When Toronto mayor Olivia Chow and Premier Doug Ford signed the “New Deal for Toronto” in late 2023, I praised the mayor for cutting her losses in a fight she was never going to win: Chow, despite substantial pressure from activists in the city’s political left, traded away a long, performative, and ultimately doomed fight over Ontario Place for a major structural improvement in the city’s finances. You don’t have to like Ford’s plans for Ontario Place to recognize the realism of that move, and the results of the 2025 Ontario election — in which, not incidentally, the Tories once again won 10 of the city’s 25 seats — mean that provincial policy isn’t changing anytime soon.
So then why is Toronto now spoiling for a legal battle with the province that it’s certain to lose, if it hasn’t already lost?
At issue here is the fate of the Toronto Green Standard, a set of rules that includes both compulsory and voluntary measures the city says reduce the construction industry’s environmental impact. The compulsory part of the TGS was already the subject of a lawsuit from RESCON, one of the province’s largest developer lobbies, arguing that the TGS exceeded the city’s legal authority.
This spring the Ford government introduced Bill 17, the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, which the government says reaffirms that Ontario municipalities cannot, and have never had the power to, impose additional building requirements above and beyond those required by the provincial building code.
The government all but confirmed from the outset that it had the TGS in its sights; during a technical briefing with reporters before the bill had even been formally introduced in the legislature, I asked ministry staff if this part of Bill 17 was aimed specifically at the TGS. They confirmed it was.
The City of Toronto argues that while the province may have aimed for the TGS, it missed. City staff have said, both in reports to the executive committee chaired by Chow and in response to questions from reporters, that the city’s legal authority to impose the TGS is unaffected by Bill 17.
The legislative details here are unavoidable, so bear with me here.
Bill 17 amended both the Municipal Act and the City of Toronto Act (between the two of them, covering all of Ontario’s municipalities) to say that, despite the wording in both those laws that says municipal powers should be interpreted broadly except where otherwise specifically limited by law, the province does “not authorize a municipality to pass by-laws respecting the construction or demolition of buildings.”
The City of Toronto’s lawyers, however, say that the legal authority to impose the TGS didn’t come from the city’s general powers under Sections 7 and 8 of the City of Toronto Act — and thus the TGS is intact. There’s a hitch, though: despite multiple requests from TVO Today, city officials would not indicate what legal authority (either in the City of Toronto Act or other provincial legislation) actually underpins the TGS, citing the ongoing legal dispute with RESCON.
(This is irritating and another example of the contempt that Canadian governments seem to hold for the public: yes, public officials should be careful about what they say about matters currently before the courts. But the city is allowed to answer a basic factual question about a substantial dispute between it and the province.)
Even if the city’s lawyers are pedantically correct about Bill 17, Toronto isn’t going to win this fight for the same reason it was never going to win the fight over Ontario Place: the province holds all the cards. This is purely a matter of provincial jurisdiction and if the Ford government needs to introduce successor legislation to put more nails in the green standard’s coffin, they’re going to do that.
This isn’t speculation: the province has already put the city on warning in a letter from the deputy minister of municipal affairs and housing, first reported by the Toronto Star and subsequently provided to TVO Today. In it, the province warns the city that “the government is prepared to take additional legislative action to ensure municipalities are adhering to the provincial framework.”
The case of the TGS is distinct from other legal battles the city has faced, for example shrinking Toronto City Council, or even removing the city’s bike lanes, where the question was whether the province was violating Charter rights. Those arguments received (or are receiving) a fair hearing in front of an Ontario judge. When it comes to the province’s building code, there’s just not really a plausible case that the legislature is exceeding its powers by insisting on the primacy of the provincial building code.
Just as one doesn’t have to like Doug Ford’s plans for Ontario Place, one doesn’t have to celebrate the death of the Toronto Green Standard. All else being equal, I’d prefer we build better, greener cities than the bare minimum required by Ontario law. But wasting time and money in costly legal battles you’re going to lose doesn’t serve anyone’s interest, least of all Toronto’s taxpayers.
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