Ford government sitting on housing start data for months, internal docs suggest
A final tally of which Ontario municipalities hit their housing targets and how many fell short last year has been finished since mid-February, according to government documents obtained by Global News, despite the province refusing to release the data for months.
For the past two years, the Ford government has set targets for new homes in towns and cities around Ontario, promising them extra cash if they meet those goals.
The numbers Ontario uses to assess whether or not cities have hit their goals are made up of new homes, long-term care beds and additional units like basements or garden suites.
The government set up a website to show which cities had hit their goals, which were on track and which had failed.
Around October 2024, however, with housing starts across the province stuttering, the government stopped updating the tracker. By the spring, the tracker had been removed altogether, with the web page telling users to “try again later.”
The information was first posted by the government to show how close Ontario was to its self-imposed target of 1.5 million homes and the annual goals that came with it.
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While the tracker has appeared abandoned for close to half a year, the government has had “finalized” data for months.
A briefing document prepared for Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack in March states the information has been ready since Feb. 15, waiting for his direction on when and how to release it.
“This decision point includes official allocation notice letters to municipalities and data by municipality to publish on the Ontario.ca housing tracker,” one line from the document, obtained by Global News using freedom of information laws, states.
At a recent news conference, Flack conceded the number of incentive cheques he will hand out to municipalities will be lower this year as housing numbers drop. He promised to release the data soon.
“I can tell you, housing starts are down, we know that,” Flack said at a news conference in Toronto. “We’re going to hand out some nice building faster cheques — not as many and not for as much this year as we did last year,” Flack said.
Elsewhere in the same briefing document, civil servants said overall Ontario housing starts in 2024 were down 17 per cent year over year.
The government indicated it was still validating parts of the housing start data, which the internal documents state is ready.
“As of February 15, 2025, all housing data has been received and finalized by MMAH staff,” the internal document said. “Municipalities and AMO are waiting to hear whether they qualify for BFF funding, and if so, how much.”
The extra calculations are necessary because, in order to help hit its own housing targets, the Ford government elected to add long-term care beds, basement units and other secondary suites to its housing starts.
At the time, Premier Doug Ford and his cabinet passionately defended the idea that a long-term care bed counted as home and said the change wasn’t just to boost their starts.
Ontario NDP MPP Catherine McKenney urged the government to release the data as soon as possible — and said the government had not made housing a “priority.”
“If there is data, make it available,” they said. “Let’s not worry about pass or fail, let’s worry about moving forward and doing what we need to build the housing we need, for the people who need it and where they need it.”
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Ontario Provincial Police are set to host a town hall in Quadeville, Ont., this evening to answer questions from residents about an attack on an eight-year-old child that was initially linked to an animal.
Police have arrested a 17-year-old boy in the case and he faces charges of attempted murder and sexual assault with a weapon.
Members of the small community 170 kilometres west of Ottawa say they were in shock after hearing about the arrest and hope to get clarity at today’s event in the town’s community centre.
Local resident Christine Hudder says she wants to know how police came up with the animal attack theory and why families were told for days to keep their children indoors.
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The victim was found with life-threatening injuries on June 24 after she was reported missing, and remains in hospital.
Police say they are planning to give as much information as possible to locals given that an investigation is still underway.
A Burlington, Ont., mother was unsettled to discover that an old photo of her children had been used in a fraudulent GoFundMe that attempted to elicit donations in connection the recent Texas floods.
Julie Cole told Global News that a friend had contacted her on social media to say that an old photo of her six children was being used in an attempt to collect ill-gotten gains.
“She reached out to me and she was like, ‘Hey, here’s a link to a GoFundMe. Sorry this has happened to you, but obviously a picture of your kids has been used without your consent and it’s being used for a GoFundMe to raise money, to help a family dealing with the Texas floods,’” she said.
Cole explained that the fake GoFundMe, which has since been removed by the company, was looking for donations to support a widowed mother of six kids in connection.
At least 120 people have died while more than 100 others remain unaccounted for as a result of the flooding, including 27 children and councilors from Camp Mystic.
“They were trying to raise $40,000 because of the three daughters had been victims of the Texas floods,” Cole said. “And the way it was presented felt very much like they were part of maybe that girl’s camp.”
Julie Cole told Global News that a friend had contacted her on social media to make that an old photo of her six children was being used in an attempt to collect ill-gotten gains.
Provided
Cole said once the listing was sent to her, she immediately contacted GoFundMe to get the fundraiser taken down.
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By Wednesday morning, the company had done so and in a statement to Global News, GoFundMe said that the fundraiser did not receive any donations and the account has been banned from creating any further fundraisers on the platform.
“GoFundMe has the most robust donor protection processes of any platform of our kind. We have round the clock trust and safety support, humans and technology making sure funds will get to where they are intended,” the statement offered.
After contacting the company, Cole said she shared the incident on her social media pages to raise awareness.
“So I did put it on my Facebook and I put it in my LinkedIn as like a heads-up learning experience kind of thing and there was a lot of outrage,” she said.
Cole also noted that while she is disappointed by the incident, she is well aware that her troubles are miniscule in comparison to those affected by the flooding.
“I do feel a little bit in myself that what I’m feeling is in no way comparable to what the actual families are feeling who have gone through the tragedies of the flooding,” she said.
The photo came from an old blog post she had written 16 years ago. Cole can date the picture as the baby in the photo is now getting ready to go for his driver’s test.
“I’m one of those, like, OG mommy bloggers from 20 years ago. So my kids have been on the internet. They have been sort of in the public eye,” she explained.
“And I know the risk is out there. And I think parents need to remember that, that their kids’ photos can be just screenshotted and used without consent. So there’s one lesson.
“I felt a little, well, very unsettled about it, particularly because of what it was being used for.”
In addition to being a parenting blogger, she also helped found Mabel’s Labels, which offers washable labels for kids clothing and other school items, in an effort to keep them out of the lost and found.
Julie Cole and her six kids in 2025.
Provided
Being a spokesperson for the company while raising six kids keeps her in the parenting sphere and she offered some other advice to parents about the images and social media.
“I think parents just have to be mindful and aware that once it’s out there, you know you’d like to think you’ll get consent or you’ll give consent if somebody asks or they want to use it, but people will just take it and they can just take,” she said.
“You have to be especially careful now with AI, because these photos can be altered.”
She also warned parents to check with their kids as they get older to see if they are OK with pics being posted and that people should be mindful of where they are sharing their donations.
“Another lesson out of this is people need to really be cautious and know where they’re putting their fundraising dollars,” Cole said.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
ARC World may be a celebration of Asian culture, but organizer Clement Chu hopes that people from all backgrounds come and enjoy the one-day festival in downtown Toronto.
Food, shops, music and speakers will all be featured at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Kerr Hall on Saturday, with a celebrity basketball game including actor Simu Liu and former Toronto Raptors star Jeremy Lin the day’s finale. Chu said that there will be something for everyone, whether they have ties to Asia or not.
“The stories that some of these people are telling here, it’s not just necessarily about them being Asian but it’s a story of resilience,” he said in a recent phone interview. “These are stories that apply way beyond, the Asian community so we hope people get that out of it.
“We hope people come enjoy the things that come from our culture, whether it’s food or art or entertainment. More than anything else, we want to get young people out and volunteering and making contributions back to the community, because we feel a lot of that was lost during COVID.”
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Originally named the Chinese Canadian Youth Athletic Association, the Asian Roots Collective was founded 30 years ago by Chu and his friends to create a safe space to play basketball. Chu said that over time the organization’s mission has broadened to include people with connections to all of Asia and to encompass other “universal languages” that, like basketball, can bring people together even if there are other linguistic or cultural barriers.
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“We want to showcase all these things that are excellent, that are happening,” said Chu. “So we decided to change the direction of the organization a little bit, because we’re no longer just Chinese, we’re no longer just youth oriented programs, and we’re sure as heck not just athletics.
“We wanted to have a calling card that was more representative of what we’re doing. This year is the first year we’re launching ARC World, which is this convention where we’re celebrating all things Asian.”
The acronym ARC still reflects those roots in basketball, however.
“Because we come from basketball, (the name) is like the three-point arc, your shot arc, but we’re trying to tell a story now so this is a narrative arc,” said Chu. “That was the inspiration behind the name of the organization.”
ARC has come a long way since it was founded in 1995, the same year the Raptors started playing in Toronto. Back then, Chu and other leaders within the organization had to rent basketball courts at local high schools. Now they have their own athletic centre in Markham, Ont.
“We used to make that joke about, ‘oh, you know, one day, as opposed to renting schools, we’d love to have the keys to gym,’ because that’s the dream of every kid, to have the keys to gym so you could shoot around,” he said. “It’s just funny because, like, fast forward, 30 years later, through some of these initiatives, we were able to raise enough money to build our own mini-community centre with a basketball hoop and stuff, but so now we do have the keys to the gym which is pretty, pretty cool.
“The only downside is, I’m so old now that I can’t really play anymore, but the kids now have a place to run around, we have video games there, art, we teach coding, it’s gone far beyond just basketball.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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