The Ford Government’s “More Homes for All” plan was first submitted to Queen’s Park on Wednesday afternoon.
It includes dozens of actionable items, many of which aim to reduce bureaucracy and speed up the approval process as a way to accelerate growth.
The plan, however, omits many of the recommendations made by the Ford Government Affordable Housing Task Force in a report released last month, including the removal of municipal policies that prioritize maintaining the “neighborhood character” in decisions. design.
There is also a lack of a special group recommendation that would allow the so-called “right” zone, which automatically allows developers to build up to four units with a maximum of four floors on a residential plot, effectively bypassing the municipal approval process.
“We need to work with Ontario’s 444 municipalities and we heard very clearly that the recommendations may have been a little bold for some communities,” Home Affairs and Housing Secretary Steve Clark told reporters at Queen’s Park on Wednesday.  “So we have to go back and consult with them and work with them, because if we are going to deal with the housing crisis in Ontario, we have to have municipalities in our corner.”
Task Force recommendations will continue to serve as a long-term roadmap: Clark
Clark said that while the 55 recommendations made by the working group would serve as a “long-term roadmap” for tackling affordability in Ontario, the bill tabled today provides an opportunity for some more “immediate change” to “enter shovels to the ground faster.  . »
If the plan is passed into law, the Toronto Act and the Provincial Planning Act will be amended so that “site plan control” issues related to the compatibility of a development with the surrounding neighborhood are decided by city staff. and not by city councilors.
It should be noted that the Toronto City Council already assigns “site plan control” decisions to the planning staff, but a district councilor is currently allowed to request any application to be decided by the city council.
Further regulatory changes will then be implemented in 2023, requiring municipalities to make decisions on zoning applications within a specified time frame.
According to the new timetables set by the province, municipalities will be required by law to reimburse 50 per cent of the restructuring fees if they do not make a decision on the application within 90 days.  Then they have to return 75 percent of the fees if no decision is made within 150 days and 100 percent of the fees if no decision is made after 210 days.
Officials say the change is intended to help speed up remodeling decisions, which currently require an average of nine to 25 months in the GTA and unnecessarily inflate costs.
In fact, they point out a study by the Ontario Association of Architects, which suggests that the cost of delays between site design implementation and approval is $ 1,930 per month for each unit in a 100-unit condominium.
“We need to build more houses, we need to have shovels on the ground faster, and all our consultations have recognized that it takes a long time to build homes,” Clark said Wednesday.
Changes to the building code are suggested
In addition to regulatory changes aimed at reducing bureaucracy at the municipal level, the Ontario government is also promising to invest $ 19 million to help the Ontario Land Tribunal and Landlords and Tenants Board reduce outstanding cases.
The Ford government is also proposing several changes to the building code, which it says will “save downstream costs for home buyers and tenants.”
These include licensing 12-storey solid timber buildings and exploring the possibility of allowing only one means of exit to medium-sized buildings between four and six storeys.
The hope is that the initiative package will boost supply and ultimately reduce the cost of living in GTA, where the average price of a home has recently exceeded $ 1.3 million.
Speaking to CP24 earlier Wednesday, BMO Capital Markets senior economist Robert Kavcic said that while a full-scale correction in the GTA is unlikely, prices will start to fall in the short term due to the Bank of Canada’s current rate hike. and various government interventions, including Ontario’s previously announced plan to increase its tax on foreign home buyers.
“We are not talking about any kind of crash or major damage that is causing house prices to fall as we saw in the US 10 or 15 years ago.  The market here is very well rooted in the fundamentals of supply and demand and demographics.  There is a real fundamental force here.  “The problem is that prices have exceeded these fundamentals last year since COVID was launched,” he said.