Olivia Chow urges Trudeau government to give Toronto all of its promised housing accelerator money as new building stalls

Toronto's mayor is joining calls from other GTA cities for the federal government to immediately hand over all the funds in a major housing program that Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives vow to cut if they win the next federal election.

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OTTAWA — Mayor Olivia Chow is joining calls from other GTA cities for the federal government to immediately hand over all the funds in a major housing program that Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives vow to cut if they win the next federal election. In an interview with the Star, Chow said Canada’s biggest city needs the rest of its Housing Accelerator Fund money — amounting to more than $300 million — right now to overcome a dearth of housing construction. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) in October that housing starts in Toronto were down 20 per cent in the first nine months of this year, compared with the same period in 2023.

Chow said that drop — which she cited as being even steeper in August and September — is fuelling her demand for all of Toronto’s agreed funding under the federal program, although she also said it would be disruptive to the city’s housing plans if the initiative gets scrapped by a possible future Conservative government. “Either way it will hurt,” said Chow, adding that the city is doing everything it agreed to do under the program, which is designed to dole out $471 million to Toronto over three years. “It’s supposed to cut red tape, streamline rezoning laws, which we’ve done.



Expand affordable rental programs, which we’ve done ...

and unlock non-market housing, which we have done,” she said. “We’ve done the work. We should get the funds.

” Five GTA mayors have also said , after Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish made the demand in a letter to Housing Minister Sean Fraser. Asked about Chow’s demand, a spokesperson for Fraser referred to comments from his office last week, which shot down the idea. Fraser’s office said the Housing Accelerator Fund is designed to distribute funds when cities hit agreed-upon milestones, to ensure the money is achieving its intended function of faster home construction.

Of the $4.4 billion that is earmarked for the program over three years, Fraser’s office has said $1.2 billion has been distributed through more than 170 agreements between the federal government and municipalities across the country.

Under Poilievre’s leadership, the federal Conservatives to scrap the program to help pay for their proposal to remove the federal sales tax from construction of new below-market rentals. The Liberal government has since removed the GST from all new rental construction. In October, Poilievre said he would cut the Housing Accelerator Fund and devote the unspent $3 billion to help cover lost revenues from another promised tax cut — this time to and condos that sell for less than $1 million.

The Conservatives also said they would save $5 billion by scrapping a separate federal program that hasn’t started distributing money yet, and is designed to fund infrastructure like water and sewer systems for housing developments. According to Poilievre, the GST cut would cost roughly $4 billion per year and boost annual home construction by 30,000 units. Asked about Chow’s demand for the accelerator money now, Poilievre’s spokesperson Sebastian Skamski noted that development charges have increased in Toronto this year — the were 42 per cent higher for a new two-bedroom apartment compared with , for example — despite the city signing onto the Liberals’ housing fund.

He said Ottawa is “giving billions to greedy NDP-Liberal mayors,” while the Conservatives would cut taxes and “bureaucracy” and create incentives for municipalities to build more by tying funding to levels of construction. “Incompetent and greedy NDP Mayor Olivia Chow is the model example of the failure of the Liberals’ housing photo op fund,” Skamski told the Star by email. Chow blamed market conditions and interest rates for the slowdown in new construction, and said that if the city received all of its housing accelerator money now, it could expand a program to cut development charges for new buildings that include at least 20 per cent of their units as affordable rentals, which she said is currently expected to fund 7,000 units.

The city has also used the federal funding to slash how long it takes to change city plans to clear the way for denser housing construction, in part by hiring a team to act as a “one-stop shop” for approvals at city hall, Chow said. On top of that, she said, the city is planning to work with non-profit groups to build more affordable housing on municipal land. “We cannot stop, because we signed contracts,” Chow said, predicting legal costs and “chaos” if the program is cut.

“We’re banking on getting our second and third installments.”.