The Ford government introduced its latest omnibus housing bill hours after announcing billions of dollars to reduce development charges in a bid to improve a homebuilding sector that is “on its back.”

The new Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act includes a range of measures around official plans, the building code and a suite of highway and transit changes.

Among the changes is a move to consult on whether or not the cost of development charges passed on to homebuyers should be added into purchase and sale agreements, removing development charges for non-profit retirement homes and water infrastructure frameworks for remote parts of the province.

Housing Minister Rob Flack insisted “it all adds up” and “every little bit helps” in the government’s “transformative” bid to restart a housing sector it once promised could build 1.5 million homes by 2031.

“When you look at the bureaucracy there,” he said on Monday. “I come from the business sector, how it was managed through the years. It’s just layers and layers and layers. We got to simply, standardize, that’s what we’ve got to do.”

Other new steps include standardizing municipalities’ official plans, reviewing the building code and advancing public water and wastewater corporations to help municipalities amortize infrastructure costs.

One part of the bill, though, is set to raise the ire of environmental groups, with the legislation proposing to build on a previous move by the province to block municipalities from imposing their own mandatory climate-friendly standards on building developers.

The new measure would also ban cities from requiring green outdoor standards, with officials giving examples of landscaping, foliage requirements, soil composition and electric vehicle chargers at street level. They say having differing standards in different municipalities slows down the building process.

The Ontario Real Estate Association agreed with Flack’s assessment that the bill will be “transformative” for the province’s housing.

“If implemented, these will be transformative initiatives for housing in Ontario, now and in the future,” the group wrote in a statement. “This is the kind of bold action we need to drive economic growth, support jobs, and keep the dream of homeownership alive.”

The proposed legislation comes days after Ontario tabled its 2026 budget — which includes a full HST rebate for all new homes and more bad news for the province’s housing projections.

The government also annouced billions to reduce the cost of development charges on Monday.

Figures included in the fall economic statement released in November 2025 suggested Ontario would see 315,000 new housing starts from 2025 to 2028. That figure has dropped by more than 10 per cent to 276,900 in the latest budget.

The figures essentially make Ontario’s goal of 1.5 million new homes by 2031 impossible.

Flack appeared to acknowledge that the goal was no longer achievable on Monday.

Asked what the new internal goal was, he said: “As long as we sell more homes than we did the month before, than we did the year before, and we see a progressive change upwards, I’m happy.”

Elsewhere in the legislation, the government is substantially increasing the fines for people caught fare dodging on GO Transit and moving ahead with its plan to let anyone use HOV lanes off-peak.

— with files from The Canadian Press

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