Earlier this year, a housing report came out that listed Toronto among the least affordable real estate markets in the world.

The Demographia International Housing Affordability report put both Toronto and Vancouver among the top five.

The media pounced on the ranking, sharing a report that echoed many middle-class voter frustrations with real estate affordability in Canada and feeding into the constant refrain we hear from politicians that we need to fast-track development, despite the impact such decisions would have on the environment.

But few questioned the report, which limited its ranking to cities in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States, and didn’t consider expensive cities like Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Amsterdam and Munich.

The report, which blames high prices on land-use regulation, was produced by Urban Reform Institute alongside Frontier Centre for Public Policy. The former is a Texas-based non-profit and real estate lobby group. Its board of directors is largely made up of the presidents and CEOs at large development firms.

Meanwhile, the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy has questioned climate change science, questioned the efficacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada recommendations and once released a radio ad casting doubt on the trauma caused by the residential school system.

And their interests align with Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s position that fixing the housing supply requires cutting red tape that hinders development. In 2018, Ford was caught boasting about opening up “a good chunk” of the Greenbelt to developers.

The Ontario premier has issued Municipal Zoning Orders to steamroll over cities, citing affordable housing and accommodating rapid population growth as reasons to fast-track building on the Dominion foundry in Toronto and wetlands in Pickering. A joint Toronto Star and National Observer investigation revealed that the MZO’s that Doug Ford issued to pave the way for a proposed Highway 413 through farmlands and the Greenbelt would benefit developers who contribute to the Ontario PC party.

“I have a lot of concerns about building a highway that, on average, will improve people’s commutes by 30 to 60 seconds when our goal is to build a truly sustainable city so that we can survive climate change,” says Ontario NDP housing critic Jessica Bell.

“If we are looking at getting people out of their cars, we shouldn’t be building a new highway. We should be reinvesting that money into expanding GO and investing in local transit systems and making sure that they coordinate effectively so that people can get to A to B at an affordable price on transit quickly. That is a far, far better way to tackle some of that congestion issues that we have in our region right now.”

In a roundtable discussion with real estate industry figures hosted by NOW, Bell raised the alarm on what else Ford’s government is doing just outside of Toronto.