On Oct. 23, Ontario took another important step toward tackling the housing crisis and strengthening the provincial economy. Rob Flack, minister of municipal affairs and housing, introduced Bill 60, the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025 – an omnibus bill aimed at cutting red tape, speeding up housing approvals and supporting the construction of the homes and infrastructure Ontario urgently needs.

This legislation builds on the momentum of Bill 17, the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, 2025, introduced earlier this year, and represents a direct response to the challenges faced by the building and development industry across the province. It is also a clear recognition by the provincial government that housing supply and affordability depend on an efficient regulatory environment, timely approvals and fair, transparent cost structures.

Several priorities

At its core, the new act protects Ontario’s economy by keeping workers on the job and getting shovels in the ground faster. It reflects the need to lower the cost to build, reduce bureaucratic delays and improve infrastructure planning and delivery.

Bill 60 focuses on several priorities, including:

Accelerating development near transit-oriented communities, helping to bring more homes, businesses and amenities closer to where people live and work while maximizing the investment made in transit infrastructure.

Establishing a Peel water and wastewater corporation as a potential new model for how these services are provided in Ontario. This builds on key learning from other jurisdictions that fund water and wastewater in a different way, enabling the infrastructure while not inflating the cost of new homes. If successful, this will be a critical step in finding new ways to fund growth more sustainably by launching a review of the Ontario Building Code to discover and eliminate additional unnecessary regulatory barriers that add costs.

It will clarify which minor variances might qualify as as-of-right, simplifying approvals for small, low-impact projects and certainly making life simpler for homeowners looking to add a deck or add a small addition.

It will consult on reforms to streamline official plans, municipal application processes and Green standards as they relate to site plan control – addressing issues that result in costly delays or directly add construction costs. Furthermore, the act takes large steps to modernize development charges (DCs), which remain one of the largest and most onerous costs in new home construction. Specifically, regarding DCs, it will:

Clear direction

Provide clear direction on how to calculate who pays for what – new-home buyers or the existing tax base – based on who benefits the most.

It will require municipalities to develop local service policies – policies that identify which costs in a new development are the obligation of the new development or the municipality.

Provide direction on how DCs are calculated to remove some elements that have distorted DCs levels in higher cost municipalities.

These measures will bring much-needed transparency and accountability to the system, ensuring that municipalities have the funds required to support growth, while preventing homebuyers from being unfairly burdened by inconsistent or inflated municipal fees.

The Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025 reinforces the Ontario government’s commitment to working with municipalities and the building industry to deliver more homes, faster. By modernizing approvals, reforming development charges and aligning infrastructure planning with growth, this legislation advances a pragmatic, solutions-oriented approach to housing policy. Ontario’s housing crisis is not insurmountable, but it requires focus, urgency and cooperation. The Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025 embodies all three.