The Unintended Consequences of ‘Building Faster’: The Hidden Taxpayer Costs of Bill 60

Bill 60, officially titled the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, is a legislation introduced by the Ontario government in October 2025 with the stated aim of accelerating housing construction and “cutting red tape.” 

In Ontario’s political vocabulary, “cutting red tape” is presented as a cure-all. The assumption is that if we remove the friction of regulation, the real estate market will efficiently solve the housing crises. While marketed as a tool to speed up development and clear backlogs at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB), the bill fundamentally alters land use planning and residential tenancy in the province. 

Key measures include shortening eviction timelines, removing compensation requirements for certain evictions, and restricting municipalities from enforcing green building standards that exceed the provincial code.   

Critics argue these changes prioritize speed over stability, creating a “cost transfer” mechanism that shifts the financial burden of housing instability and infrastructure deficits from private developers and landlords onto municipalities, taxpayers and the emergency shelter system. 

In fact, a recent analysis by the City of Toronto’s Staff Report suggests that changes to the LBT will weaken tenant protections. The legislation will also erode city environmental standards and change the fees developers pay to municipalities when building new infrastructure. This is the most significant financial cost of Bill 60, as it puts a cap on the City’s land cost estimates. Previously, municipalities could account for the rising cost of land for the whole duration of a developer’s infrastructure plans. By preventing municipalities from forecasting the true future cost of land, the province is mandating that we under-collect on every project. 

All the while, municipalities remain responsible for offering parks and recreation, services, and transit corridors to those developments years later at a higher market rate. This difference cannot be recovered from the developer themselves, but rather from the everyday taxpayer. 

Bill 60 also restricts municipalities from enforcing their own Green Development Standards if those standards exceed the requirements of the Ontario Building Code. In Ottawa for example, developers are required to install the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in a specific percentage of the parking spaces. This is often higher than the provincial minimum. This might cut costs upfront for builders, but it creates a massive future liability for citizens. 

The most alarming aspect of Bill 60 is its dismantling of tenant protections. 

Framed as “fighting delays” at the LTB, Bill 60 introduces a pay-to-play model. It requires tenants to pay 50% of any rent arrears before raising issues of disrepair or harassment. This rule tilts the playing field. It neutralizes the economic leverage of withholding rent, and grants negligent landlords a license to ignore repairs and remove any tenants who speak up. It also shortens the notice period for eviction filings and halves the appeal window from 30 to 15 days. This will inevitably accelerate the flow of individuals into emergency shelter systems.  

As a housing focused emergency shelter, we believe that this bill will cause our province further fiscal distress. Eviction prevention, in contrast, costs a municipality roughly $300–$700 per person per month, while an emergency shelter bed costs $2,000–$4,000. By prioritizing developers, the province directly burdens city social services and non-profits like the Ottawa Mission, who rely on both municipal funds and private donors to deliver life-saving services. 

The idea of “cutting red tape” relies on the assumption that the regulations in place are a useless bureaucracy. In reality, tenant protections and environmental standards are our insurance policies against social and fiscal chaos. Bill 60 does not cut costs, it hides them. It removes line items from developer ledgers only to have them reappear on our own tax bills, and emergency housing services.