At Queen’s Park on Tuesday morning, Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie and MPP Adil Shamji will introduce a new private-member’s bill that would, if passed, sweep away some of the most restrictive forms of building regulation across Ontario’s municipalities — and put the spotlight on a long-running case of inaction from the current Progressive Conservative government.
The BUILD Ontario Act (the first word is short for Building Universal and Inclusive Land Development) would legalize four units on every lot already zoned for residential homes, specifically by prohibiting a number of the regulatory obstacles that municipal councils currently use to obstruct them. In particular, municipal councils would be forbidden from imposing off-street parking minimums, height limits below four storeys, and floor-to-area ratios (a planning metric controlling how much land a building can sit on) for buildings of between three and six homes.
Crombie leads the Liberal party without having a seat in the legislature; she’ll rely on Shamji to introduce the bill for the house’s consideration.
Legalizing four units on residential lands around Ontario was one of the key recommendations of the Housing Affordability Task Force convened by then-minister of municipal affairs Steve Clark, who received the task force’s report shortly before the 2022 election. Its most ambitious (but controversial) recommendations were not implemented prior to the election and have not been acted on since.
In prepared remarks provided to TVO Today, Crombie took aim squarely at Premier Doug Ford’s claim to “get it done” in government.
“I know the Ford Conservatives have refused to take action to get homes built faster — so we’re stepping up to get it done,” Crombie says. “Our agenda is ambitious and based on a simple yet bold concept of abundance. Good land-use planning is also good climate policy.”
Private-member’s bills rarely become law in the context of a majority government at Queen’s Park, particularly if they’re proposing substantial changes in policy. One private-member’s bill related to housing — Bill 156, the Homes You Can Afford in the Communities You Love Act from Green leader Mike Schreiner — was sent to a committee over Schreiner’s objections, and it’s unclear whether it will ever see the light of day again. Shamji’s bill may face a similar fate, but the Liberals intend to draw a contrast between Crombie and the premier.
“Abundance” has been a recurring theme for Crombie lately. In an op-ed for International Women’s Day published by The Trillium, the Liberal leader paired a message of ambition for female politicians with the theme of a more ambitious set of policy priorities for the Ontario government. Crombie highlighted the need for housing affordability but also included transit investments, health, and elder care.
One adviser to Crombie, speaking with TVO on background, says that the “abundance agenda” will be a pillar of Liberal policy proposals between now and the 2026 election. The phrase has been part of the progressive policy debate in the United States for some time now, with writers like Ezra Klein calling for “a liberalism that builds” in contrast to a more traditional emphasis on proceduralism — or, in this case, on laws and regulations that empower localities and their voters to preserve the status quo at the expense of affordability.
Abundance also featured in Monday’s announcement on climate policy; in a release, Crombie said that, if the party were to win the next election, it would not implement a carbon tax provincially and would instead focus on measures to reduce costs for households.
Crombie was criticized during the Liberal leadership campaign — and after, by Ford — for Mississauga’s relatively poor performance in getting new homes built. Late in the leadership campaign, Crombie used the strong-mayor powers bestowed on her by the Ford government to reverse a decision by Mississauga council legalizing fourplexes in the city she then led, in part because federal funding was on the line.
Beyond the attacks of her critics, there’s a more subtle distinction between the perspectives of different levels of government. In federal and provincial politics, economic and demographic growth are almost always assumed to be a good things, but at the municipal level, leaders can be much more ambivalent. Even outside cases of outright NIMBYist bad faith, there’s the simple fact that, under Ontario’s current rules, municipalities bear a lot of the costs of growth, while much of the fiscal benefit is monopolized by the provincial or federal governments. Any mayor making the leap from municipal to provincial politics would necessarily need to adjust their perspective.
That said, the text of Shamji’s bill also shows that some municipal experience has its benefits, too: it’s clearly written with some detailed knowledge of the specific policy levers that councils rely on to block housing when that’s their aim. It might still be insufficient: municipalities can be endlessly creative in throwing up procedural obstacles when they want to.
In any case, Shamji’s private-member’s bill will almost certainly not become law. But it might help the Liberals draw a contrast between their party and the Tories. And if they — and Ontario — are fortunate, it might just goad the Ford government into adopting the policy as its own, if for no other reason than to deny its critics an attack line.
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