Toronto to receive $471M in federal housing cash: source
CBC
Toronto is set to receive $471 million in federal funding to build new homes, a government source told CBC News Thursday.
The money is coming out of Ottawa's Housing Accelerator Fund and should help Toronto build around 12,000 new units over three years, said the source. In the next decade, it should help facilitate more than 53,000 units. Details of the announcement were first reported by the Globe and Mail.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will announce the new funding this morning alongside federal housing minister Sean Fraser and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow.
You can watch the announcement live in this story at 11:45 a.m. ET.
The development comes a month after Fraser told the city it would need to change its building policies if it wants to access its share of the housing fund. At council last week, city councillors voted to approve changes that would improve Toronto's application to Ottawa.
The $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund is a federal initiative to encourage municipalities to make changes to bylaws and regulations that would spur more housing construction, in exchange for more money.
Some of the changes Ottawa has pushed for include denser zoning and faster issuance of permits.
Including the announcement today, Ottawa has reached deals with 16 municipalities across the country.
The Rachel Notley government's consumer carbon tax wound up becoming a weapon the UCP wielded to drum the Alberta NDP out of office. But that levy-and-repayment program, and the wide-ranging "climate leadership plan" around it, also stood as the NDP's boldest, provincial-reputation-altering move in their single-term tenure.