Exteriors of Queen's park taken on Feb. 6, 2018.Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail
There is a long list of challenges facing Ontario’s next premier. Health care and taxes will vie for attention with the fight against climate change. U.S. tariffs are also a huge threat to the province, although the response to them will primarily be a federal government effort.
But the crux of the Feb. 27 election is which leader can be counted on to make real progress on housing and transportation. Simply put, it’s too expensive to live in much of the province and too hard to get around in it.
This does more than just make life miserable, although it does that too. Transportation dysfunction and housing that is too expensive both throttle prosperity in the province’s urban centres, including Toronto.
Desirable places are expensive and economically robust areas have a lot of traffic. That’s normal. But it’s not normal for people still to be at home into their 20s and 30s when they would prefer to live independently. It’s not normal for small towns far from jobs to become unaffordable. It’s not normal for commuting to take so long it grinds away at the soul and sandbags the economy.
Through this lens, Ontario is getting worse.
Housing starts were down last year by 16 per cent compared to 2023, according to figures from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. That translates to work having begun on about 13,500 fewer homes. Not a huge number in a province of close to 14 million people, but the trend-line is going in the wrong direction.
Also, a Canadian Home Builders’ Association survey at the end of last year found confidence among the residential construction industry at abysmal lows in Ontario. The group blamed buyers trying to time their purchases around interest rate changes, political and tariff uncertainty and construction and development costs.
This space has argued that governments can do more to lower development charges. While some cities have moved in this direction, including the Toronto-area communities of Vaughan and Mississauga, provincial leadership is needed to provoke faster change.
The provincial government could also create incentives for municipalities to change their zoning codes, allowing greater density. This doesn’t mean forests of towers. Buildings with four or six units can be inserted into traditional residential areas without changing how they look
To do so, the next premier must stand up to home-owners who demand a veto on change in their neighbourhoods. Allowing them that power has locked too many areas in unaffordable stasis. This can’t continue.
Transportation problems are tightly linked to housing costs. Part of the reason commutes are so bad is that housing closer to jobs is expensive. This isn’t a new phenomenon but is now spurring price run-ups in communities hours away.
More people are driving, and driving farther. This can’t be solved by building more roads. Decades of research show that they simply fill up, leaving new traffic jams. It also can’t be addressed by wedge issues like attacking bicycle lanes.
Two solutions that can actually improve congestion are building transit and putting a price on driving.
Ontario is currently engaged in a $70-billion rail transit expansion the government likes to tout as the biggest in provincial history. That’s the good news. But the province spent decades ignoring transit and much more is needed. And the massive price-tag reflects an underlying problem. Many other jurisdictions can build transit much more cheaply. Ontario needs to figure out how to emulate them, and get much more transit bang for the public buck.
Even world-beating transit wouldn’t work for everyone. Driving will remain a common way to get around. So Ontario needs to use its roads more smartly, starting with road tolls. A modest fee would help reduce demand, speeding up the remaining traffic and spreading it around more efficiently. Create a virtuous cycle by putting the toll money into building transit that gives those people not driving a great alternative.
This idea remains on the political fringes in Ontario, where all three main parties disparage tolls. That is misguided populism that pretends to be on the side of drivers, while effectively campaigning on making their lives worse.
Cheap populism won’t address Ontario’s big problems. If the next premier wants to be able to claim in four years to have done that, they will need to focus on the direct threats to provincial prosperity: housing and transportation.