LILLEY: Crombie’s Liberals fighting NIMBYism but they know it works

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Is Bonnie Crombie’s Ontario Liberal Party ready to take on NIMBYs or is she just playing a role in the wake of her housing policy release?

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It’s a question worth asking based on her party’s last election win and her own policy flip-flops on the how and where to build housing.

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Last July, the Ontario Liberals won the riding of Kanata-Carleton, an area of the province they had not won in well over a century. One of the main reasons for the victory was campaigning against more housing being built and attracting NIMBYs to their cause.

The big issue in the by-election last summer was whether a privately owned golf course could be developed into housing.

Locals, not just the well-heeled who had bought homes backing onto the course, were outraged that the golf course would soon host homes. The golf course was part of the fabric of the community, it was a place local kids would toboggan in the winter, a pleasant green space even for those not swinging a club.

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The Liberals, including their local candidate and now MPP Karen McCrimmon, leaned into the issue.

The Progressive Conservatives, saying they were doing everything they could to build housing, couldn’t exactly come out against a privately owned golf course being turned into housing – it would seem elitist.

The Liberals saw an opportunity and pounced, making the issue a problem for Premier Doug Ford and his candidate Sean Webster.

“Kanata residents are concerned about losing access to the green space they care about. Are you going to give away the protected land at Kanata Lakes to your billionaire friends just like you did with the Greenbelt?” the Liberals asked in a news release still on their website.

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Now, Crombie has come out with a housing policy that would allow anyone, in any built-up area of the province, to knock down an existing home and put up a fourplex or even a four-storey building. There are areas of this province with entire neighbourhoods where one and two-storey homes as the tallest buildings.

Crombie’s proposal, if adopted, would forbid local councils from saying no to a four-storey home going up in a neighbourhood of bungalows. Advocates of the policy can argue that it’s the right thing to do in a housing crisis, but so too is building homes on a golf course the owners no longer want.

That by-election in July 2023 took place at the same time as the Ford government was still pushing ahead with allowing homes to be built on a section of the Greenbelt surrounding the Greater Toronto Area. That was a policy the Liberals generally opposed, though Crombie’s flip-flopping on the issue is well documented.

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By late August, Premier Doug Ford caved to public pressure and not only abandoned the idea of building on the Greenbelt but apologized for even attempting to do so.

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Ford’s policy flip-flop on the Greenbelt was bad public policy – this was not pristine farmland, and he should have stayed the course – but politically it was popular to reverse course. In the same way, it doesn’t matter how many housing experts say that Crombie’s policy of allowing four-storey homes “as-of-right” in every corner of the province is the right thing to do, it’s a vote loser.

She won’t win votes in Orleans, Manotick, Ancaster, Burlington, Grimbsy, London, Guelph, Timmins, Sudbury or many other communities with a policy like this. In fact, this kind of policy would also be unpopular in many of the Toronto ridings the Liberals should be contending in, or even ones they hold like Beaches East York.

A recent poll by Liaison Strategies found that while 55% thought not enough housing was being built right now in Ontario, 57% thought enough housing was being built in their community.

Translation, people know we need more housing built, but they don’t necessarily want new homes built next to them. Which is why Crombie opposed the policies she is now proposing when she was mayor of Mississauga.

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