Adil Shamji, the MPP for Don Valley East and a doctor, was one of the more consequential people to endorse Bonnie Crombie for Liberal leader during her successful bid last year. That he’s the party’s health critic makes sense, and it would make further sense if he ended up being health minister in a future Liberal government. But lately he’s been talking housing a lot more than health care, leading the legislature’s third party in its efforts to come up with a winning policy pitch for voters on one of the province’s most pressing needs.
“My entire career, even pre-politics, I’ve seen first-hand how people have suffered when they haven’t been able to access the housing they need,” Shamji told TVO Today in a phone interview over the long weekend. “Whether it’s ownership, renting, or supportive wrap-around services, this is something I’ve been passionate about.”
On Tuesday, the Liberals will announce that Shamji has been tapped to chair the party’s housing-policy panel, which will inform the eventual party platform presented to voters at the next election. (Under Ontario’s fixed-election-date law, that’s supposed to be summer 2026; it now appears likely that voters will head to the polls in spring 2025.) This is the second panel the Liberals have announced; the first, focusing on climate, was announced earlier this year and is chaired by Beaches–East York MPP Mary-Margaret McMahon.
That earlier climate panel made headlines for the Liberals because of one policy it ruled out: Crombie announced that her party, which in 2015 introduced Ontario’s first carbon-pricing mechanism (the cap-and-trade program, under Kathleen Wynne), would not support a consumer-facing carbon tax.
This time, Shamji says, no ideas will be off-limits going in.
“If we’re honest about wanting to genuinely and expeditiously address this, we have to accept the fact that we’re going to learn things and be surprised by things that come out of our analysis and our consultations,” Shamji said. “We need to have the freedom to reach the conclusions that we feel are appropriate.”
Which isn’t to say he’s starting with a blank sheet of paper: the party has already announced that it would legalize four-storey, fourplex buildings provincewide, and he says his mandate from Crombie includes prioritizing affordable home ownership and improving fairness in landlord and tenant disputes, among other issues.
The panel also includes Mississauga city councillor Alvin Tedjo, More Neighbours Toronto founder Eric Lombardi, and Sue Chen, director at the development firm Tenblock.
Tedjo, who recently came in second in the Mississauga mayoral byelection to succeed Crombie, says that one thing he’s taken away from that experience is that the electorate is ready for serious housing policy. He notes that, between himself and the victorious Carolyn Parrish, voters overwhelmingly supported candidates who put forward aggressive housing proposals.
“A lot of residents in the 905, the electorally important suburbs around Toronto, understand the need for more housing, and they understand that we can’t keep doing things the same way,” Tedjo said in a phone interview Sunday. “The majority of voters believe that we need more housing and voted for candidates that represented that.”
Tedjo previously ran as a Liberal candidate in the 2018 election and as a leadership aspirant in the race eventually won by Steven Del Duca in 2020; he says that he won’t be running for the party provincially next time around, given his commitment to municipal politics, but that he intends to bring that municipal lens to his work on the panel. For example, he hopes to see policies that can support municipalities in delivering more diverse housing types.
“We absolutely need to build all kinds of housing, including market housing, but we know that it’s more difficult to build purpose-built rental, to build affordable housing, that it’s not currently incentivized to build more two- and three-bedroom family units,” Tedjo said. “So that’s what I want to focus on.”
The panel is arguably up against more than one ticking clock. There’s the threat of an election call coming a year or more before the party was planning on, but there’s something at least as urgent facing whoever wins the next election: the need to act boldly — and quickly — simply because redirecting something as ponderous as the housing sector takes years.
(Across the Atlantic, the British Labour party is reportedly looking at a “Blitz” of planning reforms within weeks of taking office on exactly these grounds: rapid action, early in a new government’s mandate, is necessary simply to be able to show any kind of improvement in time for another election four years later.)
“I haven’t yet been asked to set a 100-day target; however, we’re keenly aware that we’re in a genuine crisis,” Shamji said. “Vacancy rates are the lowest they’ve ever been, and encampments are at all-time highs. That underscores the urgency with which we have to act.”
That said, the trained surgeon took pains to emphasize that urgency is no excuse for sloppiness.
“If there’s even one lesson we can take from the current government, it is that it’s absolutely crucial to do your homework and to execute, without delay, but correctly and only once,” Shamji said. “I certainly learned that in the emergency room, and I’ve been trying to practise that in policy so far.”
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