On September 9, 2026, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) released a pre-budget submission with ten recommendations aimed at the housing crisis. The headline asks are to permanently remove the HST from new home purchases, or fully index the original GST rebate so it keeps pace with prices, to reduce development charges on new homes, and to fund modern approval processes including digitization, building information modelling, and expanded as-of-right building permissions. RESCON frames the goal as restoring the cost of a home to about four times a household's income, and points to warning signs including a population decline in the Toronto area between 2024 and 2025 and a 12 percent drop in the number of children under five in Toronto between 2011 and 2021. The submission is a request to government, not enacted policy, but it signals where industry pressure is concentrated heading into the next Ontario budget.
A pre-budget submission is a wish list, not a law, but it is a useful one: it tells you where the organized building industry is pushing before the government writes its budget. On September 9, 2026, RESCON, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, put out ten recommendations, and three of them go straight to the cost and speed problems every Ontario developer is living with.
| Ask | What RESCON wants |
|---|---|
| HST on new homes | Permanently drop the HST from new home purchases, or fully index the original GST new housing rebate so it keeps pace with today's prices instead of thresholds set decades ago |
| Development charges | Reduce development charges on new home purchases, building on the 2026 reduction programs rather than treating them as one-off deals |
| Approvals | Fund modern approval processes: digitization, building information modelling, and expanded as-of-right building permissions to cut the time from application to permit |
The through-line is that these are the three biggest levers on the delivered cost and timing of a home, and they sit with three different levels of government. HST is federal, development charges are municipal with provincial oversight, and approval speed is a shared municipal and provincial responsibility. RESCON is asking Ontario's budget to move the pieces it controls and to keep pressing on the ones it shares.
Waiting on faster approvals is not a strategy. PreBuildIQ maps any Ontario address to its approval path and required studies in 60 seconds so you file complete.
Check my site →These are the arguments behind the asks. The population and demographic figures are meant to reframe housing cost as an economic-competitiveness issue, not just an affordability complaint: if people and young families leave because they cannot afford to stay, the labour force and tax base that fund everything else erode with them.
A submission is not a guarantee, but the direction of travel is consistent with what has already been enacted. The as-of-right and approval-digitization asks line up with Bill 60, Bill 98, and Bill 17. The development charge ask lines up with the Toronto and Mississauga reduction programs. The realistic read for a developer is that the fee and approval-speed measures already in motion are more likely to be extended than reversed, and that a project positioned to use them, complete application, qualifying unit mix, permit timing inside the reduction windows, is positioned for whatever the budget adds.
A pre-budget submission is an ask, not a rule. Plan against the reduction programs and as-of-right permissions already enacted, and treat anything in the submission as upside rather than a basis for a pro forma.
RESCON released ten recommendations on September 9, 2026. The headline asks are to permanently remove the HST from new home purchases or fully index the original GST new housing rebate, to reduce development charges on new homes, and to fund modern approval processes including digitization, building information modelling, and expanded as-of-right building permissions.
RESCON is the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, an industry association representing residential builders. Its pre-budget submission is a set of recommendations to government ahead of the provincial budget, so it reflects industry priorities rather than enacted policy.
Not as of September 2026. RESCON is recommending that the HST be permanently dropped from new home purchases, or that the original GST new housing rebate be fully indexed so it keeps pace with current prices. This is a request in a pre-budget submission, not enacted law, so developers should plan on the rules that currently exist.
RESCON cites a population decline in the Toronto area between 2024 and 2025 and a 12 percent drop in children under five between 2011 and 2021 to argue that housing costs are pushing people and young families out, framing affordability as an economic-competitiveness issue. The recommendations are aimed at restoring the cost of a home to about four times household income.
Treat it as a directional signal, not a rule. Build pro formas on enacted measures such as the 2026 development charge reductions with their expiry windows, design for as-of-right permissions where possible, file complete applications to benefit from faster approvals, and avoid delaying a certain, dated saving to chase an un-enacted change.
PreBuildIQ maps any Ontario address to its approval bodies, required studies, and terms of reference in 60 seconds, so your application is complete before it is filed.
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