Statement by Phil Pothen, Counsel, and Ontario Environment Program Manager

Toronto | Traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat – Rather than focus on the specific obstacles to building “more homes, faster” inside Ontario’s existing small town, suburban and city neighbourhoods, the Ontario Government’s proposed Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026, could deprive municipalities of tools they need to enhance construction efficiency, prevent environmental harms, and boost housing output.

Environmental Defence and other housing advocates have been clear about the specific provincial planning, building code and tax reforms, like as-of-right permission for six-storey buildings inside residential neighbourhoods, that are needed to address the dire need for new homes. Ontario must remove the many barriers its planning laws put in the way of building efficient, mid-rise and multiplex inside of towns and cities. It must also remove policy incentives, like recent settlement boundary expansions, planned suburban highways, and outdated zoning that encourage the diversion of construction capacity away from efficient development to be squandered on sprawl – or pointless, luxury rebuilds of existing homes. With Bill 98, the Ontario government has once again failed to take these actions.

Instead of directly removing those specific planning law and building code prohibitions that are actually obstructing the most efficient forms of housing, Bill 98 chooses instead to remove entire tools from the municipal “toolkit”. That could have serious negative effects upon the efforts of municipal governments – most notably, the City of Toronto – that have been using these tools to try and promote greater efficiency.  For example:

  • Bill 98 once again aims to kill the Toronto Green Standard, undermining efforts to control operating costs and standardize efficient ways of building and servicing new homes.
  • By requiring that municipalities limit their Official Plan designations to only 12 options (which it prescribes), Bill 98 might spell the end of Toronto’s apartment neighbourhoods designation, which has historically been used to provide greater housing flexibility.
  • Bill 98 would strip municipalities of the power to use site plan control to promote “sustainable” (and thus, often, more efficient) design.
  • Rather than prohibiting municipalities from requiring parking in general for midrise and multiplex apartment buildings, as recommended in the Midrise Manual, Bill 98 would selectively deprive municipalities of the power to require that at least some of the parking developers do include is equipped to accommodate electric vehicles.  It’s not electrical details, but rather the expensive construction, and wasted space inherent in including parking that stands in the way of efficient, low-cost homes.
  • Bill 98 would even restrict the ability of municipalities to include Official Plan chapter and section headings that address challenges or opportunities peculiar to their circumstances.
  • Bill 98 would limit the power of municipalities to set their own fares, which could get in the way of municipal transit fare programs, like farecapping in Toronto, that make it easier to market and build housing without parking.

If Ontario were genuinely interested in “standardization”, it would be extending the best local standards, like mandatory heat pumps or low-carbon thermal systems, province-wide, and to every housing format, rather than reducing standards for all municipalities to some lowest common denominator.

It is time for the provincial government to stop scapegoating environmental protections for the collapse in housing starts. In  fact both the housing shortage, and the current collapse of homebuilding are the result of its own obsession with encouraging sprawl and its own refusal to directly zone for greater density and variety in the existing suburbs

Background Information

  • Ontario’s housing shortage is not the result of recent economic headwinds or stalled construction.  It developed at a time when our construction labour, equipment and materials were all being put to full use, because government policies incentivized squandering that capacity the least inefficient forms of housing, worst of all highway sprawl.
  • In order to fix the housing shortage quickly, as the Ontario government has promised, it must focus on changing the formats and locations we rely on for new family homes.  That means that it must fix the perverse laws that have artificially made it more expensive to build what should be the most efficient kinds of housing, mid-rise and multiplex within existing, currently lowrise neighbourhoods.  That starts with implementing the recommendations of the Midrise Manual, which identifies provincial laws and policies as the main barriers to developing mid-rise homes at scale and ending Ontario’s housing shortage.

ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.

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For more information or to request an interview, please contact:

Karishma Porwal, media@environmentaldefence.ca