Introducing the Strong Mayors Home Building Act, Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark linked it to the provincial commitment to build 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years.
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At a time when homeownership seems frustratingly out of reach for many residents, Ottawa’s next mayor will face not only pressure from the provincial government to get more homes built faster, but also new powers that the province has said they can use to make that happen.
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Whether and how they will do so will depend on the person in the mayor’s office. The provincial proposal for new “strong mayor” powers has been met with strong criticism in Ottawa, including from Mayor Jim Watson, with none of the three highest-profile candidates to succeed him rushing to embrace the new government model of the mayor presented for Ontario. two larger cities.
Introducing the “Strong Mayors, Housing Construction Law” on Wednesday, Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark linked it to the provincial commitment to build 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years.
“Our focus with this legislation and the regulations that follow is to ensure that the mayors of our two largest cities are equipped with the powers they need to get the shovels to the ground faster,” Clark said during a news conference. “strong mayor” powers, which extend to the budget process, charter vetoes, municipal contracting, and submitting proposals to council, could be given to other municipalities in the future, though Clark did not provide clear timelines or benchmarks. to measure your success in Ottawa. and Toronto.
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The target of 1.5 million households was the A general prescription from a PC government-appointed housing affordability task force struck last year with a mandate to recommend ways to make housing more affordable by increasing the supply of housing on the market. It is also a compromise that the PCs and all other major parties adopted in the spring provincial elections, though there was no mention of using a strong mayor system to achieve it then.
Opposition politicians criticized the bill introduced in the legislature, where the Progressive Conservatives have a strong majority.
“It’s not clear to anyone I’ve talked to how this is going to accelerate housing construction,” said Stephen Blais, a housing critic for the Ontario Liberal Party and Orleans MPP. He accused Clark of “finding ways to make Doug Ford’s dreams come true that he expressed in his memoir.” (In a book Ford wrote before he entered provincial politics, expressed a desire to see strong US-style mayoral systems in Ontario.)
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Green Party leader Mike Schreiner said the province “already has many tools at its disposal to increase housing supply in cities without increasing sprawl and without concentrating power at the top of municipal government,” including the recommendation not yet approved by the task of housing affordability. force to end foreclosure zoning as well as investment in affordable housing.
One power the next mayors of Ottawa and Toronto will have after the fall municipal elections, if provincial legislation passes, is to submit proposals directly to the council “tThat could potentially promote a provincial priority.” They could also veto a council-approved charter if its approval would interfere with such priority.
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The prime minister and his cabinet would define these priorities, and according to a press release, they could include Ontario’s 1.5 million home construction target, as well as the “construction and maintenance of infrastructure, such as transit and roads, to support new and existing residential housing. developing.”
One does not have to look very far in the recent history of statutes being considered by the Ottawa City Council to find elements in which it was stated that passage would delay housing development. It happened earlier this summer, when the planning committee considered a more ambitious statute governing the collection of parkland, or cash, from the people behind development projects, and ultimately voted to pass it.
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Some important housing-related statutes are also expected in the council’s next term, from the new zoning statute, a major commitment to implement the vision the city laid out in its new official plan, to the implementation of inclusionary zoning, which implies requirements. to provide affordable units in new developments, and has already seen tension between those calling for more ambitious requests from developers and those who warn doing so will kill housing projects.
As a former mayor and city chief administrative officer, Clark said the pieces of legislation he thought were most important “to get the shovels in the ground faster” were giving mayors powers to appoint department heads and craft city budgets.
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“You have to have the right equipment in place and you have to have the right policies in place and you need to have it funded,” Clark said.
Ottawa planning committee co-chair Glen Gower shared a different perspective: Efficiency can ultimately be found in thorough consultation and consensus building.
“I’m really struggling to see how to reduce the number of voices or minimize the need to get community buy-in and buy-in, how that will help achieve (an) acceleration of housing,” said Gower, who is running for re-election in the Stittsville district. “It just seems like the opposite of any experience we have of what actually works or helps… getting things moving forward in a positive way.”
He offered two alternative suggestions for the province to build more housing, faster. Focus on the human resources needed to support the housing supply chain: “If we’re going to double the rate of growth in Ontario, I’m very concerned that we won’t have enough people to build the houses, enough people to inspect the houses, enough people to review planning, enough engineers to test stormwater” and help cities address what Gower sees as the biggest barrier to neighborhood acceptance when it comes to new development: creating amenities like stadiums, transit and stations. police to support growing communities.
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While others were critical or perplexed by Wednesday’s legislative filing, housing industry players applauded the provincial government’s initiative.
Ontario Real Estate Association Executive Director Tim Hudak called it “a good step in giving mayors a bigger role in speeding up the housing supply and reducing red tape and evasion,” and pushed for it to expand to other cities. The president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Ottawa, David Renfroe, said they “support any municipal leadership” that helps reduce approval times and the cost of new homes, and “enforces the objectives” of the ministry of county house.
This newspaper contacted the three highest-profile mayoral candidates about how, if anything, they would use the new powers to create more housing.
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Mark Sutcliffe said that he did not plan to use them. “I will release a full policy on housing in the coming weeks. It is crucial that we have a mayor who can collaborate with other levels of government to build homes and invest in the infrastructure that supports them,” he wrote in an email.
Catherine McKenney said, “Ottawa needs more housing and needs all levels of government to invest in more housing that is affordable. As mayor, that is where I will focus my energy. I don’t require special anti-democratic powers to do it.”
As for Bob Chiarelli, “No one person or level of government can solve this problem alone. It will require the collective resolution of all three levels of government working together cooperatively,” he said, having previously noted that “it is not yet exactly clear how the new mayoral powers will work.”
