Environmental standards gutted as housing starts stall: critics warn Ford’s new housing bill opens door to Greenbelt development
As Ontario scrambles to meet its promise of building 1.5 million homes by 2031, Doug Ford’s government is once again reshaping housing policy with developer-driven plans, at the expense of local environmental standards for the seventh time since being elected in 2018.
In 2019, the More Homes, More Choice Act was the Ford government’s first major housing bill. It aimed to speed up development approvals by “streamlining” the planning process and reducing environmental oversight.
In 2022, the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act gave mayors of Toronto and Ottawa — and others later on — expanded powers to advance provincial housing priorities, including the ability to veto council decisions and push through legislation without the support of a majority of councillors.
This was followed by Bill 109, the More Homes for Everyone Act, in April 2022, which introduced stricter timelines for municipalities to process planning applications, with financial penalties for delays, while centralizing more control at the provincial level.
Within two months, Ford directed the housing minister at the time, Steve Clark, to develop a framework for "swaps, expansions, contractions and policy updates for the Greenbelt," and chose a political staffer who secretly executed the approvals that determined where exactly development could occur in the supposedly protected Greenbelt, including land that at least two developers had instructed the PCs to swap in for residential construction. The since reversed plan is now under investigation by the RCMP.
In October 2022, the Ford government introduced Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act — a sweeping omnibus Bill that significantly reduced development charges, limited the role of conservation authorities and was labelled ‘ecological insanity’ due to its weakening of environmental and heritage protections to facilitate faster housing construction.
In 2023, the Affordable Homes and Good Jobs Act focused on aligning municipal zoning with provincial priorities, particularly near transit hubs, and included provisions to attract investment in skilled trades and infrastructure.
In August 2023, Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk revealed the “flawed” and “biased process” marked by “preferential treatment” in the selection of Greenbelt lands for removal.
At the time, Ford and Clark defended the move as a necessary response to the housing crisis—a claim Lysyk’s audit refuted. The report detailed how the PC government disregarded expert recommendations, failed to consult environmental groups and Indigenous communities, and bypassed transparency measures enshrined in Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR).
In September 2023, after months of backlash and several staffers and two of his ministers resigning, Ford finally reversed his decision through Bill 136, the Greenbelt Statute Law Amendment Act, which, in theory, protects the lands that developers are hoping to build on.
Seven months later, there was new legislation aimed at cutting “red tape”.
In 2024, the Province tabled the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act, which aimed to eliminate what the PCs labelled as further barriers to development by streamlining approval processes and reducing municipal control over certain planning decisions.
All of the legislation follows the aggressive lobbying of the development industry in Ontario, led by BILD, the Building Industry and Land Development Association. It relentlessly lobbies against sweeping Greenbelt protection, claims opening up more land for construction is the only way to meet housing demand and insists that municipal charges, levied for decades on builders to pay for the infrastructure new residents need, should be dramatically reduced or eliminated. Its recommended policies have served as the blueprint for Ford’s housing legislation, which mirrors BILD’s demands. In 2018, Ford was caught on a secretly recorded video clip promising a room full of developers that if they helped get him elected for the first time he would open up a “big chunk” of the Greenbelt so they could reap massive profits—Lysyk’s audit estimated that the developers preferred by Ford to get their assembled Greenbelt properties approved for construction, stood to see their land value increase by more than $8 billion.
Despite rewriting legislation and the urban growth playbook in Ontario to suit developers and purportedly make it easier to build homes, mostly at the expense of environmental protections, it doesn’t appear to be working. The PCs admit they are falling behind on their 10-year goal of building 1.5 million homes.
On May 12, Ford’s government unveiled Bill 17, dubbed the Protecting Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, in a bid to jumpstart home construction through changes to development charges, building codes and planning.
In the fall economic statement, Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy projected a decline in housing starts in the province over the coming years. Toward the end of 2024 the provincial government projected that housing starts for the year would be down from an estimated 87,900 to 81,300 — a significant shortfall from the original goal of 125,000 homes to be built last year, putting Ford’s target of 1.5 million new homes by 2031 further out of reach.
“They’ve used the housing shortage as a pretext to give special interest groups, like developers, exactly what they want,” Phil Pothen, program manager of land use and Ontario environment at Environmental Defence, told The Pointer.
“We are concerned that the proposed Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act could unduly restrict municipalities’ abilities to apply development standards that protect energy affordability, public health and climate objectives as we build new homes and communities,” The Atmospheric Fund’s vice president, policy and programs, Bryan Purcell said in a statement shared with The Pointer.
In the span of just two weeks, the Ford government has moved aggressively to “cut red tape” and push development at the expense of environmental action and local governance.
On May 1, the province introduced Bill 5, officially named the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, granting the province broad authority to award infrastructure and development projects to anyone, anywhere, and on any timeline, exempting these projects from existing provincial and municipal environmental laws.
The province says Bill 17 “work(s) together” with measures proposed in Bill 2, the Protect Ontario through Free Trade within Canada Act, and Bill 5, “as part of the government’s plan to protect Ontario by strengthening internal trade relationships, supporting faster provincial development and supporting buying local.”
“AMO is firmly behind the province’s commitment to streamlining approvals and enhancing transparency to get more homes built faster in Ontario,” Association of Municipalities of Ontario President Robin Jones said in a statement to The Pointer.
“Minister Flack’s approach highlights what we can achieve when the province, municipalities and the development sector all work together towards a shared goal. We look forward to finding new and innovative ways of funding the infrastructure that communities need to support growth and the economy, and maintain the quality of life that remains Ontario’s key competitive advantage.”
It’s unclear why legislation is being passed before tens of billions of dollars needed for infrastructure to support 1.5 million new homes has been committed. AMO and the Ford government have not explained how shifting the responsibility for these costs from developers to taxpayers—the only way they could be covered—is fair. For decades, builders have paid for growth-related infrastructure and could decide how much of those costs would be passed onto the buyers who enjoyed the benefits of local roads, bridges, sewer and water systems, community centres, libraries, policing, emergency services, stormwater systems and all the other pieces of infrastructure municipal development charges pay for.
For Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish, “much of the Building Faster and Smarter Act is so far very vague.”
For Pothen, the pattern is all too familiar.
Among its wide-reaching provisions, the most contentious aspect of Bill 17 is its move to centralize control over the Ontario Building Code, effectively stripping Ontario’s 444 municipalities of the power to set their own construction standards.
“Municipalities do not have the authority to require their own unique standards beyond the Building Code,” a provincial technical briefing on the bill noted.
This effectively cancels out local green building initiatives, such as the Green Development Standards that Mississauga has spent years refining, and those more recently introduced by Caledon Council in July.
“Municipal ‘green’ standards do not duplicate or conflict with the Ontario Building Code, they complement it and consolidate municipal design priorities into a single streamlined document,” Purcell said.
“Accelerating affordable housing and supporting the economy is a welcome focus for this government. However, limiting cities’ abilities to plan for growth could have a devastating impact on affordability in the long term by exposing homeowners, tenants, and building owners to spiraling energy costs and the increasing impacts of extreme weather and climate change.”
Mississauga and Caledon both passed municipal green development standards in 2024, and are among the success stories in the GTHA. Most large cities in the region now have mandatory emissions standards for new construction, representing 86 percent of the population.
(The Atmospheric Fund)
“With Bill 17, the Ontario government is once again choosing to ignore the most important causes of the housing shortage while scapegoating municipal policies like green building standards that often actually help to improve construction efficiency and lower housing costs,” Pothen says.
The government has long been warned, he adds, that it can’t solve the housing shortage, especially the lack of family-sized homes, “without changing what we build and where we build it.” That means adding more mid-rise and stick-frame apartment buildings on existing residential streets, not pushing development into greenfield areas.
“To do that, the province needs to remove outdated restrictions that block this type of infill housing, like rules requiring a second egress that limit smaller apartment buildings, and stop wasting construction capacity on inefficient, low-density sprawl like McMansions,” he emphasizes.
“But none of those barriers exist in municipal green building standards. The government is targeting the wrong problem. Instead of addressing what’s really slowing down housing, Bill 17 just concentrates decision-making power in the hands of the minister.”
The bill gives the minister of municipal affairs and housing, Rob Flack, new regulatory powers to establish “as-of-right” zoning variances — changes that could let certain developments bypass standard municipal approval processes, limiting the ability of local leaders to shape how and where growth occurs.
In the technical briefing deck, the government indicated it is considering allowing Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma to issue MZOs that bypass basic local planning rules.
Bill 17’s technical briefing clearly states the province’s minister of infrastructure will be provided “decision-making authority” to designate land for the Transit-Oriented Community (TOC) program.
(Government of Ontario)
“We are concerned that this is the beginning of the infrastructure minister using the MZO power to try and build on some parts of the Greenbelt while labelling that development as transit-oriented development,” Pothen says.
“And that could be real bad…because MZOs are already being overused and misused.”
There is a glimmer of potential for some municipal leaders within Bill 17’s amendment to the Development Charges Act. It is a provision to delay payment of development charges until occupancy for certain residential projects—a policy already adopted in Mississauga.
“The section on the DC (Development Charges) Act implies it will be studied and that change is coming,” Parrish told The Pointer. “But the only concrete item was the delayed payment, confirming Mississauga’s already implemented direction.”
In January, Mississauga also cut development charges by 50 percent for most residential builds, and 100 percent for three-bedroom purpose-built rentals, provided permits are issued before November 13, 2026, to reduce housing costs and encourage higher-density development.
Pothen acknowledged that deferring development charges until occupancy can support increased housing supply, but only if the policy is strategically applied.
“We were already building at full capacity when the housing shortage began, so applying the same incentives to greenfield and expansion developments won’t make a meaningful difference. These deferrals should be limited to infill projects like mid-rise buildings and multiplexes where they can actually help address the shortage,” he notes.
Buildings and transportation are the top emissions contributors in the GTHA.
(The Atmospheric Fund)
Buildings currently account for 45 percent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, making them the top contributor to urban pollution in Mississauga and Brampton. They are also responsible for more than 27 percent of Canada’s total GHG emissions, according to a 2021 report by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
Parrish expressed disappointment that the bill offers no direct financial support for municipalities and does little to address deeply affordable housing.
“I had hoped for financial assistance in the form of grants to municipalities that make dramatic cuts. I was disappointed that there’s nothing concrete on deeply affordable housing which engages the province with the issue financially,” she said.
It’s a problem across Peel.
Previously, under Bill 23, the province assigned Peel a target of building 246,000 new homes by 2031: 120,000 in Mississauga, 113,000 in Brampton, and 13,000 in Caledon — a pace more than five times faster than the region has experienced over the past decade.
“We can achieve the targets, but I don't know that we will have the funding to achieve the targets,” former Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie said at the time.
That concern is not unfounded. Development charges, which are typically used to fund infrastructure needed for population growth, were limited under Bill 23.
A 2023 report to Peel Regional Council estimated it would cost $20.4 billion to build the water, wastewater, and transportation infrastructure to support the new homes — far above the region’s existing 10-year infrastructure plan of $8.9 billion.
“I don’t believe it’s fair to put that type of burden on taxpayers,” Caledon mayor Annette Groves said in a council meeting. “My son is going to be paying that debt and maybe his children.”
Parrish voiced cautious optimism for Bill 17 after a recent meeting with Minister Flack, where he participated in a gathering of her Housing Task Force with major developers.
“I was very impressed with his questions, comments and attitude. I will hang onto my confidence in his expressed desire to truly accelerate home building and wait until the many studies referenced in the Act are completed before final judgement.”
Meanwhile, environmental advocates are already sounding the alarm over Bill 17, which has already passed its first reading, and could set off a domino effect, unravelling years of hard-fought environmental progress.
The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) accounts for nearly half of Ontario’s total greenhouse gas emissions, with Peel Region being the second-largest emitter after Toronto, contributing 11.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Within Peel, buildings and transportation make up more than 83 percent of total emissions. Eliminating standards that can drastically reduce these emissions could trigger a dangerous domino effect.
In municipalities like Mississauga and Caledon, Green Development Standards (GDS) have played a critical role in reducing building emissions and advancing local climate goals—such as Mississauga’s target of cutting emissions by 40 percent by 2030, and Caledon’s commitment to a 36 percent reduction from 2016 levels by the same year.
But with Bill 17 on the table, these targets are now at risk.
Eliminating GDS could severely undermine the province’s ability to meet its own 2030 and 2050 climate targets—eventually dooming Canada’s national goal of cutting emissions by 40–45 percent by 2030 compared to 2005, on the path to net-zero by 2050.
The Atmospheric Fund’s senior manager of climate policy, Evan Wiseman, had told The Pointer that Green Development Standards don’t just focus on “energy efficiency and carbon reduction, which are incredibly important to lowering costs for people, but also include things like bike paths, managing stormwater runoff, and preserving green spaces…things that make our streets and communities livable.”
“The elimination of green building standards will cause a serious problem for municipalities who are trying to meet climate targets,” Environmental Defence’s Phil Pothen said, warning the bill also targets complete streets rules—policies that ensure urban spaces are designed for more than just cars.
By shifting control away from local governments, the bill strips municipalities of the power to design walkable, transit-friendly communities.
“To build more homes in our existing neighbourhoods, we need to change the way our streets are laid so that they support a denser population. We need to change our streets so that a larger portion of the population can walk and take transit, and cycle. There is not enough room within neighbourhoods for everyone to drive,” he underscored.
“All of those changes are obstructed if this bill passes, because cities can't modify their streets to support higher densities, won't be able to modify their urban design to accommodate more people in the same footprint, and this will make it harder and less harder and less pleasant to densify existing neighborhoods that add more housing.”
Pothen argued that the government’s focus on dismantling environmental policies is a distraction from the real issues blocking housing development, like outdated zoning laws.
Instead, Bill 17 could make it difficult to meet the province’s housing and climate targets by favouring developer interests.
Developers have long viewed Green Development Standards as a thorn in their side, a stance made clear in November when the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON), representing new home builders, filed a legal challenge against the City of Toronto targeting the city’s Toronto Green Standard (TGS), which mandates tougher environmental building requirements.
RESCON is seeking a court order to prevent the City from applying these standards through planning applications, claiming it oversteps the legal authority granted under the Building Code Act.
“With a critical need for new housing, it is imperative that all levels of government take immediate action to boost construction by lowering taxes, fees and levies, and reducing the red tape and bureaucracy that slows the industry and adds to the cost of housing,” RESCON president Richard Lyall said in a statement. “To spur the market, we need conditions that allow builders to build houses that people can afford. Otherwise, we may be in dire straits as new home construction stalls and unemployment in the industry rises.”
RESCON's position is supported by a report it commissioned—Housing Market Outlooks in Ontario—warning of declining housing starts in the years ahead, which it argues will worsen the province’s housing supply crisis.
Environmental advocates dispute this claim. A report by The Atmospheric Fund (TAF) found that stricter green standards have not hindered housing development.
In fact, Toronto exceeded its 2023 housing targets by 51 percent, with nearly 96 percent of housing starts meeting the Toronto Green Standard. “Overall, Toronto’s housing starts have grown or stayed consistent nearly every year since the TGS was implemented,” the report noted.
As previously reported by The Pointer, the Toronto Green Standard has become a gold standard for sustainable development, inspiring other municipalities such as Mississauga to adopt similar models.
Pothen says Bill 17 “is another instance of the government under the guise of trying to improve housing output, actually just adding favours to very narrow interests, and in some cases, making it harder to increase housing supply.”
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