On Thursday, a bit more than a year after the Ford government first announced its intention to open up the Greenbelt for development, Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra formally introduced a bill that capped off weeks of retreats. Bill 150, the Planning Statute Law Amendment Act, will reverse the changes made to official plans of municipalities around the province that expanded the lands intended for development. Had they been left in place, the changes would have opened up substantially more land than did the also-reversed Greenbelt changes, with 14,000 hectares designated for growth — in some cases, in direct opposition to the stated will of municipal councils.
Bill 150 still needs to pass through the usual stages that apply to any piece of legislation at Queen’s Park, but, in the current legislature, its success is a near-certainty. By the end of the year, the government’s attempted changes to both the Greenbelt and municipal official plans will have been reversed in law. In terms of housing policy, that means the Tories will have almost entirely wasted a year. And not just any year, but the one farthest from their re-election campaign. The year it would have been easiest to make real efforts to address the province’s housing crisis and sort out any related voter acrimony with the most time still to go before the 2026 election.
Nullifying a whole year in the legislative calendar is bad enough, but Premier Doug Ford could make things even worse if he follows up on his complaints that the federal government is cutting deals with municipalities. The feds have (belatedly) become aggressive on the housing file in the past few months, and they’re getting modest but real results. Rather than welcome this turn of events, conservative premiers have threatened to prohibit municipalities from accepting federal cash. It would be churlish and petty but also entirely within the provinces’ powers to do so.
(The important exception to this policy vacuum is the decision by Ontario to match the federal move to exempt rental housing from the harmonized sales tax. Because the HST is federally administered, Ontario couldn’t move until Ottawa did, but with the change in federal policy, Ontario has moved quickly to follow suit, and hopefully we’ll see some badly needed rental housing built as a result.)
The furious backpedalling by the PCs won’t solve all their problems, of course — though it does seem to be helping them in the polls. There’s the small matter of the RCMP investigation into whether anyone in cabinet or in its employ committed any crimes, a ticking bomb that could plausibly detonate at any time between now and the 2026 election.
More important, there’s the stubborn fact that Ontario is still facing a housing crisis, which the government should probably at least look like it’s doing something to address. Good ideas abound, but Ford and his cabinet face some serious self-imposed political obstacles thanks to the events of the past year.
First and most obvious: their credibility. If you engage in the kinds of billion-dollar giveaways to developers that opening up the Greenbelt to construction entailed, even charitable observers will question whether your primary interest is creating windfalls for close friends rather than getting Ontarians adequately and affordably housed. It’s not intrinsically scandalous that a conservative government would rely heavily on private for-profit homebuilders to address the current shortage; the problem is that the Tories have seemingly done everything in their power to make doing so scandalous.
The more subtle problem the government faces is that municipal councils around the province are still in charge of local land-use planning matters — and local leaders are rapidly running out of patience with Queen’s Park. Guelph mayor Cam Guthrie has been vocal about his frustrations that Ford seems to be more interested in name-calling than in addressing real municipal concerns. Cities and towns have seen their revenues take a hit from provincial decisions like Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act. There were reasonable arguments for Bill 23’s shifting of costs off new homes, but municipalities have only so many options to make up the lost money — and many balance sheets still haven’t fully recovered from the pandemic, either. And Bill 23 is just one of many examples of councils being whipsawed by massive changes dictated by Queen’s Park.
The government needs to bring forward real housing policy to replace the late and unlamented policies of the past year. But bringing forward ones that municipalities can actually implement — and that voters will believe are more than just another round of giveaways to developers — may be beyond this premier and his cabinet.
Donate