The proposed "More Homes…

The proposed "More Homes Built Faster Act" includes only tepid measures to enable more badly needed home construction in existing cities while diving deep into dangerous attacks on wetland habitat, woodlands and other conservation lands and encouraging even more of the expensive rural sprawl that caused Ontario’s housing crisis.

The most glaring feature of this bill and its associated policy proposals is an attack on Conservation Authorities, woodlands and provincially significant wetlands that aims to enable destruction of wetland habitats and conservation lands.

Across Ontario, municipalities largely leave it to Conservation Authorities to use refusal of permits – and their authority to appeal land use decisions – to ensure that sprawl doesn’t destroy the ecological function of the habitat and water bodies they protect.
However, this Bill prohibits Conservation Authorities from doing anything to prevent sprawl from causing flooding and erosion – or destroying ecology. It would leave vast swathes of Ontario’s most important habitats largely unprotected – and put Ontarians at real risk. This measure is useless as a spur to housing supply, because Ontario has more than enough room in existing neighborhoods and lands already designated for development than it will need for housing for many decades
Proposed policy to allow “pay to slay” destruction of currently protected wetlands and woodlands, and changes to the rules that are used to identify wetlands, will cause the majority of these rare and ecologically crucial areas to be opened to development
This Bill’s attack on regional planning is counterproductive for creating affordable homes – as well as being environmentally disastrous.

Devolving planning decisions to lower-tier municipalities would produce development that is more scattered and thus much more environmentally harmful, but also more uncoordinated and expensive.
This is precisely the opposite of what’s needed at a time when we need to preserve every acre of farmland and habitat, and use scarce construction materials, construction labour, equipment and supporting infrastructure to maximize the number of well-designed and low-cost homes, and transform existing post-warII subdivisions into public transit supporting complete communities.
The draft bill attacks Green Buildings.

Municipalities have developed green building standards to ensure new construction is environmentally, socially, and economically responsible as well as cheaper to own and maintain. This bill will take away their authority to require green buildings and undermine the affordability benefits that energy-efficient, climate-resilient buildings provide to owners and tenants.

One of the only bright spots in this Bill is a requirement to build more densely near major transit stations:

However, promised reforms to remove or reduce exclusionary “single detached” zoning, which is desperately needed to add compact and low-cost family housing to existing low-rise neighborhoods, were watered down to such a degree that, according to the government’s own documents, they would create just 50,000 of the 1,500,000 promised homes.
This means that families would still be pushed out into low-density car-dependent sprawl.
The government seems to be using this bill to destroy many of the most effective measures that cities have created to ensure that development can go ahead smoothly without causing social and environmental problems, including ending the requirement for rental unit replacement when old buildings are replaced and putting restrictions on inclusionary zoning.
Unless the major flaws in this Bill are addressed it will further the destruction of critical natural areas in a time of climate crisis while also failing to deliver the urban transformation – or the affordable housing – that Ontario needs.