Ontario Premier Doug Ford had strong words for the City of Burlington.
The comments were made during the Aug. 9 news conference following the release of the auditor general’s report on the province’s plans to open up multiple parcels of Greenbelt land for development.
Ford argued that the city has not fulfilled its part of a pledge to add 29,000 new homes to the city by 2031 in order to help address the ongoing housing crisis. Here’s the video (at 37:45 mark):
“I’m going to point out one city, and it’s not fair to the rest of the province that the burden of going through this falls on every other big city and every other jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction is Burlington. 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. 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,” said Ford.
The 29,000 homes allocated to Burlington is part of the province’s plan to construct 1.5 million homes across Ontario by 2031.
Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward was quick to issue a response to the premier’s comments. Later that day, she released a statement and said she would have more to add on the matter in the future.
“Those numbers are from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation; however, they do not tell the whole story of how many developments are actually underway in Burlington. We will have more to say on this,” said Meed Ward.
The mayor has been vocally critical of decisions made by the provincial government over the last few years. Notably, while the city was passing an overall municipal tax increase of 7.52 per cent, she repeatedly took aim at Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, arguing that it created a hole in municipal budgets.
The auditor general’s report, released on Aug. 9, states that the process to select which lands were removed from protected status was biased in favour of certain developers and landowners who had access to the housing minister’s chief of staff.
In his news conference following the report’s release, the premier acknowledged that the province “could have had a better process,” but maintained that they were doing everything they could to address the housing crisis in the province.
The Greenbelt was created back in 2005 with a stated goal of protecting specific agricultural and environmentally important land. The Ford government has argued that the housing crisis has necessitated the removal of those protections.
Mayor Meed Ward said the city is willing to do its part to fill its share of new housing units.
“Burlington Council has unanimously accepted our pledge to issue 29,000 permits by 2031, and our City already has 25,000 units and growing in the development pipeline. We are willing to work with the development industry to help enable them to get shovels in the ground,” said Meed Ward.
