Bill 98 Passes: Ford Overhauls Housing Rules and Seizes Transit Control

Bill 98 passed on the same day the ERO comment period on its most controversial provisions closed — a structural shutout that denied the public meaningful input into legislation that will govern how Ontario's buildings and transit system operate for decades. Over 1,200 comments were submitted to the ERO; the government closed the window as its own majority voted the bill through.

The green building provisions — Schedules 1, 2, and 7 — permanently remove municipal authority to require EV charging infrastructure, bird-friendly glass, tree canopy thresholds, and energy performance standards beyond the provincial minimum. These standards were passed through local democratic processes in more than a dozen Ontario cities. RESCON, the residential construction lobby, had simultaneously filed a court case in November 2024 seeking the same outcome. Bill 98 delivered RESCON's legal position by statute before a judge could rule — setting a precedent that industry groups can launch litigation against municipalities, wait for a sympathetic government to legislate the dispute away, and never face a judicial determination. See the full story: Municipal Green Standards Rollback.

Schedule 4 — the Fare Alignment and Seamless Transit Act, 2026 — strips the TTC Board and Toronto City Council of all authority over fares for the first time in the TTC's history. The Minister of Transportation now has unilateral power to set TTC fares, impose geographic fare zones, redirect TTC fare revenue to other GTHA transit agencies, and designate who operates priority routes. Mayor Olivia Chow's fare freeze and fare capping program — which made transit free after 47 trips per month — can now be overridden by ministerial order, with no public consultation required. See the full story: Ford's TTC Takeover.

The bill arrived as a companion to the Carney-Ford federal housing deal — announced on the same day, March 30, 2026 — framed as a package of measures to accelerate housing supply. But Ontario's housing starts have declined through every prior planning overhaul under Ford, from 315,000 to 276,900 projected starts between 2025 and 2028. Bill 98 is the fourth major planning restructuring in four years. None of its predecessors reversed the decline. The Canada Green Building Council noted that green standards add only 2.1–3.5% to construction costs — they are not the bottleneck. The bill removes climate protections without addressing the real drivers of housing unaffordability.

Six municipalities — Hamilton, Ottawa, Waterloo Region, Guelph, Clarington, and Oshawa — paused development of new green building programs before Bill 98 even passed, a chilling effect that now becomes permanent. Every building constructed to minimum code in the coming years will operate for 50–100 years at lower energy performance than the municipal standards would have required. The retrofit bill, estimated at approximately $200,000 per apartment unit, falls on residents, not developers.

For Toronto transit riders, the most immediate risk is fare increases. TTCriders Executive Director Andrew Pulsifer was direct: "Toronto has one of the lowest fares in the region, so I think it's inevitable that if this goes through, fares will go up." Zone-based fares would disproportionately affect riders in Scarborough, Etobicoke, and North York — lower-income communities with the highest transit dependency. The legislation's companion regulations have not yet been published; the full scope of ministerial powers won't be clear until they are.

RESCON's legal challenge against the Toronto Green Standard — filed November 2024 in Ontario Superior Court — may now be rendered moot by statute. No court will have ruled that Toronto lacked authority; the province simply legislated the outcome RESCON sought. This pattern — industry litigation followed by legislative delivery of the same result — sets a template for bypassing judicial review of municipal powers.

Bill 98 is the fourth major planning overhaul in four years and shares a legislative session with Bill 5 (Special Economic Zones) and legislation seizing Billy Bishop Airport. The cumulative effect is a province where municipal authority over land use, transit, environmental standards, and infrastructure has been systematically dismantled. Communities that built green standards through democratic processes, or that set affordable transit policies through elected boards, have been overridden at each step by a Queen's Park majority accountable only to a PC caucus.