AMO 2025 Pre-Budget Submission
AMO has released its 2025 pre-budget submission highlighting how municipalities are focused on providing the things that matter most to Ontarians, including:
- building more homes to support growth and make housing more affordable;
- dealing with homelessness and the drug crisis to improve quality of life for everyone; and,
- providing important core municipal services like policing and transit while keeping property tax growth to a minimum in the face of ongoing cost of living challenges.
But delivering on these priorities is impossible with the current provincial-municipal fiscal arrangements. For over a year, AMO and more than 160 member councils have been calling on the province for a joint Social and Economic Prosperity Review with no engagement to date. The impact of a broken provincial-municipal fiscal framework is apparent in our communities, with implications for housing affordability, cost of living, and public safety.
Municipalities urgently need the province to reset fiscal fundamentals. To address the growing threats to quality of life across Ontario, AMO urges the provincial government to make concrete commitments in these key areas:
- Infrastructure funding for housing and the economy
- Reduced provincial reliance on municipal subsidies
- Fixing broken provincial systems to address homelessness
AMO will provide a presentation outlining this year’s pre-budget submission on the plenary stage at the 2025 ROMA Conference.
AMO Supports Changes to Brownfields Rules to Reduce Barriers to Development
AMO submitted comments to a recent Environmental Registry posting regarding provincial rules for Brownfields development in support of changes to regulatory requirements for brownfields projects to reduce the need for Records of Site Condition (RSC) in certain cases.
The proposal will eliminate the need for RSCs where there are no legislative requirements and where proposals are low-risk, meaning they would have been filed with a Phase-One Environmental Phase Assessment (EPA). This means that no potentially contaminating activities or areas of potential environmental concern were identified for that property.
AMO supports a risk-based approach to environmental safety requirements. Ontario’s ambitious target to build 1.5 million new homes over the next ten years to house a growing population requires close public and private sector cooperation. Brownfields offer valuable properties that can be repurposed in communities for new residential or other uses. Changes to reduce red tape and improve development timelines while ensuring strong environmental protections can help deliver needed development more quickly and affordably.
AMO response to Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021
AMO recently sent a letter to Minister Kusendova-Bashta in response to consultations on the Support for Seniors and Caregivers Act, 2024.
The proposed changes included improved access to dementia care, consistent with AMO’s longstanding asks to expand emotion-focused care. However, the Bill’s enforcement and liability provisions raise potential impacts of new individual liability provisions on long-term care staff recruitment, on liability for long-term care home Board members, and the removal of the reduction of penalties from municipal and other non-profit homes. AMO members are committed to their roles on the Boards of long-term care homes and to the safety of residents in municipal long-term care homes. We strongly encourage the provincial government to reconsider these changes.
