10,000 additional units of non-profit and co-operative housing units will cost at least $1 billion to build and $150 million a year in operating subsidies, or $1,250 monthly per unit. This is a 79% increase over the $700 monthly operating subsidy per unit estimated by the Liberal government when it introduced the Homes Now program in 1988.

While the provincial government's housing expenditures escalate, the private sector is building very little affordable housing. Unfortunately, this government has taken no steps to stimulate badly needed construction of affordable housing by the private sector. The government could consider dismantling the rent control system which acts as a strong disincentive to the construction of rental housing. The introduction of a shelter subsidy program would protect needy tenants during the phasing out of rent control. The number of families requiring shelter subsidies would decrease as market forces regained equilibrium, the vacancy rate increased, and rents decreased. Such a system would direct assistance to people in need rather than having the government subsidize, in effect, well-to-do tenants who occupy inexpensive, rent-controlled units.

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Instead, through Bills 4 and 121, the government has tightened rent control and increased disincentives to the private sector to construct rental housing. The government could also have introduced a program of assistance to first-time home buyers in order to free up affordable rental units, stimulate the construction of affordable owned housing, and put laid-off construction workers back to work. Instead, the government brought in a budget that offers nothing for the first-time home buyer.

Without the private sector building affordable housing, the province will have to build every new affordable unit and the Housing ministry's budget will become a black hole. This year the Ministry of Housing received, by percentage increase over the previous year, the largest budgetary increase of any ministry. As old social housing stock deteriorates, new non-profit units with huge subsidies come on stream and more non-profit housing is built, the Housing budget will consume even more taxpayers' dollars. My party supports an appropriate mix of private and public housing initiatives. By contrast, the present government has shown complete disregard for the role of the private sector.

For instance, the government's consultation paper, A Housing Framework for Ontario, does not address how the private sector should be involved in building affordable housing. The regional municipality of Peel, in which my constituency of Mississauga South is located, singled out this omission in its response to the housing framework paper. The region of Peel recommends that the framework paper add an additional objective: "A housing framework for Ontario should include the private sector....Government policies and support should also be directed to strengthen and further develop private housing (rental, affordable ownership, and other tenure alternatives) as part of Ontario's housing system."

This government's tunnel vision regarding the private sector is crippling our provincial economy, penalizing both tenants and landlords and preventing many Ontarians from realizing their dream of home ownership. My party also believes that public dollars are too scarce to be squandered on unproductive expenditures. Unfortunately, as I will discuss in more detail in a few minutes, we have uncovered some glaring examples of waste and inefficiency in provincial housing programs.

At this point, I will turn to my party's concerns in the area of non-profit housing. Some entries in the estimates show huge year-over-year budgetary increases because of the growth of non-profit housing programs. For example, I am concerned about the increase for grants in support of non-profit housing under item 2, "Housing Field Operations Activity -- Operating Expenditures," on page 76. These grants will increase by 73% in just one year, from $255.5 million to $440.7 million. Looking at this figure another way, these grants now make up 58% of the ministry's operating budget and 49% of its total budget.

The expenditure details on page 78 show that the biggest increase is for the provincial non-profit program, which includes Homes Now, Project 3000, Project 3600 and some new initiatives. The provincial non-profit program will increase 165% in one year, from $54.5 million to $144.5 million; 58% and 165% are huge year-over-year increases and require explanations from the minister and her officials.

Based on the number of units promised by the Liberal government, the cost-of-operating subsidies for units built under the Homes Now, Project 3000 and Project 3600 programs will reach over $875 million by 1993-94. This figure was calculated before the NDP government's promise of 10,000 more units. Therefore, I would like to receive the most recent estimates of the operating subsidy costs for all non-profit housing programs. I would request yearly figures for each program showing the number of units that will have been built and the subsidy costs. In addition, I would like to know the number of units and the estimated yearly operating subsidies upon completion of all the units that have been promised to date.

My party has particular concerns about the Homes Now program because my colleague David Tilson, who preceded me as Progressive Conservative Housing critic, has done comprehensive research which reveals very questionable expenditures in the program. Documents which Mr Tilson obtained under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act show that fees charged by lawyers, architects, mortgage brokers and consultants for the first 117 committed projects under Homes Now will consume more than $26.3 million, based on the non-profit organization's own project cost estimates.

Of particular concern, $10.6 million of this figure is for so-called "organizational expenses," in other words, high-priced consultants. It appears that the ministry is rubber-stamping applicants' organizational expense estimates rather than properly scrutinizing and controlling them. At this rate of $26.3 million in fees for 6,140 units, about $172 million will be spent on such charges if all the 30,000 Homes Now units promised by the Liberals, plus the 10,000 new units promised by the NDP government, are built. As Mr Tilson said when he released the information last May, "That's simply outrageous for a program which bills itself as non-profit."

Keep in mind that these figures are just for Homes Now. Similarly high fees may have been charged for housing projects built under other provincial non-profit programs. This is a matter which requires the immediate attention of ministry officials. Obviously there is a need to introduce proper cost controls on existing non-profit housing initiatives before proceeding with further expansions of these programs.

My party is also very concerned that $3 billion in mortgage moneys for the Homes Now program has been borrowed from the Canada pension plan. In the budget lockup last April neither Treasury nor Housing ministry officials could tell us how and when this $3 billion would be repaid, so I am asking that question now. As elected representatives, we have a moral obligation to protect our residents' pension funds.

Turning to some of my concerns regarding rental housing, it is clear that this government's rent control and review system is aggravating our shortage of affordable and decent rental housing. Too often rental housing stock is not being maintained or repaired because landlords cannot recover the costs through rent increases. There is no incentive for the private sector to build badly needed rental housing. In addition, rent review is very cumbersome, especially for small landlords. I note that the costs of the rent review system have decreased for the first time this year, no doubt as a result of Bill 4 and its absolute ceiling on rent increases for 1991. Even so, this year's total cost for rent review, estimated at $33.5 million, has increased 353% since 1984-85, when the system cost $7.4 million.

What is more, Bill 121, which will replace Bill 4 at the end of the year, continues the rent review system. There will probably be a significant increase in the cost of rent review as people become familiar with the changes brought in by Bill 121. As well, this bill will change the bureaucracy within the ministry. There will be a new staff of inspectors and rent officers who will take over the work of the Residential Rental Standards Board, which will be dissolved. Will the number and cost of staff increase as a result of the changes introduced by Bill 121? Also, what are the ministry's projections for the annual costs of rent review once Bill 121 comes into effect?

According to the estimates on page 104, the number of inquiries regarding the rent registry has increased 80-fold from 1,000 in 1988-89 to a projection of 80,000 this year, up by 40,000 inquiries or 100% from last year. I would like to ask ministry officials how they are coping with these inquiries, since I note there is virtually no increase in the salary and wages component under item 3, "Rent Review Operations Activity Expenditures," on page 107. This would suggest no increase in staffing to handle the requests. Is this inference correct? Will more staff be required once Bill 121 comes into effect and expands the registry to include all residential complexes that contain rental units, regardless of size?

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I would also like to know how many staff presently administer the rent review system, with a breakdown of the numbers in rent review services, the rent registry, the rental housing protection program, the Rent Review Hearings Board and the Residental Rental Standards Board.

Another issue of concern with respect to rental housing is the possibility of phasing out rent control and introducing a shelter subsidy system to assist core-need tenants who cannot afford market rents. Two weeks ago when I raised this matter in the House the minister quoted from a joint report by the Co-operative Housing Association of Ontario and the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association about the cost of establishing such a system. As the new critic I have not yet had a chance to study that report, but I would be happy to receive it and all other information in the ministry's possession regarding the cost of shelter subsidy systems and the kinds of systems which are possible. As I requested in the House, our party would also like the government to undertake its own cost-benefit analysis of shelter subsidy systems. I hope, Madam Minister, you will forward that material to me.

In the House the minister stated it would cost $1.2 billion a year to run a shelter subsidy program and said she thought it would be too expensive. She should put that $1.2-billion-a-year figure in perspective by considering that the ministry will spend at least $4 billion to build 40,000 units under Homes Now. She should also consider that her government's most recent figures estimate the monthly cost of subsidizing non-profit units to be $1,250 a unit. As I said earlier, non-profit operating subsidies will cost the government about $875 million a year by 1993-94, not including the cost for the additional 10,000 units promised by her government. When those 10,000 units have been built the annual cost of operating subsidies will be well above $1 billion.

Given these figures, Madam Minister, I do not see how you can shrug off the need to consider other alternatives such as a shelter subsidy program. Government cannot afford to build every new affordable unit. We must involve the private sector in constructing affordable housing. When this government discusses affordable housing it always seems to limit its discussion to non-profit, co-operative and rental housing. However, my party is also concerned about the affordability of home ownership. As I said earlier, I am disappointed that the government would not consider an anti-recession measure such as Quebec's program My Taxes, My Roof, which gives first-time buyers either a $5,000 rebate on a new home priced under $130,000 or an 8.5% mortgage. Since the program was introduced last fall, housing starts have climbed 46% in Quebec.

As the president of the Greater Toronto Home Builders Association wrote in a recent newsletter: "Ontario could learn much from the Quebec experience. With the existence of a substantial pent-up demand among entry-level buyers, it wouldn't take much to stimulate the market and provide a much-needed boost to our decimated construction labour force."

In the meantime, the Ontario home ownership savings plan is not working. Those who can afford to pay into it are limited to very small contributions, while those whose incomes do not permit them to contribute much to such a plan can make the largest contributions. It is time the government studied alternatives to help people achieve their dream of home ownership.

Looking at another program, as the Progressive Conservative advocate for disabled persons I strongly support the Ontario home renewal program for disabled persons, which provides loans of up to $15,000 to home owners to make modifications that increase accessibility for disabled occupants. I was very disappointed that this popular program was due to be phased out by the Liberals. It has had a temporary injection of $4.5 million this year as one of the government's anti-recession measures, but the estimates indicate on page 160 that "this is an anti-recession program capital project funded during fiscal year 1991-92 only." I would like to know, Madam Minister, why the government does not plan to continue this very much needed program.

At this point I will turn to residential intensification, one of the major policy objectives of the policy statement on land use planning for housing which was issued by the previous Liberal government in July 1989. The present government asked municipalities in priority areas to have adopted official plan and zoning bylaw provisions to implement the housing policy statement by August 1991. However, for good reasons, which I will outline, few municipalities have been able to comply with the request as it applies to residential intensification.

A problem which both the region of Peel and the city of Mississauga have identified is that under the Assessment Act a dwelling with an accessory unit may generate the same tax assessment as a dwelling with a finished and unrented basement. Unless the unit increases the market value of the property by more than $5,000 -- which is not the case with many of these properties -- the assessed value of the building does not increase. In fact, property taxpayers would subsidize municipal and educational services for residents of many accessory apartments. The Assessment Act must be amended to allow municipalities and school boards to receive additional tax revenue for these units.

Another problem is the need for right-of-entry legislation to control problems which may arise from intensification such as illegal conversions, unsafe conditions, poor maintenance by absentee landlords, and noise. I realize that Bill 112, when passed, would revise the Building Code Act to give emergency remedial powers to the chief building official in respect to buildings that pose an immediate danger to health or safety of any person. I also know that Bill 121 would give power of entry to inspectors to determine whether a landlord has complied with a prescribed maintenance standard. However, the right-of-entry issue remains a concern of Mississauga and the region of Peel because of problems they have experienced with rooming house conversions. Can the minister tell us what steps she will take to ensure that accessory apartments are subject to assessment and that appropriate right-of-entry powers be enacted?

I would also like the minister to indicate whether she supports the previous government's policy statement on land use planning for housing. If not, could she explain where her views differ and tell us when she will issue a new policy statement? As well, I would appreciate knowing the amount of money that will be spent this year on intensification projects, both by project and in total.

No one can disagree that intensification is less expensive than building affordable housing megaprojects which require the construction of infrastructure such as roads, sewers, public transit, schools and recreational facilities. However, there have been some major problems introducing intensification. My constituency is home to the former government's first housing intensification project. This project is very controversial because it consists of 41 units on two and a quarter acres of land in an area where many residents purchased their homes based on the neighbourhood's low density of housing. When the government changes the rules after the fact, as it did in this case, it can expect residents in the vicinity of the project to object.

Another form of intensification, the conversion of single-family homes into rooming houses, has caused serious problems in some neighbourhoods in my constituency. These conversions have created housing of poor quality for tenants which has an adverse impact on neighbourhoods.

The government has received a consultants' study entitled The Control of Rooming, Boarding and Lodging Houses -- commonly referred to as the Pandy, Koltun study -- which examines the problems that have arisen in university towns where many rooming house conversions have occurred. However, it is not clear what the government intends to do with this information or whether it will develop legislative tools to address the many areas of concern.

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On the subject of off-campus student housing in university towns, last week my colleague Elizabeth Witmer, MPP, stated in the House that the mayors of five Ontario cities -- Guelph, Kingston, London, Waterloo and Windsor -- wrote to the Minister of Colleges and Universities on August 14, 1991 about problems which arise from the demand for off campus student housing. As Mrs Witmer said: "The increasing need for students to find housing off-campus has resulted in a significant decrease in the availability of moderately priced housing for families in these communities. The fact that many students can afford to pay inflated prices for substandard accommodation has forced many low-income families to lower their expectations for the kind of housing their limited incomes can afford.... I strongly urge the minister to make the time to meet with these mayors at the earliest possible opportunity and to work not only with them but with the Minister of Housing to find solutions to this extremely difficult problem."

To my knowledge, the requested meeting has not occurred. I would ask the Minister of Housing if she and her colleague the Minister of Colleges and Universities plan to meet with these mayors to discuss the possible solutions to the serious problems which result from a shortage of student housing. Could the minister also tell us what action her government will take to solve the problems which result from rooming house conversions?

I expect that once issues such as property assessment and right of entry have been resolved, few home owners would object to intensification in the form of an accessory apartment in an owner-occupied home, since these homes usually are well maintained and would have a reasonable number of people occupying them. In addition to accessory apartments, we must consider intensification options such as main street programs, infill housing and the conversion of non-residential to residential uses. These steps can help us control the urban sprawl which has marked much of the greater Toronto area's development.

However, in selecting former industrial sites to redevelop for housing, great caution must be exercised with respect to site suitability. As my leader, Mike Harris, and I pointed out last week in the Legislature, the proposed Ataratiri housing project on the east side of downtown Toronto is turning out to be a white elephant, largely because of unforeseen costs for environmental restoration of the land. There are 500,000 cubic metres of contaminated soil on the Ataratiri site which will have to be cleaned up. The site will also have to be protected from flooding of the Don River and noise from the adjacent Gardiner Expressway. It hardly seems to be a good site for housing.

The land acquisition costs of $237 million work out to $3 million an acre, a ludicrous amount for severely polluted land. Gross underestimation of the cleanup costs have seen Ataratiri's budget balloon from the original estimate of $444 million to as much as $2 billion, according to the Urban Development Institute. In other words, the 7,000 housing units could cost as much as $250,000 a unit to build. At that cost, nobody can call Ataratiri affordable housing. Already the interest on the $237 million spent to purchase the Ataratiri land is $60,000 a day, or $22 million a year. Moreover, it is rumoured that by the time Ataratiri is built the loss to provincial taxpayers will be almost $1 billion.

Toronto city council has stated that unless the provincial government will guarantee cost overruns above the $800 million in loans the province has already guaranteed, the city will withdraw from the Ataratiri deal. Therefore, the fate of Ataratiri rests in the hands of the provincial government.

Given the cost escalations of Ataratiri, we are urgently awaiting the government's decision on whether to continue with the project or cut the losses. With interest charges accumulating at the rate of $60,000 a day, the taxpayers of Ontario cannot be kept waiting. I ask this minister again, as Mr Harris and I did last week, not to throw good money after bad. It is irresponsible to make taxpayers finance this project if the costs will outweigh the benefits.

I have presented some of the Progressive Conservative Party's major concerns regarding the government's management of the housing portfolio, including issues which arise from the 1991-92 estimates for the Ministry of Housing. I look forward to discussing our concerns with the minister and her officials.

In the remaining time this committee has allotted for the Housing estimates, I will ask ministry officials about other issues arising from the estimates which I have not yet had an opportunity to raise.

The Chair: Thank you, Mrs Marland. I appreciate that you are exactly on time. I now recognize the minister if she would like to respond at this point. She may choose to do that a little later if she wishes or she can proceed now. I am in your hands, Minister.

Hon Ms Gigantes: If members will indulge me, I would be pleased just to make some opening comments. Much of the questioning that has been raised by the official critics for the opposition parties probably should be responded to in detail by ministry staff, because I do not want to make mistakes out of my ignorance, to put it baldly. I am not familiar in every detail with programs and many projects, so I would prefer to make sure the critics get accurate information. I can make a few comments of a general nature along policy lines.

The critic for the Liberals has spent some effort to make clear that she feels we have not made adequate information available to her. Specifically with regard to the questions she has raised before with the ministry, I will undertake to try to find out what information might still be lacking. Certainly, in personal terms, I can indicate that the reason there have not been many statements from me as minister in the Legislature in the last three weeks we have been back is that I do not have an awful lot to say.

If the information about any kinds of ministry announcements, such as the federal-provincial program, is in fact being delayed so that it does not reach your office for two weeks, I will undertake to find a quicker way to get it to your office. The intent is there.

Further, when it comes, for example, to the question of information that you have been looking for around consultation on regulations attached to Bill 121, on the subjects of amortization and the guideline, I signed a letter to the Chair of the standing committee on general government some time ago, as I have signed letters to various of the interest groups we are undertaking consultation with. Why he would not have provided you with a copy of those consultation documents, I do not know, but I will certainly check into that.

I hope you will take as given the intent to provide information. I am a firm believer in having a well-educated Legislature. In many cases I expect that for some time to come the opposition critics will know a good deal more about many of the items we deal with in the Ministry of Housing than I do at the moment. I am quite anxious to share any information that is going to be helpful to you and I will look forward to the same from you.

We can give you further details on the allocations within the budget of the Ministry of Housing. I do not have them right here, though. People in our group from the ministry can provide those and we can get into detail as we move through these estimates.

With regard to more detailed information about Homes Now and P-10,000, I will wait to get help from ministry staff, if you will bear with me.

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On the housing policy statement, it is easy for me to respond. In fact, the question related to the deadline for a response by municipalities, many of which had been funded by the Ministry of Housing to undertake to provide changes to official plans so that they could meet the objectives of the land use for housing statement. That deadline has not been met, as you indicate. We are in a situation where we are negotiating on a one-on-one basis with the larger municipalities, which are further ahead in the process. I think the setting of deadlines in a process like this one is a great encouragement for forward motion. It is the kind of thing you leave to another day if you do not have a deadline attached to it, as many other kinds of things get left. We are certainly keeping the pressure on the municipalities to get them to bring forward their proposals for change.

We had not thought of sentencing anybody to jail for non-compliance. The project to get serious action from municipalities that meets the objectives of the land use for housing statement is one I take very seriously. At this stage, our position in the ministry is that we will be keeping the pressure on and the communication with municipalities going, because we want the job done.

On the question of Bill 121 specifically -- though some of the questions of the Liberal critic related to items that flow through still and will continue to flow through from Bill 51 -- we are in the stage of final consideration of amendments, so the sooner you make your proposals in this forum, the better. We fully intend to move forward along the time lines that the former minister had indicated and, with good luck and your assistance, to have the bill passed by the Christmas break and to have it proclaimed in early spring of the new year.

Again, I will leave some of the specific questions that had to do with a backlog and so on until I can make sure we are providing you with as precise figures as we can. I will also call upon ministry staff help to go into details of various of the projects you are interested in.

Just to begin the discussion I am sure we will have about the housing framework policy paper, the point has been made to me by several groups -- some of which I have met, some of which have written; there have been various media comments and so on -- that the framework is not incorporating private housing objectives and private housing planning processes and so on. That is accurate. It defines what it is doing at the beginning of the document. It says it is going to focus on those things the government most intimately affects in policy terms.

I suggest to you that if we had written out some kinds of notions about how private developers should go about their business, or about how the building construction members in Ontario should proceed with doing housing, there would have been a hue and cry that we were interfering in the private market. I think you will have to accept my word, though I was not minister at the time, that my reading of the document suggests to me that we were attempting to generate public discussion around government policy goals in the housing field. The document may not be perfect, but there certainly has been no intention to slight or ignore the role of private actors in Ontario housing policy.

If I could just make a few comments about questions raised by the Conservative Housing critic, many of the comments in the early part of her contribution to the kickoff of debate here figured around rent control and identification of what she sees as the causal elements in the lack of affordable housing we face. I suggest that rent control is not a subsidy program. Rent control does not subsidize any tenants, whatever their level of income. Rent control is designed to ensure, on an annual basis, that the rent increases tenants face are within reason. Certainly under previous legislation a great number of tenants have had to face rent increases which, I believe, all of us would say were not reasonable. The bill we have put forward is an attempt to ensure, in as simple an administrative form as we can, that there is a reasonable rate of increase of the level of rents for tenants in Ontario.

She identifies the elements that contribute to the affordability in housing and lists several, including interest rates. These are all true: They do contribute to the high cost of housing and the lack of affordability. I suggest to her that affordable land is really the biggest problem when we look at why new housing costs are so high, whether they are rental, condominium, single-family home or duplexes. We have a real dearth of affordable land in major urban centres. That problem is not going to go away. I suggest to her also that as that problem becomes more and more acute, she and I and all Ontarians will come to recognize more and more acutely how valuable those holdings of land, a pooled resource of the public of Ontario and the communities of Ontario, are going to be. If we did not have, for example, the 84,000 units of Ontario Housing Corp housing available for use by residents of Ontario now, the affordability problem we face would be that much greater.

The investment we make -- and I as minister am certainly willing to very carefully scrutinize exactly what kinds of programs we are into, exactly what kinds of projects we undertake to make sure we are getting value for money -- is not an investment that disappears between the period January 1 and December 31 in a given year. It does not disappear as a public, pooled resource. It creates housing which continues in the affordable market. It continues at some cost. That is correct. Those costs should be scrutinized. That is correct. But in the end, that is land which will be retained for public use, for affordable housing. That is the difference, in my view, in a reflective way, in what we do when we create non-profit housing and co-op housing. That is the difference between encouraging the development of a resource which is a publicly held, pooled resource available to us and simply paying out a rent subsidy every year.

If I could leave that thought with you, I am sure we will have plenty of time to discuss it as we go on. I recall well that back in 1975, when I was first elected to this Legislature, we began looking at what was then called rent review. The Conservative government of the day introduced a program to encourage first-time home buyers, many of whom were condominium buyers. It was a subsidy program of $1,000, as I recollect, in 1975. What it did was encourage home ownership in a period which turned out to be quite an inflationary period.

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I remember well going around the riding of Carleton East, which I represented for a period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and seeing the number of doors which had been padlocked. These new home buyers had bought at the beginning of a heavy upswing in the market. With the $1,000, they undertook mortgage payments that they just could not keep on with. Many, many of them in the economic situation of the day had to default. It was a pathetic and quite shaking instruction to me that getting people into mortgages may not be the best thing for them, even though it looked like a good kind of program at the time. If we are looking at what we should be doing in a public sense, I think one of the most important things we need to be thinking about is trying to maintain some kind of steadiness, some kind of stability in the market. The swings up and the swings down in the housing market hurt people. They hurt the investors. They hurt the developers. They hurt everybody. It is to our benefit, I think, to make investments in housing at a time when other people are not investing in housing, and not try and get involved in the market at any depth when other people are very active in the market. I think that part of what we need to be trying to do is to achieve stability in the market. That is why I am particularly interested in seeing us actively engaged in building housing in this period when others are not. Fully a third of the construction in the residential market these days is construction which would not be going on unless we were actively engaged in the building up of co-op and non-profit housing. It contributes to jobs now and it uses the resources of land when they are cheapest and it uses construction costs when they are at their lowest. I think this is the best time for government to be involved.

I was interested in the comments of the Conservative critic on the subject of intensification, and I look forward to further discussion of that because I am very keen on the subject myself. I was also interested in her comments that nobody can call Ataratiri affordable housing. To my knowledge, nobody has. There is no housing there. It has been quite a disappointment for everybody who had been looking forward to it, I am sure. I would like to remind her nobody can call North Pickering affordable housing either. The land costs for that land assembly were written off many years ago when the North Pickering airport project, which a previous Conservative government decided was going to go ahead, fell apart. When we end up with projects that run into trouble -- and I am sure it will happen with our government too -- then I think we have to look at the situation in a positive sense. It certainly, now, with hindsight, looks like it was unwise to assemble land at North Pickering, unless of course we are going to do something with it now that will help create affordable housing and good community planning and all kinds of wonderful things which we may be able to do. But it has certainly been a long-time investment to see that. With Ataratiri, I also believe that we have to look constructively on the situation, make the best of a bad situation -- nobody is trying to pretend it is a great situation -- and look at all the options. I am quite willing to have an extended discussion about what proposals may come from the opposition critics because I am interested in hearing all the options. Certainly we think we are canvassing them all now and we are working hard to make sure we are doing that and going through all the variables that are involved. We will be looking to make proposals in the days to come. I thank you very much, Mr Chair, and I thank the opposition critics.

The Chair: Thank you, Minister. I am in the hands of the committee, as I said earlier, as to how you wish to proceed with the remaining hours to complete our estimates. If you wish to go in time-allocated rotation or -- we have six identified votes that we have to proceed through -- we could follow the book. We will entertain a brief discussion on how you would like to proceed.

Mrs Marland: I wonder, just before we do that, if the minister could have all the people in the room who are her staff indicate by raising their hands.

The Chair: I believe most people in the room are ministry staff, as had been indicated earlier to me by the minister. I would like to proceed with the question I asked.

Mrs Marland: Mr Chairman, I have a right to ask that question.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I think they would be quite happy to introduce themselves.

Mrs Marland: They do not have to introduce themselves by name. I am just curious to know how many ministry staff are here.

The Chair: Staff, could we put up our hands? It is just like school here. That is great. The room is down the hall to the right and to the left for ladies.

Mrs Marland: Thank you, Mr Chairman. My suggestion as to how we proceed is, as we have proceeded with other estimates and it seems to work very effectively, that we rotate on a time basis, and I am quite happy with 20-minute or 15-minute portions per party.

Ms Poole: I concur with the Conservative critic. Rotation seems to be the fairest way of making sure every member has an opportunity. Perhaps 20-minute segments. The one suggestion I would have is that we stack the votes for the end so that if we do get interested in a particular topic, all members would be free to pursue it rather than to have to stick to the book.

Mr Johnson: I am agreeable to stacking the vote and to 15-or 20-minute time periods, but I would just like to ask how many of those in attendance here are not ministry staff? And I ask that because it would have appeared that everyone was ministry staff and I do not know if that is exactly true; it was hard to tell.

The Chair: At this point there is nothing on Hansard to imply that we are even talking to anybody else in the room. I would like to proceed.

Mrs Marland: Mr Johnson has a right to ask that question.

The Chair: And he did.

Mr Daigeler: Just to be on the record, I support the Chair. I do not think it is in the public interest to know exactly who attends here. This is an open meeting and whoever wants to come has the right to do so. I think we should get on with business.

Mrs Marland: It is interesting to see how expensive it is with all the staff here.

The Chair: I would like the Vice-Chair of the committee to please come to order. I would then like to proceed. We will lead off, if I may use that phrase, with Ms Poole for the first 15-minute segment.

Ms Poole: I would like to thank the minister for her comments. I guess the question I had is: Why would anybody in their right mind, other than ministry staff, attend a meeting of the Housing estimates?

The Chair: I found your comments interesting.

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Ms Poole: Why would anybody, unless they were forced to, come to this?

Mr Daigeler: Could I put in a word for the committee?

Ms Poole: I was basically criticizing myself since I took up a significant amount of the time here today.

Madam Minister, I appreciate your comments clarifying and in response to some of my opening comments. I should say that the reason I was disappointed that you were not bringing forward matters to the House that I felt should be was because your predecessor made a point of not doing so. Granted, you have only been there three weeks, but yesterday was your first opportunity to make what I consider to be a fairly significant announcement, and that is the allocation of 3,300 units to, I believe, some 28 communities across the province under the program announced in the budget.I would like to, perhaps for a few minutes, pursue that particular topic since we have not had an opportunity to dialogue on it.

Of the 3,300 units that were allocated, does the ministry have a deadline, a timetable for when those allocations have to be turned into commitments or else the allocations are lost?

Hon Ms Gigantes: I am going to get some help here. My understanding is we are talking about year's end. Tim Casey from our operations branch.

The Chair: Welcome, Mr Casey.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Murray Wilson, colleague.

Mr Casey: Murray Wilson is the executive director for field operations, principally responsible for looking after the administration of the non-profit program. I believe the question was about the 3,300 units; is there a deadline?

Ms Poole: Yes, I wondered what the deadline was for these allocations to be able to provide the ministry with the documentation necessary to show they are ready for the commitment stage.

Mr Casey: There is no actual deadline. Each project is handled on its own basis depending on how complicated it is for someone to turn in the completed application, but most of these come in in a relatively short period of time compared to the total project development time frame. We are usually averaging somewhere in the neighbourhood of 24 to 36 months to bring a project to completion. Some go longer than that. Some go shorter than that. There really is not a deadline as we have in the federal-provincial program. That was one of the major complaints the non-profit co-operative sectors had at the time, the fact that they always had to work on a December 31 deadline. If they did not make the deadline then they essentially lost it after that.

In Homes Now and the other provincial programs we have eliminated all those deadlines, so consequently we work the projects through the system and give them time to produce. Some take a little bit longer, some take a shorter time frame.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Did your question relate to when they would get a final commitment on whether they went ahead? Ms Poole: That is right.

Hon Ms Gigantes: That is how I understood it.

Ms Poole: I would assume that you would not take 36 months to get these projects to the commitment stage. I would assume that if you had some projects that were just simply not up to speed and could not produce what the ministry initially thought they could produce, you would also have a cutoff so you could give that allocation to another non-profit group. That is what I was wondering. There must be some sort of monitoring. There must be some method to determine whether these projects are proceeding as expeditiously as possible.

Mr Casey: There is, and that is what I was indicating. I did not say 36 months to commitment. I believe it was 36 months to completion.

Ms Poole: That is right, to build.

Mr Casey: Consequently, taking it to commitment stage is part of that activity. Those projects are monitored all along the way by staff. We have co-ordinators who look after a set number of projects. They watch those projects as they go through the system. They help the various social housing providers with those projects. If it looks like one is not proceeding or it does not have a good chance to proceed, we do not hold that allocation. In other words, it does not take up a place that someone else could occupy. The object is to produce the housing as quickly as possible.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Would it be fair to say that of the 3,300 that we have announced now, we would expect to be able to make a decision about most of them by year's end?

Ms Poole: That being March 31, just for clarification, or December 31?

Hon Ms Gigantes: I was thinking about the annual --

Mr M. Wilson: December 31?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Am I pushing you?

Mr M. Wilson: December 31?

Hon Ms Gigantes: That was my understanding. Is that a reasonable time frame for making a commitment or not?

The Chair: What are you officially telling the applicants in terms of time frame?

Mr M. Wilson: That they have an allocation and that they should work with us to establish a timetable that would bring the project to a commitment stage. As the minister said, certainly our expectation would be that a lot of them would make the commitment stage by December 31. But Minister, honestly, the number of those that would at this stage, I am not prepared to --

Hon Ms Gigantes: Oh, that is fine. We are not trying to nail you to the wall here, just to get a rough idea.

Ms Poole: Your target is December 31. Whether it is realized or not is something that --

Mr M. Wilson: In terms of what Mr Casey said, I would simply add that I think in each and every case what we attempt to do is work with the non-profit group to establish realistic development schedules. I know the member has had projects in her own area and is certainly aware of projects that have been delayed for whatever reasons. To the best of our ability we work with the groups to establish realistic time frames and then try to achieve those time frames. In each and every case those differ, depending on the individual circumstances related to the municipality, related to the site itself, the stage that it is developed to, whether it is zoned, whether it is serviced, etc.

Ms Poole: I guess that brings me to my next question, which is the matter of delay in building the non-profit, and sometimes this adds substantially to the costs. Some of these, and probably a predominant number of the problems, are encountered at the municipal level, with zoning, with red tape, with trying to get through the various development levels.

I wonder if you could tell me what types of initiatives the ministry has undertaken to try to get some of these projects up in a very expeditious time frame.

Mr M. Wilson: There are a whole host of things that have been undertaken, and I mean since 1987. There was the issue of partnerships and coalitions where we tried to work with different community-based groups in dealing with municipal officials and residents of municipalities to explain what it was they were proposing to put in that particular community and how it would be managed.

Quite frankly, my own assessment is that it has been successful in a large number of cases and has worked to allay some of the municipal fears about non-profit housing and what would be put in place as a result of that. I think that has overcome some of that.

In addition, the ministry has worked very diligently, through a number of people, in terms of advocacy and actually advocating on the part of people who are proposing, as an affordable housing initiative within a community, using non-profit or co-operative housing. There are people from the Ministry of Housing who in fact have made representation before the Ontario Municipal Board on numerous hearings identifying what the Ministry of Housing objectives are and what they hope to achieve through the approval of that process.

I would like to comment on one of your comments. I suppose in some peculiar way over the last couple of years actually the delayed commitment of projects, and by that I mean actually having final contract prices in place, has really worked to our advantage in the sense that the market has softened quite a lot and we have not been going into a burning hot marketplace that has seen prices escalating very significantly. We have been able to go into a marketplace that is much more stable and where it is, quite frankly, much more competitive.

Ms Poole: That leads in beautifully to my next question, which I would actually like the minister to answer, because I think it is more a matter of her personal beliefs and philosophy. Your predecessor, Mr Cooke, said last fall, almost a year ago, that in a recession it was actually an ideal time to build non-profit housing because you basically could get more bang for the buck.

We certainly know of a number of condominium developments which have not proceeded and the developers are desperate to get it transferred over to non-profit housing at a tremendous bargain-basement rate in order just to get it off their hands and to get the development done. Does the minister believe that now is the time that we should be building the non-profit housing?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes. I indicated that earlier.

Ms Poole: So you are confirming Mr Cooke's philosophy. Of these 3,300 that are allocated, that by my very rough-and-ready math would leave 6,700 remaining to be allocated in the budgetary announcement of this spring. Can the minister tell us when she would anticipate those would be allocated?

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Hon Ms Gigantes: I will need some help there too.

The Chair: Any takers out there?

Ms Poole: This is what is called a pregnant pause?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Passing the torch.

Mr M. Wilson: The last part of the question is all I would like to hear again, so I could be very precise.

Ms Poole: Of the 10,000 units that were mentioned in this spring's budget, the minister so far, as of yesterday, has announced the allocation of 3,300. We are now -- again, if my math serves me correctly -- less than six months away from the fiscal year-end, and I am wondering when we might expect the balance of those 10,000 units to be allocated.

Mr M. Wlson: Certainly there will be recommendations for the minister to consider over the next couple of months and, quite frankly, there is a sorting and sifting out of a number of different programs that we have, one being brought to a conclusion that the minister will be considering, together with any decisions that she may want to make with respect to making additional allocations under Project 10,000. The short answer is we will have recommendations for the minister to consider certainly within a three-to-six-month time frame, that is for sure.

Mr Daigeler: What is the minister telling her staff?

Hon Ms Gigantes: I beg your pardon?

The Chair: Would one of you like to put that question on the record?

Ms Poole: My colleague, I think, has asked an additional follow-up question.

Mr Daigeler: Yes. I would be interested to know what the minister is telling her staff, because I think essentially this is a political decision. Are you pushing to have this completed as quickly as possible? What are you telling your staff that they should have this ready for?

Hon Ms Gigantes: I think there is a reasonable flow of work that the ministry can cope with. The flow has been very heavy over the last couple of years and in particular in the last year. What my practice has been -- and I have not had much practice -- is to take their judgement about the appropriate flow, given the goals that we have and that we continue to get to and deal with their recommendations as they come forward. That is what I have been doing and I feel happy proceeding that way.

Ms Poole: Do you anticipate the 10,000 will be allocated by March 31, 1992?

Hon Ms Gigantes: That is our current plan. As Mr Wilson was indicating, we have also been dealing with the completion of the Homes Now program, so there is some overlap that has been going on and the pace of work at the ministry has been extremely high.

Ms Poole: Tell me, Mr Chair, when I have run out of time. Homes Now is my next question, which is, I think, in response to one of your own members' questions. Following the deadline of Homes Now extension, September 30, you responded, I believe, if my memory serves me correctly, that 25,000 had been committed under Homes Now.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Right.

Ms Poole: What about the target of the remaining 5,000?

Hon Ms Gigantes: We will deal with the applications that have come in through Homes Now on a project-by-project basis, and, again, we hope to have that complete by the end of the year. In fact, I think that is what I was referring to when you asked the earlier question and I mixed my programs, which is something I am still likely to do. Forgive me.

Ms Poole: There are enough of them to do that.

Just following along that line, recognizing that the Ministry of Housing has been very busy, are you extending the deadline just on a case-by-case basis, or do you have a cutoff point at which time you will say, "Homes Now is finished"?

Hon Ms Gigantes: We always suggest a cutoff point because it makes people move. That is what I am learning.

Ms Poole: Do you have one?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes, I think we have given some general indication.

Mr Casey: December 31 is what we are shooting for, but in effect we are trying to be able to finish out Homes Now. Consequently, for those 5,000 units, we are taking it on a case-by-case basis. If it looks like a particular project is going to take a long time to come to commitment stage, we have other programs that we can consider that project under and we can put other projects that are ready to move ahead under Homes Now so we do not have a multitude of programs dragging on for years. That way we can finish off Homes Now within the funding envelope provided and we can move on to the next set of programs.

Ms Poole: And December 31 is also the --

Hon Ms Gigantes: No, that is where I have been confused. That is where I was creating problems --

Ms Poole: I thought that was just with the 3,300 allocations.

Mr M. Wilson: Not being one to want to correct the minister at estimates or any other time --

Hon Ms Gigantes: You see, they have not learned that I like to be corrected.

Mr M. Wilson: In terms of the commitment, what I think I said earlier is that there will be every attempt made to bring whatever projects we can to a commitment by December 31, but the objective of that exercise is certainly, in my view -- if we could bring all 3,300 that would be wonderful, but I know that is not possible. I know as I am sitting here right now that will not be possible. It, quite frankly, will depend very much on what I said to you earlier and that is the development schedule that we develop with the group.

Ms Poole: Just one final clarification. Is it 8,300 allocations that you are trying to bring to the commitment stage by December 31, the tail end of the Homes Now plus the new allocations?

Mr M. Wilson: Trying, you say?

Ms Poole: Making it to the commitment stage.

Mr M. Wilson: The objective would be to try as best we possibly can, but there certainly is absolutely no way I can foresee that we would have 8,300 units brought to a commitment by December 31. The 5,000 in Homes Now, which is, I think, part of that number that you are using, we would attempt to bring that to a commitment by December 31. Certainly of the remaining 3,300 under Project 10,000 we will bring as many of those as we can, but that is really subject to a whole lot of variables right now that we do not control for sure.

The other part is that there is a another program called the federal-provincial program. It is jointly cost-shared, and it has to be brought to a conclusion by December 31 or, like Cinderella's coach, it turns into a pumpkin.

The Chair: That should please the Minister of Agriculture and Food.

Mrs Marland: I just want to say at the outset, I do not know whether the minister is trying to be humorous, but I was a little insulted when I said that at the cost of the Ataratiri project, as the costs are evolving, nobody could call it affordable housing, and you said, as far as you knew, there were no houses there.

I thought that was kind of a snide comment for someone in your position to make, Madam Minister and I take exception to it because it is insulting to me. It is sort of suggesting that my comment was suggesting that there is housing there, and you know quite well from my questions and my lead-up to it that I am talking about the projections of that cost. I think when you have time to review my speech, you will see that perhaps you might even want to apologize for that comment.

Hon Ms Gigantes: If I have given offence, I certainly extend my apology. I thought we could both joke at the fact that it is not affordable housing.

Mrs Marland: All right. I accept that apology. Thank you. Let's continue then from that point, if you think we can joke about the fact that it is not affordable housing. I do not see it as a joke. I see it as having very serious implications for the taxpayers in this province. I am very concerned that, first of all, we are looking at a site that frankly even when the Liberal government bought it -- and I recognize that you are in an absolutely beautiful position to walk away from Ataratiri because it is not your baby. It was the Liberal government's baby and I remember when it first started talking about it. Was it not called St Lawrence Square or something originally? The staff people are nodding in agreement, for the sake of Hansard.

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When it was introduced under the original name by the Liberal government, I was the Environment critic for our party and I rose in the House a number of times to ask a question about the pollution that existed on that land. To tell you the truth, it was a long time after that before I realized that Ataratiri was now the new name for what had been St Lawrence Square. Is that correct, St Lawrence Square?

Mr Casey: That is correct.

Mrs Marland: Thank you. I think if we are looking at planning for housing and where people are going to live, we better start looking, first of all, where there are not these inordinate costs because of the condition of the land. If we are talking about affordable housing, which this is not now anyway, but even if the cost had not escalated, are you really saying as a government that it is okay to put people where the land has been so badly contaminated, because of the history of -- in fact, we do not even know fully the total history of that property and just how bad it is going to be when they start to clean it up for residential use.

I think maybe our Ministry of Housing staff would do well to take a ride on any of the trains that go through our greater Toronto area -- they can do it quite comfortably on a GO train -- and see other areas that may be available for purchase, old areas that are ready for redevelopment. Albeit they have not been residentially zoned either, but they may not be as heavily contaminated as this particular site.

Frankly, I do not think it is a joke when we are paying $60,000 a day while we are humming and hawing about whether to go ahead with this project. I think since your party has been the government for a year and has inherited this mess, you are in a perfect position to say: "Stop. We are not going to put people in this kind of an area." For the same investment, we can do far more in terms of providing units if this is your goal. We can provide more accommodation elsewhere, where there is not such a risk.

First of all, as I understand it, we do not have a final cost of how much contaminated soil there is on that site. I really want to ask the minister how she can defend what the estimates are now for that project. The former government entered into this contract with Toronto. By the way, I would like to point out to Hansard and anybody else that on page 24, I do have a typo, where I said, starting on page 23, "Toronto city council has stated that unless the provincial government will guarantee cost overruns above the $800 million...." It says in my printout, "about the $800 million...."

The fact is, that agreement between the provincial government and Toronto existed. Now, because of the cost of the project, I understand Toronto is getting cold feet and saying, "If it runs over $800 million, you have to guarantee the difference." If we are looking at these kinds of costs in real terms -- and at the moment, I recognize everything is an estimate -- why do you not bite the bullet? Certainly when we were the government, we made mistakes. Things like Suncor Inc will haunt any Progressive Conservative in this province to the grave. There are mistakes made, but in the best interests of protecting the taxpayer, why would you not put a stop to that mistake? How can you defend things like the fact that the cost of the cleanup was underestimated to the point where it has gone from $444 million to as much as $2 billion now? How can you defend spending $250,000 a unit for 7,000 housing units?

Hon Ms Gigantes: You raise some very good questions. One of the things that will help you get a sense of what is on my mind at the moment is to suggest that we think about the possible time frames for what exists or could be brought to exist at Ataratiri. I think if we were going to try to make a decision today, quickly, we might make decision A or B. If we said to ourselves, as you point out, that there have been a couple of hundred million-plus invested already; if we were to decide that our real planning time frame in this project, given what we have come to understand about it and how complex it is, should be a long time frame, perhaps 5, 10, 15, 20 years -- there are projects that are worth doing that take that long to do.

The question with Ataratiri is more complex than simply, "Do we cut our losses?" The question is also, "Can we cut our losses better if we continue a project" -- not necessarily the original project but a project -- "on that land?" What do we have to do? What further investments would have to be made? Would that make continuation of efforts to develop Ataratiri lands worth while? These are open questions at the moment. It does take a long time and a lot of work to develop options and to try to pin down the costs associated with those options in a situation, as you quite accurately point out, where environmental costs may or may not now be defined.

In these kinds of developments what we are running into -- and it is very instructive for a government and probably for people outside government too -- is to understand what private developers get into, the hassles and problems they can run into and the difficulties.

The other question, which is a broader question, and again I think an important one from a public policy point of view, is whether we just write off contaminated core lands in Toronto, Hamilton, Windsor, London, Ottawa. We all have them and never do anything with them. Increasingly, industry is not using old industrial downtown sites. If we are going to say, "That land is filthy and can't be used for residential development," maybe it is not worth while to bring in those environmental and waterfront measures that would make it viable for any development.

What we are doing is writing off core land, which is a pretty precious commodity. The costs of doing something to put it in usable shape for different kinds of projects are high. We are beginning to understand how high and we are beginning to get in touch with other countries, with other states, to find out how well they have coped with similar kinds of problems. Our old cities were always built by waterfronts, and the industrial lands and the ports and everything were built along the waterfront. These are valuable lands if they can be brought into usable shape.

These are some of the things we have to take into account. I do not think it is just a question of saying, "Why don't you bite the bullet and cut your losses now?" The timing of when you cut your loss is important and some other considerations need to come into play too. You may be right that in the end -- and it may be a very quick end -- we say: "This government says we're going to bite the bullet. We're going to cut our losses now and get out." Maybe that is the best solution, but I would like to feel we are canvassing every option as well as we can before we make that decision.

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Mrs Marland: Madam Minister, I would just like to tell you that this project did not cost $1 million or $2 million or $3 million, it cost $237 million to buy that.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I said a couple of hundred million, I am sorry. I have buck teeth and sometimes my words slur.

Mrs Marland: Well, $237 million and $60,000 a day in interest.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes.

Mrs Marland: If you are going to prioritize where you are going to be saving money, as a minister, I would hope -- it is not your fault because you are the new minister, but your government has looked at this project for in excess of one year. It is certainly not a small project for your ministry. So for a year, your government has waffled on the decision of whether or not it is worth while paying $60,000 a day.

It is very interesting, when you talk about all the old industrial sites and what to do with them, for a government that professes to be the only people who ever cared for people on this earth, you do not demonstrate a lot of genius in terms of leadership for your own ministry. When you talk about the costs of cleaning up industrial land -- and I certainly know what that is about because I have some in my own riding -- you are saying, "Do we just leave it like that or do we clean it up?" I can tell you that the cost of cleaning up that land for recreational use like open park land and recreational space is a huge percentage less than if it is going to be used for redevelopment, where you are digging basements and putting in foundations. What is happening --

The Chair: Mrs Marland, if I could interject and suggest to you that you are at time and the minister would like to respond. If you could --

Mrs Marland: Mr Chairman, the minister just took five minutes responding to my first question.

The Chair: I was about to complete my suggestion that we temper our commentary to the point. Perhaps if you could give the minister an opportunity, she would like to respond.

Mrs Marland: That is fine, but I would like to say what I want to say.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Feel free.

The Chair: I am charged by the committee to maintain the time frames allotted to me.

Mrs Marland: I have been going 12 minutes, Mr Chairman.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Do I have to speak?

Mrs Marland: Are we doing 15-minute or 20-minute turnarounds?

The Chair: We are doing 15-minute turnarounds.

Mrs Marland: Okay, that is fine.

The Chair: I just wanted to advise you that you were coming near to that. In fact now we are over that, but if you wish a response, the minister can use her time accordingly. I am guided by the committee's mandate.

Mrs Marland: You have used up some of my time, Mr Chairman.

The Chair: I did not cut you off, Mrs Marland, I just advised you that you were nearing the end of your time.

Mrs Marland: Thank you.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I am quite happy to hear further comments from the Conservative critic.

Mrs Marland: We live in a province where we are continually landfilling into our lake to provide open recreational space. The cost of rehabilitating industrial contaminated land to residential standard compared to recreational standard is very different. If you are saying, "What do we do with all these dirty old lands?" I agree with you. What do we do with them? I suggest that as we get more and more dense urban development in the downtown city core, which we are -- I heard a friend of yours, Mr Jack Layton, on the radio this morning, talking about a little park around the corner from here that is going to be lost because Tridel is building a big high-rise building. You have only got to walk along the lakeshore and see the landfilling into Lake Ontario for parks.

If you want suggestions about what to do with this kind of contaminated land, I have them, but what I am suggesting is that to be a responsible government, you do not spend $60,000 a day hanging on to it while you make a decision. I am simply saying to you that sooner or later you are going to have to make the decision, so why do you not have a think tank? Even if it took you a week, with all of this wonderful staff you have, you could make the decision once and for all. But you are evading the commitment to the taxpayers of this province by evading making that very important decision. What we want to see is not this kind of money wasted when there is such a need for this money in other areas.

Hon Ms Gigantes: The things that are in mind on this policy decision are the things I have tried to describe. I do believe it is worth gathering whatever evidence we need to make sure the decisions we are looking at are fully informed. If we were to say, "The best thing to do is just to get out," we could lose a lot more than we need to. I would like to make sure that if we decide to get out, we decide on the best possible information.

Mrs Marland: And you think that $250,000 a unit --

The Chair: I am sorry, Mrs Marland, in fairness to the other committee members -- I have Mr O'Connor, who has been most patient and he has been waiting. We have seven and a half hours in total. You will have time to revisit your line of questioning. Mr O'Connor.

Mr O'Connor: Madam Minister, thank you for coming today. As I have been told, you are obligated to do.

Hon Ms Gigantes: That is right.

Mr O'Connor: It is still a pleasure to have you here, and your staff as well. We have talked a little bit about north Pickering and the Seaton development. As a lifetime resident of Durham region who watched the land holdings grow for reasons of an airport, I am curious as to what consultation procedure you are proceeding with in trying to develop a strategy around affordable housing for the Seaton project. It is a vast land holding and I am concerned whether or not it is going to be the most environmentally sound project possible, when we consider that a lot of the land is prime agricultural land and perhaps should be left that way. I am also concerned about whether we are going to have sprawl, as a number of communities have.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Seaton has large potential for the development of new ideas and new concepts and new affordable housing. The current process is one in which we are deliberately going out and looking for feedback from people from the area. I would like to have our ministry people come and talk to you about it, because they are very much better informed than I am. It would make more sense for them to tell you than for me to read things off a piece of paper, and I love to hear them say it, too.

The Chair: Mr Dino Chiesa, you know most of us. Welcome. Would you like to respond?

Mr Chiesa: Thank you for the introduction. We are going through a very public consultation process now, where we have about 30 stakeholder groups in a room over six one-day sessions. We are meeting once a week, every Thursday, and these stakeholders very much represent broad community interests. They represent municipalities, the region, the Seaton community group, environmental groups, Save the Rouge groups, farm land preservation groups and developer-builder organizations. Every walk of community interests and local interests are represented in this group. By and large, what we are asking for from them is how they would like to see the Seaton lands developed, how they see development happening on all those 20,000 acres in total.

The main messages coming out are the same messages that we as staff have been promoting, which is very much one of conservation of farmland, compact urban growth, the support of public transit -- very much an intensified use, a mixed, integrated community so that everyone can live there, a community. We are trying to set an environmental standard for the development of Seaton. We want to preserve the streams and valley systems there. We are trying to be very careful as to how we affect the cold-water fisheries in the area. We are very much doing it state-of-the-art. The kind of process we want to go through, because of the size of it, is very much an open and consultative process.

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Mr O'Connor: In dealing with that, what about interaction with other ministries in this consultation process that you are going through?

Mr Chiesa: We have an interministerial group, a staff level group, that meets every couple of weeks and is trying to deal with early provision of services, for example, trying to make all the linkages with education, with the disabled, with colleges and universities, trying to get some ideas for employment-generating activities in the area. The Ministry of Transport is going to play a big role there. The Ministry of the Environment is considering the whole question of environmental assessment versus other things.

We are trying through this interministerial group to do as much of the interministerial work as we can ahead of time and feed that back to the consultation process, so they know what the different thinking is for different ministries. A formalized interministerial group has been meeting for, I guess, about six months now and the minutes of all those meetings and recommendations of all those things have been made available to the group that is meeting every week.

Mr O'Connor: Given the length of time that land holdings have been sitting there, I suppose the consultation period will not be nearly as long. Can we get a sense of when the consultation process may be wrapping up, so that we can perhaps anticipate the decision somewhere down the road?

Mr Chiesa: We have been consulting for a couple of years now, but as you are aware, we have had a change in government. We try to focus as much of that as we can within a short period of time, which is why we are having these final six one-day sessions with the major stakeholders. We plan to come back to the government this fall with the recommendations from that consultation and then some action will be forthcoming after that.

Mr O'Connor: How many meetings have you had so far?

Mr Chiesa: We have had four meetings out of the six. There may be actually one more meeting because of the size of this. We may have to take one more week. We are meeting every week, so that in another three weeks the meetings will be over.

Mr O'Connor: Terrific.

The Chair: Mr Wilson has some questions.

Mr G. Wilson: Minister, much of the discussion today has been about the building of new housing. My question concerns the stock that is already there. As you know, we depend on the stock that we already have and it is getting older, especially in my area. There are many old buildings. I was wondering what programs there are available to help the owners of these buildings. Again, I guess it applies in part to the co-operation that exists between the ministry and the private sector. I have in mind particularly the low-rise rehabilitation programs and I would like to know what success there has been with this program up to this stage and where we are going with it.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I am going to call upon a little help here too, just to give you an update on the program. We did undertake new initiatives under the low-rise rehabilitation program in this current year's budget.

The Chair: Mr Wilson, would you like to respond to Mr Wilson's question -- just to help Hansard?

Mr M. Wilson: You were mentioning low-rise rehabilitation, but in addition there is the Ontario home renewal program and various disabled options under programs such as convert-to-rent, Ontario home renewal program, low-rise rental rehabilitation and of course, the program for the physically disabled themselves.

In terms of home owner programs, the Ontario home renewal program is used by homeowners in a particular income group to repair and rehabilitate their homes to occupancy standards within communities. In the low-rise rental rehabilitation program, it is provided to upgrade and maintain rental housing buildings in the province of Ontario. Of course there is a sharing formula between the owner of the building and the amount of government money that goes to upgrade the building to the standards appropriate for that particular community and that particular time.

Mr G. Wilson: I was wondering how much scope there is for rehabilitating these buildings, taking into account the historical nature of them, to include materials that would fit in with the time that they were built, say copper roofing to fit in with other parts of the building that might be copper-clad. Are there funds for that so that there would be some sensitivity to the historical nature of these buildings?

Mr M. Wilson: In terms of the low-rise rental rehabilitation program, we would not ordinarily be dealing with buildings of a historical nature; they would be residential. We could have done something like that in the province somewhere, but to the best of my knowledge we have not been involved in anything under low-rise that would have encompassed buildings of historical significance and therefore protected by the Heritage Act and what have you, nothing like that that I know of.

Mr G. Wilson: I was not thinking of anything quite that extensive. Just to fit in, say, with older buildings that have different materials, older materials, that are not necessarily designated.

Mr M. Wilson: There is a cap on the amount of funding that we will provide for low-rise. The amount of funding the owner chooses to add to that to bring the building up to whatever standard he or she may feel appropriate is of course the owner's decision. But our funding is, in fact, capped, based on, I suppose, not necessarily a list of materials, but a list of things that can be done to the building.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Are you thinking, Gary, of buildings that have actually been designated historical?

Mr G. Wilson: Not really.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Just interesting old buildings?

Mr G. Wilson: In part interesting, but on the building owner's part. There is the idea that the materials are often more expensive because the buildings are older and perhaps need more maintenance than a newer building would need, but also for the materials to fit in. I used the example of the copper roof which, of course, would probably be a designated building, but in any case, that would make it fit in with the building as it exists. It might be harder to get. I would say, as my colleague here mentioned, the neighbourhood would have to try to keep up the aesthetic value.

Hon Ms Gigantes: It is very expensive, as we all know if we have talked to anybody who has tried to do it. I do not know if there are any experts in the room, but it is a very expensive proposition, and I think that if we have acquired older buildings, it has been more accidental, in terms of our programs, than anything else. But it is an issue I have had people raise with me.

We have a crossover problem between the responsibility to provide affordable housing, for example, and the idea of preserving buildings which mean a lot to a community, which overlaps Ministry of Housing concerns with the concerns, for example, of the Ministry of Culture and Communications. I do not think we have got a good sort on that yet, and it is probably something that we will be increasingly called upon to think about as we have more proposals for acquisitions come forward.

Mr G. Wilson: I think there is an aspect of wellness here, too, in the community, is there not, when you think of the variety of housing styles that would probably be beneficial to a community and the kind of stock that we would want to see.

Hon Ms Gigantes: If we could just think up a genius way of funding it.

Mr G. Wilson: It would be much more productive under this --

The Chair: Maybe we will tune in tomorrow and find an answer to that question. As I see 6 of the clock, we have five hours and four minutes remaining for estimates. This committee stands adjourned until 3:30 of the clock on Wednesday 9 October.

The committee adjourned at 1759.