Bill No. 262 - Interim Residential Rental Increase Cap Act (amended) - 3rd Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : I rise to offer a few remarks on this bill. Before I do, I want to address a couple of things.

First, this bill actually doesn't say anything. It says that they're going to do a thing and they'll tell us what it is later. I think that's important to acknowledge. The way that this bill is promoted is as putting forward a 5 per cent rent cap, but that is not in fact what the legislation says. The legislation says that they're going to do a thing and they'll tell us what it is later.

I want to address another elephant in the room. It's 10:30 at night. Every bill this session has been passed in the dark, literally. We spend some time voting on the budget. It could have been 8:45 p.m., in the dark. The people affected by these bills are putting their kids to bed, are watching TV, are doing the things that they want to do at the end of the night, which is 100 per cent not watching what is happening in this chamber and that's okay.

I mean, there are a couple of people. Sorry - those of you watching Legislative TV, thank you.

I will say that it's worth noticing this, that we pass our bills in the dark, and a reminder that the rules, which have been brought up a few times - if you were to look at the text of the rules, they will say that this House sits during daylight. Yet we do not.

So here we are 10:31 p.m., about to pass a bill over the objections of the Opposition, that will have a material impact on the lives of 300,000 Nova Scotians. What I want to say about this is that I agree with my colleague from Dartmouth North. I think this has been excellent debate. I think we've heard very cogent arguments about the lack of sufficient action on this file and the deficiencies of this bill in particular. Those have rightly focused on the most vulnerable people impacted by this legislation. But we have 300,000 renters in this province, and so I think the point that I've heard, but I haven't heard articulated explicitly, which I want to say, is that it is making people vulnerable.

When we started to talk about this work, we had a press conference with Elizabeth O'Hanley. Elizabeth O'Hanley makes a good living. She said: I expected to be in a position to own a house, and I can barely stay in this province because I can't find a place to rent. In fact, she had decided before she found an apartment at the last minute, after being evicted at the expiry of her fixed-term lease, from an apartment that she lived in for a very long time, she was going to move to rural P.E.I. because she had a friend with a farmhouse, and she worked remotely. She said: I didn't want to go there, but that was my only option.

Her rent when she was evicted was $950, maybe it was a bit higher, but any rate, the differential between her rent when she left her apartment and the rent advertised a few days later was in the order of $700 or $800, as I recall. And this happens every day. This doesn't happen occasionally.

I appreciate the member for Bedford South talking about the ways in which we regulate things. Even if most people are law-abiding citizens, or most people will follow a rule, this is a very selective situation in this Chamber, so we often hear the government stand up and say: We don't think that fixed-term leases should be abused. Then the quiet part is: But we're not going to do anything about it. Or: We don't think NDAs should be misused - but we're not going to do anything about it. Or: We think our coastline should be protected - but we're not going to proclaim the bill.

I think it's imperative to point out that if the government thinks something, they do have the power to do something about it. This is the latest example where the government has chosen not to.

To come back to Elizabeth O'Hanley, people like Elizabeth O'Hanley are the people whom this government has explicitly said they want to attract. We apparently want to grow the population of this province to two million people - so what's the profile of those folks? Probably a little bit younger, probably folks who are eager for work, wanting to contribute. We can't even keep them here. Then when they come, they can't find a doctor, and their kids go to school in modulars, and they don't have the infrastructure and the support they need to make a life here.

This is the latest example of a bill that is showing the disconnect between what the government says its goals are, and the way it's working toward those goals. People who move to this province, unless they have a lot of money, cannot find a place to live.

We've said this 100 times, and it feels like we have to say it 100 times more. We have a rent cap of 2 per cent and we have the highest rising rates of rent increase in the country. I'm going to say that again. Our rent increase is capped at 2 per cent and our rents are rising by 9 per cent. That is not a few bad apples. That's a system that doesn't work.

As my colleagues have said, and as we have put forward in legislation, and as we have talked about, somewhat ad nauseum, the answer - and this is the answer put forward by people as diverse, really, although they might think that I am mischaracterizing them, from all sides.

We've heard lots of landlord groups say, well, they should just raise the rent cap a little bit every year. That's the off-ramp. That's the pressure release that my colleague was pointing to. Well, that's rent control. Raising it a little bit each year, that's rent control. That gives people clarity. That gives landlords and tenants clarity about what's coming. As was pointed out, that allows for a landlord to cover an extraordinary expense.

We're not here to cast aspersions on individuals. I had a conversation with someone I know who is a landlord, who owns several properties, who called me very upset and said, you can't outlaw fixed-term leases. I said, well, why? They said, because it's the only insurance we have. If we have a bad tenant, if we have an unexpected cost, the only insurance we have that we are not going to be underwater is a fixed-term lease.

I can see that perspective, but what I said to them is, if we had a system of rent control, if we had an enforcement branch of Residential Tenancies - talk about balance. Every single party involved in this conversation wants an enforcement branch at Residential Tenancies.

This government had an extra billion dollars. They could have set up an enforcement branch, but they didn't, so I question the commitment to balance.

To get back to it, my conversation was, if we had an enforcement branch, if we had allowable rent increases every year, if you could apply to the Residential Tenancies Board to cover your extraordinary costs - and they said, oh, yes, but that will never happen.

That's where we are. We're in a cynical space where we know that the system is broken. We know that it needs to be fixed. Everybody knows it needs to be fixed. Tenants know it needs to be fixed, and more than anyone, landlords understand that it needs to be fixed - yet this government refuses to fix it. We see this bill, and this bill is a band-aid - it's not really working.

I want to talk again about balance, which a few of my colleagues have brought up. Balance in the way that we have talked about it - again, not just in this legislation, but in the Coastal Protection Act, where we need to balance the future of our province and our coastlines against the interests of some property owners along those coastlines; the NDA bill that we brought forward where we need to balance I don't know what with the rights of victims of abuse and harassment not to be silenced. That's not balance. That's steamrolling.

The Premier has said many times that nothing good happens here. He has made his disdain for this House and this Chamber very clear. When he passed the health bill - I think it was the health bill - I may be misquoting, but the Premier has said, well, we're going to put this in regulations, because otherwise we'd have to come back to the Legislature every time we want to make a statement.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order, please. Please table the documents that you are referring to and the citations you are making. The member just used the words "I may be misquoting." I'd like to ask the member to table whatever the member is referring to at this time.

The honourable member for Dartmouth South.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : I am characterizing his comments. I am not quoting him. I am saying that the Premier has oftentimes expressed a disdain for the work that happens in this House. I can try to find a tabling document. I don't think anyone would disagree with me.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order, please.

The honourable member for Dartmouth South.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Thank you. I disagree - of course I disagree - because I am in the Opposition, and I get approximately 26 days a year to represent the people who put me in this House.

This government was in the same place not so long ago and was making all these same arguments. The change I have seen is nothing - no change. It's deeply disappointing.

I don't know about the people in this House, but I have been unable to turn away from what's been happening in Tennessee the last few days. In Tennessee, a newly famous legislator, Justin Jones, who was ejected from that Chamber, made an incredibly moving speech.

In that speech he said, this is the place where we wrestle with ideas. This isn't the place - he was referring to a comment someone had made about the legislative chamber being sacred and being offended by something that the opposition had brought up. He said, quite the contrary - we can offend each other. This is a place where we wrestle with ideas.

But what we have seen in the last year and a half, in this session, in this bill, is that this government doesn't want to wrestle with ideas. They want to dictate their agenda. Or failing that, they want to avoid fixes, which as my colleague the member for Halifax Atlantic pointed out - or maybe Bedford South, I can't remember - means pushing this bill to 2025, the magical date at which it may or may not be their problem anymore.

In closing, I want to say that I see this Chamber as a place of opportunity. Every bill that comes forward, we have the opportunity to make people's lives better. We have the opportunity to ensure that everyone in this province has the ability to thrive. We have the opportunity to bring people's voices into this Chamber.

This is a government that talks a lot about listening to the people on the front lines, having listening tours. But the way that that works is sort of invitation-only. We have town halls where you only know about it if you get a robo-call. We have conversations with front-line workers, but most people never hear that they're happening.

As was pointed out, when we have things like Law Amendments Committee, where you have people who have put a great deal of thought in a very short period of time into legislation that will impact their lives - that will impact the lives of their members - we see no engagement. It's incredibly disappointing.

We are supporting this bill. We are voting for this bill in all of its inadequacy - in all of its inability to address the core issue - because to not vote for this bill would be literally to make hundreds of people homeless, and to drive hundreds more out of this province.

I implore this government to do better, and to take this opportunity, what you've heard tonight, what you heard from Law Amendments, and fix this. Implement rent control. Implement an enforcement branch of Residential Tenancies. Close the fixed-term lease hole. Build public housing and make sure that everyone has a home they can afford.