On Tuesday, the federal government announced $6 billion in funding to boost housing construction and meet municipal infrastructure needs throughout the country. Slumping in the polls for months now, a year and a half out from the next election, and approaching the budget on April 16, the Liberals have come alive. This could be good news for Ontario, if Premier Doug Ford and his side choose to do the right thing. But it looks like they won’t. And that’s a shame.
When someone offers you money to do something you should be doing anyway, you should take it. That’s rule number one for life. That’s my advice to Ford. Take the money and run — run and build houses. But the federal cash comes with strings attached, and it seems there are some strings Ford can’t abide. That’s a shame, too, since the strings ought to be more than welcome.
In March, Ford declined to legislate the right to build fourplexes by default throughout the province. Had he done so, it would have become easier for builders in towns and cities in Ontario to build the sort of dense neighbourhoods necessary to address the housing crisis.
Never mind that Ford didn’t seem to know the difference between a fourplex and a four-storey “tower” — he seemed convinced that single-dwelling homes and townhouses were the way to go. Ford’s own housing task force recommended otherwise. But for the premier, it appears, it’s the ’burbs or bust.
A few weeks ago, Ford said that to legislate fourplexes as of right would interfere with local democracy.
“I can assure you 1,000 per cent, you go into communities and start putting up four-storey, six-storey, eight-storey buildings right deep into communities, there’s going to be a lot of shouting and screaming,” he said. Where to begin?
Either Ford is right about this or he’s wrong: the problem is the same. We need houses to get built, and we need density to help lower prices and open space for people where they want to live. If the premier is correct that cities are going to throw up red tape and prevent these builds from going up, someone needs to step in and do the right thing for residents who are stuck paying more because of NIMBY nonsense. If the premier is wrong, then there’s no reason not to let a thousand fourplexes bloom!
The Tories’ refusal to allow fourplexes to get easily built means the new federal cash may end up left on the table. Ford and company defend their anti-density policies by arguing that they do not want to dictate how municipalities build their communities, but that is utter nonsense.
Ford’s reasoning for turning down the cash and not legislating fourplexes as of right is bunk. It’s at least complicated. The government itself has used minister’s zoning orders to override municipal zoning before and has even fast-tracked some, let’s say, controversial builds. In fact, Ford’s government used MZOs many times more often than the previous Liberal government — issuing 110 of them between 2019 and 2023, compared to a mere 18 by the Liberals in the 15 years they were in power.
Later, amid the Greenbelt scandal, the government reviewed the MZOs and decided some might need to be cancelled. Then, in January, the province snuck through a few MZOs for Toronto — though this time, at least Mayor Olivia Chow supported the move. So, while Ford says Queen’s Park doesn’t know best, his government’s actions suggest he believes otherwise.
The government has no problem meddling in municipal planning. Its problem is that it hates urban density, preferring single-family homes and the occasional townhouse, which suit its vision of a good city just fine, thank you very much. Unfortunately, Ontarians are going to continue to pay the price for the government’s narrowmindedness — and that price is very high indeed.
As of February, the benchmark price for a home in the province was $860,000, according to Wowa. In Toronto, the average home price was up year-over-year, hitting nearly $1.1 million. Rentals.ca has one-bedroom apartments in the province’s capital going for an average of $2,500 a month. And the market may be heating up even more.
It’s never been more important to get housing built in Ontario. And meeting the province’s shelter needs requires density. That means we need to normalize fourplexes, among other builds. Ford has a chance to get more homes built, to ease housing costs, and to secure a major cash transfer from the feds for doing the right thing. It ought to be a no-brainer to take the deal, and it’s an utter indictment of this government that it didn’t say yes on the spot.
But at least the government has until January 1, 2025, to get its head right and ink a deal with the feds for the cash. With a little bit of pressure, Ford might just cave. He’s done so before.
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