Less than three years after making a key campaign pledge to build more than one million new homes in Ontario over the next decade, the Progressive Conservative government internally admitted the goal would be impossible to achieve, according to new documents obtained by Global News.
As a central plank of its 2022 election campaign, the Ford government pledged it would construct 1.5 million new housing units by 2031, arguing flooding the market with supply would help solve housing affordability.
But despite a strong start to its promise, the province quickly saw housing starts fall away and its target begin to slip out of reach, even as it changed and expanded the definition of what qualified as a new home.
Now, internal handwritten notes from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing suggest the government itself was admitting defeat by the fall of 2024 — just a quarter of the way into the timeframe it had set for itself.
Global News obtained hundreds of pages of notes written between October and December 2024, as the housing ministry drafted a piece of legislation that was eventually shelved in favour of an early elcetion call.
A series of handwritten notes from within the ministry suggest the impossibility of the housing goal was discussed.
One line of a page appears to discuss communications plans, saying: “1.5 million homes not reach target, more context.”
It goes on to add that there is “not enough time” for Indigenous input, before cautioning against making new housing pledges.
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“No promise to build more homes faster — careful how (we) promise,” the page adds.
Handwritten notes from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing in the fall of 2024.
Global News
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Ford had failed to deliver a key promise.
“This is just more broken promises from Doug Ford. Doug Ford wrote a cheque he couldn’t cash because his government is ideologically opposed to building housing,” she said in a statement.
“When did the Conservatives decide that this target didn’t matter? How long did they lie to the people of Ontario about being on track to build 1.5 million homes? Ontario has fallen to last place when it comes to building homes. This is just proof that Doug Ford has given up on fixing the housing crisis.”
The internal acknowledgement the goal won’t be reached has never been repeated publicly.
Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy has called the 1.5 million a “soft target,” while Housing Minister Rob Flack has avoided repeating the goal when pressed.
“This legislation continues to build on the work we have done previously to create the conditions (for) homebuilders to do what they do best and that is to build,” he told reporters in October 2025.
Asked if it would spur the industry enough to allow the province to reach its 1.5 million home goal, Flack was noncommittal.
“I’m committed to getting shovels in the ground faster,” he said. “I’m looking at the next six to 12 months to get this thing kick started. The future will be the future. We’re in a housing crisis. We get it.”
The government may also have abandoned its own, custom housing tracker, offering no answers on if or when it will release the number of homes built based on its modified definition of new housing, which includes long-term care beds, student dorms and retirement homes.
Asked this week about the goal he set four years ago, Premier Doug Ford pivoted to talk about the United States.
“Let’s see how we go because already in one year it’s increased over 300 per cent,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday.
“Yes, we’ve seen some uncertain times with President Trump’s tariffs but I feel when I was down in South Carolina and over in Washington, heading over to Utah, the ground is shifting right now down there … in uncertain times, yeah, it was tough last year. It’s still tough out there, but in saying that I think we’ll increase the numbers.
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing did not answer questions from Global News.
“The premier’s comments from yesterday stand,” a spokesperson said.
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