Ontario housing bill would scrap density targets, allow more development on farmland

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The Ontario government has proposed a sweeping new housing bill that would scrap targets meant to curb sprawl in the Greater Toronto Area and make it easier for municipalities to expand development into farmland – while still requiring higher densities around transit stations.

The proposed changes are included in a package of moves from Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark, the latest in a series of changes he says are needed to achieve his government’s goal of facilitating the construction of 1.5 million new homes over the next decade – a goal Ontario’s own projections show it won’t meet.

“We know that more progress and more action is required to hit our housing goals, particularly in the face of economic uncertainty, inflation and soaring interest rates‚” Mr. Clark told reporters at Queen’s Park after introducing his bill, the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, which also includes previously announced measures meant to protect tenants from unfair evictions.

Critics say many of the proposed planning changes would only fuel suburban sprawl, gutting requirements for Toronto-area suburbs to build new neighbourhoods more densely and allowing municipalities to more easily expand their urban boundaries into farmland.

“It’s kind of planning chaos,” said Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence. “It’s all just about sprawl-developer, land-speculator dreams come true.”

Plus, critics say the proposals ignore calls to do more to increase density within urban neighbourhoods, such as scrapping the “exclusionary zoning” rules that essentially mandate only single-family homes in many areas. The government’s own housing task force recommended dropping them.

Mr. Clark said municipalities have so far resisted these kinds of moves: “We have to move at the speed of our partners. We have to make sure that municipalities are with us.”

The centrepiece of the new measures unveiled Thursday is a draft rewritten version of what is known as the Provincial Policy Statement, which governs land-use planning across the province. The new document is meant to subsume the province’s other key planning policy, the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

That Growth Plan, passed by a previous Liberal government in 2005 when it created the protected Greenbelt area, was meant to force suburban municipalities around Toronto to build denser communities that are easier to serve with public transit.

The new proposed document, now the subject of online public consultations, does not include some of the Growth Plan’s key density targets, which the Progressive Conservative government had already watered down.

The plan, as amended by the Liberals in 2017, required municipalities building on “greenfields” – such as farmland – to ensure developments accommodate 80 people and jobs per hectare, dense enough to make bus service that comes every 10 or 15 minutes worthwhile, according to urban planners. Some municipalities had complained that this was too prescriptive.

In 2019, Mr. Clark lowered that number to 60 people and jobs per hectare in Hamilton, Peel, Waterloo and York Region areas, with other municipalities, including Barrie, Brantford and Guelph, required to plan for 50. Smaller places had to hit a target of 40.

The current proposal includes no hard density targets for greenfield sites, saying only that a list of 29 of the province’s largest and fastest-growing municipalities would be “encouraged” to plan for 50 people and jobs per hectare.

The new plan does maintain the Growth Plan’s density requirements near transit stations, calling for at least 200 people and jobs per hectare within 500 to 800 metres of subway stations, 160 for those near rapid bus lanes or light-rail, and 150 for those near GO Transit commuter rail or intercity rail – with some exceptions. Those 29 municipalities, which includes Toronto, are also required to plan for growth in other “strategic areas.”

But hard targets for densities within what the Growth Plan designated “urban growth centres” in certain municipalities are no longer mentioned, even though the province has itself imposed densities well above any existing targets in Toronto’s Midtown and Downtown areas and along its proposed Ontario Line subway.

The government says nothing in the new proposals would mean any more removals from the protected Greenbelt. It has faced controversy for its move last year to carve out 3,000 hectares – to be offset by 3,800 hectares of other land – from the 800,000-hectare protected area to allow housing.

Another clause in the bill introduced Thursday would give Mr. Clark new powers to approve developments that violate other provincial planning policies. Environmental Defence says this could be used to skirt provisions meant to protect wetlands. Mr. Clark has already faced controversy for using previously rarely deployed powers to fast-track scores of projects, often for developers who were also large PC donors.

The government also says its proposal would give municipalities the power to expand the boundaries of their built-up areas into farmland at any time, instead of the current process that requires an extensive review. Mr. Clark says this added flexibility would allow more homes to be built.

He has already forced municipalities to make expansions, even overriding opposition from Hamilton, where council had voted to put more growth inside existing boundaries to curb urban sprawl.

Opposition NDP housing critic Jessica Bell said the changes would only “make it easier for developers to pave over farmland” and do nothing to solve the province’s housing crisis.