Burlington, Ont.’s, mayor says numbers quoted by Ontario’s premier suggesting the city is not doing its part in fighting the province’s housing crisis “don’t tell the whole story.”
Marianne Meed Ward clarified that “municipalities don’t build homes” after Doug Ford claimed the city had only committed to about five per cent, or around 200 homes, from a pledge to add 29,000.
“So I can tell you that we are issuing permits,” she said.
“We have 38,000 units in our development pipeline, so as long as builders come in, make applications and pull permits when we’ve approved them, we should be fine.”
Last week Ford singled out the city and Meed Ward saying it was “not fair to the rest of the province” that the burden of meeting new housing targets should fall “on every other big city” and jurisdiction.
“They’ve been allocated 29,000 new homes — they built 208. Two hundred and eight; that’s five per cent. There’s no one that comes close to five per cent,” said Ford.
“At minimum, it might be 29 per cent, so it’s not fair to the rest of the province that there’s a delay in Burlington of only five per cent. That is totally unacceptable.”
Meed Ward submits Burlington is different than most cities in the GTA, making a commitment a decade ago of not building on the Greenbelt and focusing development around three GO stations, aging retail plazas and major corridors like Fairview Plains.
Adopting that plan means a single permit potentially encompasses a high-rise apartment with hundreds of units.
“So again, that permit piece simply does not tell the story on the ground,” she insisted.
“I can tell you when I look out my window, I see cranes in the air. There are hundreds of units being under construction right now.”
Ford reiterated some 500,000 people will land in Ontario over the next 10 years and praised Barrie, Brantford, Pickering and Toronto for being on pace with the province’s housing mandate.
He promised to “get together” with Meed Ward this week to “help her” with the numbers that “aren’t there.”
“Maybe they’re waiting for something, or if we can help them out, then we’re going to help them out,” Ford said.
“But when there’s just a glaring difference of five per cent versus everyone else, all other 28 large municipalities, we have to address it.”
The province is under pressure after a scathing auditor general’s report concluded that developers had direct influence over a November 2022 decision to remove 7,400 acres of land from the Greenbelt to build housing.
The report said a team of six staffers had been given just three weeks to evaluate which areas of land should be removed from the Greenbelt. Most of the parcels of land considered were suggested by housing minister Steve Clark’s chief of staff.
An outline to build 1.5 million homes over 10 years does not include any Greenbelt lands in and around Burlington.
But even so, with developers and provincial consultants beginning formal and informal conversations with municipalities, the mayor isn’t a fan of Greenbelt development.
Meed Ward is one politician characterizing the auditor general’s report as “disturbing” and says the province shouldn’t impose on municipalities who “know best where housing should go.”
“I think the Auditor General’s report was very clear that greenfield land, Greenbelt land in particular is not needed to meet housing targets and in fact is the most expensive, longest to deliver because there’s no servicing there,” said Meed Ward.
Ontario’s finance minister Peter Bethanfalvy said Monday the province has “made it clear” that developers would have to pay for infrastructure when building on greenfield lands.
He also said land will go back into the Greenbelt if shovels are not in the ground by 2025.
– with files from Isaac Callan
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