By Gazette Staff
August 11th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
First the data was about jobs – 700,000, yes 700,000 people were looking for work.
Now it’s about the housing situation – the problem is said to be “nowhere near their target of 1.5 million new homes by 2031” according to the NDP opposition at Queen’s Park.
The data comes from Central Mortgage and Housing (CMHC); a federal government agency that collects information from across the country. It is exceedingly difficult to wade through the data – which isn’t always that timely. The data shown above is from the 4Q of 2022
In a statement released today, the Opposition NDP said:
NDP Opposition leader Marit Stiles
After months of sitting on the province’s most up-to-date housing numbers, the government has finally updated the housing supply progress tracker, showing that the province is nowhere near meeting their target to build 1.5 million homes by 2031.
“The Premier and this government have no one to blame but themselves,” said NDP Leader of the Official Opposition Marit Stiles. “Ontario is falling behind other provinces because they are refusing to act. We need ambitious policies – like our Homes Ontario plan – to bring back hope to our province.
“The status quo is not working. We need a plan that boosts housing supply and gets the government back in the business of building homes, and protects tenants from sky-high rent hikes. The private sector alone cannot get us out of this mess, this is an all-hands-on-deck moment. It’s about time the Ford government started taking Ontario’s housing crisis seriously.”
The Ontario NDP has also written to the Financial Accountability Office to conduct a comprehensive review of Ontario’s housing progress.
A final tally of which Ontario municipalities hit their housing targets and how many fell short last year has been finished since mid-February, according to government documents obtained by Global News, despite the province refusing to release the data for months.
The numbers Ontario uses to assess whether or not cities have hit their goals are made up of new homes, long-term care beds and additional units like basements or garden suites.
The government set up a website to show which cities had hit their goals, which were on track and which had failed.
Around October 2024, however, with housing starts across the province stuttering, the government stopped updating the tracker. By the spring, the tracker had been removed altogether, with the web page telling users to “try again later.”
The information was first posted by the government to show how close Ontario was to its self-imposed target of 1.5 million homes and the annual goals that came with it.
While the tracker has appeared abandoned for close to half a year, the government has had “finalized” data for months.
A briefing document prepared for Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack in March states the information has been ready since Feb. 15, waiting for his direction on when and how to release it.
“This decision point includes official allocation notice letters to municipalities and data by municipality to publish on the Ontario.ca housing tracker,” one line from the document, obtained by Global News using freedom of information laws, states.
At a recent news conference, Flack conceded the number of incentive cheques he will hand out to municipalities will be lower this year as housing numbers drop. He promised to release the data soon.
“I can tell you, housing starts are down, we know that,” Flack said at a news conference in Toronto. “We’re going to hand out some nice building faster cheques — not as many and not for as much this year as we did last year,” Flack said.
Elsewhere in the same briefing document, civil servants said overall Ontario housing starts in 2024 were down 17 per cent year over year.
The government indicated it was still validating parts of the housing start data, which the internal documents state is ready.
“As of February 15, 2025, all housing data has been received and finalized by MMAH staff,” the internal document said. “Municipalities and AMO are waiting to hear whether they qualify for BFF funding, and if so, how much.”
The extra calculations are necessary because, in order to help hit its own housing targets, the Ford government elected to add long-term care beds, basement units and other secondary suites to its housing starts.
At the time, Premier Doug Ford and his cabinet passionately defended the idea that a long-term care bed counted as home and said the change wasn’t just to boost their starts.
Municipalities meet later this month in Ottawa for the annual Association of Municipalities in Ontario (AMO). Expect the provincial Ministers who will be attending to face a very upset, disappointed and angry municipal sector.
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