Huge disparities in housing approvals and development fees found across Canadian cities by Senate report
It can take 11 years from the time a first proposal is made until a housing project is completed in Toronto, the Senate committee on banking, commerce and the economy found in its study.
Salmaan Farooqui
Published January 21, 2026
A Senate report highlighting large discrepancies in building timelines and development charges among Canadian municipalities is calling for federal funding to be contingent on cities proving that they can fast track housing projects and lower builder fees.
The report studying housing affordability, by the standing Senate committee on banking, commerce and the economy, found major differences between the approval timelines for homebuilders in different cities. It said that a housing project can take more than two years to be approved in Toronto, because of a bloated regulatory process. Meanwhile, Calgary took only 10 months for the same approvals.
In conversations with builders, the committee found it can take 11 years from the time a first proposal is made until a housing project is completed in Toronto.
Toni Varone, deputy chair of the Senate committee that authored the report, released Tuesday, noted that some cities have up to 50 agencies weigh in on a housing proposal, while other cities have less than half that number and are able to approve projects faster. Some cities have ombudsmen that can co-ordinate with municipal offices to solve issues, while others don’t, causing projects to languish as a result.
“There’s no reason why Calgary can go from first application to building permits in months and Toronto needs years, and there’s no impressionable difference in the outcome,” Mr. Varone said.
The report found that development fees account for roughly $200,000 of the final price of a single-family home in Toronto, compared with just $10,000 in Moncton. Development charges are generally used to ensure that developers help pay for the infrastructure costs related to building a new neighbourhood or services, but the report found that those fees are ballooning because they are increasingly being used to fund broader city costs with little transparency.
The committee is also pushing for the elimination of GST/HST charges on new housing units valued under $1-million and a reduction on the tax for homes up to $1.5-million as a way to lower housing prices.
The Senate document outlines 12 recommendations for co-ordinated action by all levels of the government, including greater transparency in development charges, the use of financial incentives to ensure that municipalities mirror the most efficient cities in their regulatory processes, and removing the GST/HST on multiunit rental buildings.
The 2025 budget earmarked $1.2-billion annually to reduce municipal development charges, but Mr. Varone said there hasn’t been enough detail around how cities are expected to reduce their fees, or around what expenses are appropriate to bill as a development charge.
“The federal government has given a substantial amount of money to municipalities across Canada and there’s been no corresponding decrease in development charges, nor has any of that money been linked to the ability of cities to shorten their timeline to approve housing,” Mr. Varone said.
In a statement, Department of Finance spokesperson Marie-France Faucher said the government is focused on lowering costs through tax cuts and measures to boost supply, but didn’t comment directly on the Senate report’s findings.
“While the Government continuously reviews the tax and benefit system, it would be inappropriate to speculate on any potential or prospective changes,” Ms. Faucher said.
Many housing analysts that criticized the federal government’s housing policies in last year’s budget said the Senate report’s recommendations would improve the federal government’s housing policy, which fell short of campaign promises. Some critics said the budget did not go far enough to push municipalities to speed up regulatory processes or outline a clear pathway to reduce homebuilding costs.
Benjamin Tal, managing director and deputy chief economist for CIBC Capital Markets, said development fees were another major point that the Senate report addresses in a way that the federal budget didn’t.
“We have to realize that a reduction of development charges of 30 or 40 per cent will not be sufficient. We have to basically eliminate them for it to make a difference,” said Mr. Tal, who lauded the report’s recommendations.
Mr. Varone said development charges have gone unchecked for decades, and the report found those fees have increased by roughly 800 per cent in Toronto.
In many cases, Mr. Varone said development fees were being used for city expenses such as parks and wastewater infrastructure, rather than their more traditional purpose of offsetting the cost of building new neighbourhoods.
Mike Moffatt, founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative at the University of Ottawa and a cited witness in the report, said the funding of city expenses through development charges means that new homeowners end up footing the bill through higher-interest mortgages, when cities have an ability to fund these projects through grants, cheaper financing and property-tax increases.
Mr. Moffatt said cutting the GST/HST remains the easiest way for the federal government to reduce housing costs.
“All of the other recommendations take time,” he said. The GST/HST reduction is something “the government can essentially do with a stroke of a pen.”
On Wednesday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said at a press conference that his government should also cut its portion of the HST for all new home purchases. Mr. Ford noted that the province’s earlier step to cut the tax only for first-time buyers “didn’t move the needle” on housing starts.
Mr. Moffatt said a move in tandem with the federal government to eliminate the GST/HST on new home purchases could lead to an immediate 10-per-cent to 15-per-cent reduction in the cost of a new home.
Sales-tax exemptions currently only cover homes up to $350,000 − a value that was set in 1991 and not indexed to inflation.
Mr. Varone said that figure covered 95 per cent of new homes in 1991, and an increase to $1.5-million would allow a similar number of homes to benefit from the tax exemption today.In the 2025 federal budget, the government only expanded the GST/HST rebate on new homes for first-time buyers − a measure that critics said was too limited.
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