Alongside a new program that will reward municipalities for reaching and exceeding their housing targets, Ford announced an extension of strong mayor powers to 21 additional municipalities.

As blowback for the Greenbelt land swap rages on, Premier Doug Ford announced a new $1.2B incentive program to get municipalities to build more homes.

Ford announced the new program, dubbed the Building Faster Fund, during his speech at the Association of Municipalities Conference in London on Monday, noting that it will “reward municipalities for reaching annual housing targets.”

“These targets will be ambitious, but realistic,” Ford said.

The Ontario Government has repeatedly asserted its intention to ensure the construction of 1.5 million new homes in the province by 2031, and has already doled out targets to municipalities. But with limited construction capacity, the ability to actually reach 1.5 million homes has been put into question.

On Monday, Ford said that, in the first year of the program, they are looking to achieve at least 110,000 new housing starts across the province. This is notably lower than the more than 150,000 housing starts experts estimate will be needed to reach the province’s goal.

Municipalities that reach 80% of their respective part of each year’s target will become eligible for funding “based on their share of the overall goal.”

“Think of it like this: if you get an ‘A,’ you become eligible for funding. If you do worse than an ‘A,’ you don’t,” Ford said.