By Pepper Parr
March 31st, 2026
BURLINGTON, ON
Some movement on the housing front.
Prime Minister Carney and Premier Ford shared the podium to explain what they jointly have in mind.
Part of the plan to boost housing supply by reducing municipal development charges by up to 50 per cent.
The new partnership to build more affordable homes will include a program axing HST on certain new homes, will reduce taxes and fees for a new home in Ontario by up to $200,000.
“We’re tackling the housing crisis from every angle — so we can build up housing supply and bring down costs for Canadians. We’re building Ontario strong and Canada strong,” said Carney in a press release, before the event.
Michael Collins-Wilson: WE HBA
West End Home Builders Association WEHBA pushed hard to get Burlington City Council to lower, if not declare a freeze, on development charges. Not a chance, said Council -” unless the federal or provincial governments made us whole.”
The two levels of government have come through; now is the time for planning to get a wiggle on and begin moving paper.
Which development will get the approvals they need first – and how will the development charges savings work their way to the home buyer?
The federal government and Ontario have responded by cost-matching a total of $8.8 billion over 10 years, focused on housing infrastructure projects. This funding will support the reduction of municipal development charges by up to 50 per cent — the reductions will be in place for three years and target municipalities covering 80 per cent of the province’s population.
“Our government will continue to deliver on our plan to protect Ontario in partnership with the federal government and municipalities by lowering the cost of building, getting shovels in the ground faster, cutting red tape, and investing in workers,” said Ford in the release.
Ford and Carney said new infrastructure funding will offset the financial impact of development charge reductions on municipalities, and in turn, municipalities will be expected to support development charge reductions.
The province will work with municipalities to put forward a list of infrastructure projects for approval.
A lot more to come on this story. The developers will be meeting today to figure out which project they want to move on.
In the meantime, City Hall will close for the Easter weekend.
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The city is way behind other municipalities on this because the downtown NIMBYs went crazy and killed it. The city is going to have to reduce their DCs to qualify for this, they are also going to have to prove that the money they get is actually spent on delivering new housing, not wasted on studies, consultants etc. Hamilton, Mississauga, Brampton etc. have already done this and will be first in line for money. DCs are a tax on housing. They have increased at an astonishing rate. If a $1.25 cup of coffee in the year 2000 increased at the same rate as DCs that coffee would cost $66 today!
https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/how-to-lower-development-charges
Good thing City council didn’t give in to eliminating development charges and waited
It will be interesting to see if this motivates developers in this market