Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford have big housing ideas. But in Doug Ford's Ontario, do they have a say?

But neither approach is entirely within the mayor’s control. Between a campaign promise and a set of keys handed to a Toronto resident, there is a long chain of decisions, many of them happening outside City Hall. 

“Whatever the city does, it’s through the powers of the province,” said Frank Clayton, a housing consultant and senior research fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Urban Research and Land Development.

A poll conducted by Ipsos for the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) found housing is a defining issue for nearly 70 per cent of voters in this municipal election.

The next mayor will have meaningful powers over how Toronto zones neighbourhoods, which developments it approves, how city-owned land is used and how much the city charges in taxes and development fees. But the province can change the rules those decisions are governed by and the Ford government has used those powers more frequently than previous governments. 

“A local politician may stand up and say they don’t like a decision, but if it’s the direction of the province, our decisions at the city level have to be consistent with provincial policy,” said Gregg Lintern, Toronto’s chief planner from 2017 to 2023. 

The question then becomes: which candidate can deliver on their promises within the powers of the mayor’s office?

Queen’s Park in control

Toronto operates under the province’s City of Toronto Act and Planning Act, which means Queen’s Park can set and change many of the rules governing how the city grows. Ontario also holds the power over hot-button issues like rent control, and can override Toronto’s zoning through Minister’s Zoning Orders. It has altered Toronto’s plans for how much can be built in parts of the city, and the affordable-housing requirements the city places on some developments.

Lintern said provincial policy has increasingly emphasized allowing the market to drive housing construction, while also being more prescriptive in some areas, such as requiring greater density around major transit stations.

“When the current government says that there should be more density around transit stations, the city has to follow the path it lays out,” Lintern said.

He said the relationship is not always one where the province moves first and the city follows. Sometimes, Toronto has gone further than the province in allowing new housing or the city has addressed Toronto-specific problems, only for Queen’s Park to later change the rules.

For example, the province has permitted up to three homes on a single lot, while Toronto went further by allowing four units and a backyard suite in some instances. For garden suites, Lintern said the city required angular planes to limit their impact on neighbours — but the province removed the city’s ability to impose it. 

“It reached right into the nuance of the zoning,” Lintern said.

He also pointed to Toronto’s green-roof bylaw. The city obtained provincial authority under former premier Dalton McGuinty to create the bylaw and then developed its own requirements, which Lintern said reflected Toronto’s particular concerns around stormwater and the urban heat island effect. But then, 15 years later, Ford’s government removed the city’s authority to require green roofs.

In 2019, the province also overhauled the city’s plans for Midtown and the downtown core. The city had limited heights in order to shape growth, protect the character of surrounding neighbourhoods and ensure new development was supported by adequate infrastructure. Its planning rules also placed greater emphasis on living conditions inside new buildings, including access to natural light. But the province modified the plan, allowing taller and denser buildings. In parts of Midtown, the province’s changes more than doubled the maximum building heights.

Lintern recalled the province made “hundreds of modifications” to plans for Yonge and Eglinton and the downtown core, without consulting the city. 

“In my experience, the collaboration ebbs and flows. I would say that it’s gotten more constrained over the course of time,” Lintern said.

Lintern said the back-and-forth between the two levels of government is not necessarily unusual, but the effectiveness of the system depends in part on how well they work together.

Jennifer Keesmaat, Toronto’s chief planner from 2012 to 2017 and founder of an urban planning consulting firm, said provincial and federal decisions can affect Toronto’s housing market without City Hall having control over them, such as provincial planning rules and federal immigration policy. 

“Municipal politicians are the recipient of those decisions that deeply impact the outcomes that you see in cities,” she said.

She added the province has taken a more active role in decisions that were once largely left to municipalities, and while the province has been pushing for more density and cutting red tape, Keesmaat said some changes have had the countereffect of slowing development. 

“When the provincial government says, ‘we’re going to rezone things,’ then the development industry essentially sits back on their hands,” Keesmaat said. “They’re not going to spend two years and $7 million going through a rezoning process if the province is about to change it.”

She emphasized the city controls a number of important levers. It can change zoning, approve development applications, put city-owned land toward housing, set municipal taxes and development charges, and fund affordable housing and homelessness programs. But having the power to change those things does not mean the city can guarantee that housing will be built.

“The biggest lever that the city has is working with other orders of government,” Keesmaat said. 

What the city can do: zoning

Zoning and development charges are two of Toronto’s most impactful tools, as they determine what kinds of homes can be built in different neighbourhoods and how much they cost to build.

Chow has focused on continuing existing city programs and government agreements to get projects moving, while Bradford has argued for faster approvals, lower development costs and more housing types, including “missing middle” homes such as multiplexes, townhouses and small apartment buildings.

Keesmaat said one of the biggest misconceptions in the housing debate is that approvals automatically translate into construction.

She said the economics of projects have become a bigger obstacle, particularly due to construction and financing costs and development charges.

To that end, in June, the city under Chow secured up to $1.5 billion through a federal-provincial program in exchange for reducing residential development charges by 40 to 60 per cent from 2026 to 2029. The city estimates the measures could support about 44,000 homes.

David Amborski, a professor emeritus at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, noted that rezoning to allow for more density across the yellowbelt — a large swath of single-family neighbourhoods — could be a useful tool within the city’s grasp, but politicians are often hesitant to campaign on the idea because homeowners may resist changes that would allow more homes on their streets.

What the city can do: use city land

Toronto owns land that can be used for housing, which gives the mayor a tool that does not depend entirely on persuading private landowners to sell or build.

Susannah Bunce, an associate professor of human geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough, said public land gives the city an opportunity to prioritize housing that the private market may not produce in sufficient numbers, including co-operative, non-profit and other nonmarket housing. The limitation is that city land is finite, and putting it toward housing does not eliminate the cost of construction or the need for operating money once a building is complete.

Chow has proposed a larger role for municipal land and non-profit housing, and has previously committed to creating 25,000 new rental homes on city-owned land, including affordable and market-rate units. Since she took office, city council has set a larger goal of 65,000 rent-controlled homes, including 41,000 affordable rentals and 17,500 rent-controlled market homes.

Bradford’s approach puts more emphasis on changing the conditions for private developers including zoning, approvals and development costs.

Clayton said that adding market-rate housing can also free up less expensive homes as households move through the market, a process known as filtering.

But Bunce cautions that simply adding supply does not guarantee that the new homes will be affordable to households at the bottom of the market.

“Supply is not the panacea that a lot of politicians think it is,” Bunce said. “The strategy around the supply really needs to focus on where it’s needed.”

What the city can do: taxes

Bradford has proposed to eliminate Toronto’s municipal land-transfer tax on the first $1.1 million of an eligible principal residence for first-time buyers and existing homeowners moving within the city. The change could save a buyer who is at the threshold about $18,000, according to TRREB.

The city has the authority to change its municipal land-transfer tax, but doing so would leave a hole in the budget, with Bradford saying the proposal would cost the city about $300 million a year in lost revenue.

Chow, by contrast, has defended the municipal land-transfer tax. Her administration also raised the rates on luxury homes and she has pointed to the vacant home tax as a source of money for affordable housing.

“The whole reason why no one else has done it is because the city relies on the funding that comes from the land transfer tax,” Keesmaat said.

Amborski said reducing the tax could improve housing mobility and make buying less expensive, but agreed that the city would need to find another source of revenue.

What the city can do: tenant protection

Chow has made tenant protection a central part of her housing platform. Her administration passed renoviction rules requiring landlords seeking to remove tenants for major renovations to go through a municipal permitting process. She has also proposed “Bad Landlords Task Force” that would target buildings with repeated maintenance violations.

Meanwhile, Bradford’s housing platform includes expanding purpose-built rental construction and reducing costs for rental projects, rather than relying primarily on new municipal tenant regulations.

However, Ontario controls one of the most important political talking point for tenants: rent control.

Toronto can regulate property standards, licensing and enforcement, but the mayor cannot change the province’s rent control rules.

That distinction has become especially visible as the province has changed housing and tenancy laws in ways Toronto has opposed. The city has challenged provincial legislation it said would make some evictions easier, arguing they could increase pressure on Toronto’s shelter system.