The Executive Director of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario says they were very happy to receive a letter from the Minister of Municipal Affairs at the end of last November, stating that the Province was going to offset the costs of Bill 23 to municipalities.
Brian Rosborough explains, the bill doesn’t eliminate Development Charges entirely, it just reduces them, discounts them and eliminates them in certain areas for certain types of housing.
“So we estimated that the changes in Bill 23, the reduction in development charges, would cost municipalities about a billion dollars a year, which obviously doesn’t help us support increased in the supply of housing because it doesn’t help us get the infrastructure in place that’s needed to support that growth,” explained Rosborough.
Rosborough says the Province has agreed to offset those costs, but they haven’t released any details regarding how that will be done. He says they have continued to make that commitment publicly and they’re very much looking forward to seeing those details.
“We know that part of the plan is for the government to undertake some audits in some municipalities to understand those numbers and I think our members are looking forward to any development there because when it comes to the numbers, municipal numbers are always in public,” Rosborough added.
Rosborough says he believes the government is committed to looking at the financial impact of Bill 23, and to helping to offset those financial impacts, and the biggest part of that is development charges.
“The commitment is not to provide additional funding to municipalities in general. The commitment is to offset the cost of Bill 23. So I think what we will see is a better understanding of what the financial impacts of Bill 23 are and where those impacts are and funding to compensate for that,” Rosborough concluded.
