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Ontario premier Doug Ford spoke at the Annual General Meeting of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario on Jan. 23, delivering a blunt assessment of the barriers preventing Ontario from meeting its housing construction goals.
“At the municipalities, we have bureaucrats across the province and some really tough numbers,” he fumed. “No matter what you want to build, they won’t let you build a garage, they won’t let you build a doghouse without taking five years to go through it. I call it the carousel. You go on the carousel, you go to city hall, you put in your application, they move it around and it comes off for comments. Then, guess what? We’re back on the carousel again for more comments.” Ford cited the need to cut red tape, regulations and fees: “Cut to the chase, get the permit done and move forward.” He said housing demand has outstripped supply for “too long” and acknowledged young familes and newcomers are locked out of the market.
Ford pointed to “bold action” by his government to address the crisis, including setting ambitious targets for city growth, cutting red tape, reducing municipal fees and removing HST on purpose-built rental projects. Queen’s Park is spending over $3 billion on water, road and bridge improvements that he claims will enable the construction of 660,000 new homes.
Ford said American state governors are astonished when he tells them the province has to pay municipalities to “do what they need to do.” Outside of a few mayors, Ford claimed, the reaction to the shortage has been to agree they need more homes and more affordable homes but to not want them built in their area.
Ford went on an extended riff about the federal Species At Risk act, saying “they have to peel me off the ceiling” when he hears about it. He said he’s heard stories of projects halted not because they found snakes in an area but because it looked like an area where there might be snakes. “We’re holding up the 413 because a woodpecker has one tree,” Ford related. “Last time I checked, a woodpecker can fly from one tree to another.” Protection for grasshoppers and illuminated turtle tunnels also attracted his ire until he finally had to apologize to his teleprompter operator and get back on text.
The premier gestured to plans to introduce a single province-wide planning policy statement replacing the individual ones municipalities have now, eliminating, he said, 100 pages of regulation and 6,600 hours per year of municipal staff time. He cited building code revisions allowing mass timber construction and standardized designs. “We’re using every tool in our toolbox,” Ford said.
Ford pivoted the top-of-mind issue of tariffs, promising to always stand up for Ontario. “I’ve never heard one American say Canada is the problem,” he reported. “I’ll tell you what the problem is. China has no problem shipping cheap parts into Mexico, slapping native Mexican stickers on them and costing American and Canadian jobs.” He outlined his plan to focus Trump’s mind on this threat, saying “Why not build the North America fortress? Let’s make our two countries the strongest, the richest, wealthies, safest and most prosperous countries in the entire world.”
But Ford didn’t neglect to show a stick, as well. “Trump says ‘we don’t need Canada.’ That’s nonsense. Sixty percent of their energy gets imported from Canada, no matter if it’s 4.3 million barrels of oil we ship down there from Alberta or 450,000 barrels coming from Saskatchewan. Or the uranium from Saskatchewan that gets transferred over the border and down to the U.S. to get enriched. They have no choice. Everyone wants our uranium. But what do you want us to do? We want to sell it to our closest allies and friends. Or potash. President Trump wants to attack our agricultural sector. In one switch we could decimate their agricultural sector because [losing] 87 percent of the potash that that goes to the U.S. would devastate their farming.” He went on to mention nickel, aluminum and electricity, and suggested that the only other source for much of the critical resources American needs are Russia and China.
Then Ford pivoted to the damage Canada could do with retaliatory tariffs. “Nine million Americans wake up every morning to produce products for Ontario alone, just Ontario,” he said. “We’re the number one trading partner in 17 states, number two in 11 others. Across the country, the $1.3 trillion as the number one export destination in the world is Canada.”
Ford admitted the U.S. can hurt us worse than we hurt them and cited the potential need for public relief. “If we’re going to be out there spending tens of millions of dollars as we did in the pandemic to protect people, to protect businesses and to protect communities, I don’t get a mandate from other politicians. It doesn’t work that way. You get a mandate from the people wanting to move forward and support the growth we’ve seen in the last year.” So Ford, who has signalled he will call an early election this week, is using the threat of Trump tariffs as his justification.
The premier set out some elements of what will likely be his campaign platform. “The worst thing you can do is tax businesses,” he said. Businesses left with money will reinvest it creating more jobs and growth that generates more tax revenue for the government. Ford said when he took office, the Ontario budget was $150 billion and is now $214 billion without raising taxes. “We created the climate and the conditions for companies to come and the best manufacturers created more jobs than all 50 U.S. states combined. That’s maybe what got Trump ticked off,” he quipped. Ford claimed there is another $70 billion in foreign investment “potentially” coming to Ontario.
Ford pledged to spend the windfall from all this growth at least in part on healthcare. “We’re spending unprecedented amounts of money, close to $200 billion a year, building hospitals for the first time,” he said. “At 50 sites around the province, you are either getting a new hospital or and addition to the hospital. Never stop investing into infrastructure and investing into people.”