Hi everyone,
Link to petition, this is the official CKL petition and it has over 700 signatures.
https://jumpinkawarthalakes.ca/online-petitions
(Scroll to the list of petitions near the bottom)
In November 2022, the Ontario government passed Bill-23, which, which waives development fees for new builds. These development fees are meant to cover the costs of growing the city services and infrastructure.
It appears that excusing developers from paying these fees means that the municipalities will have to cover these costs. For instance, it says on Northumberland’s Business and Development webpage that this will cost the municipality $17.4 million, and that this amount will have to be made up by either reducing services to the county or increasing property taxes; the amount tentatively proposed on the webpage was 27% over the next 2-7 years.
Despite this waiving of fees for developers, the goal of which was to encourage the building of a larger quantity of more affordable houses, developers are not building more houses across Ontario, new starts are down and continue to drop. Inventory on houses for sale is starting to stagnate and in some areas sellers are starting to take big losses, which calls into question whether rapid building to inflate supply is necessary at all.
I've been looking on the City of Kawartha Lakes website, and I saw something that has led me to believe that, in spite of the cost to taxpayers and the lagging development, the Ontario government is forcing the City of Kawartha Lakes to expand. On the province’s website, it was announced in 2023 that it would be awarding so-called “Strong Mayor Powers” to 45 municipalities, one of which was the City of Kawartha Lakes, with the goal to increase housing, transit, and infrastructure (an additional 169 municipalities were added to this list in May 2025). The City of Kawartha Lakes website does not mention any provincial funding for this privilege, and in fact in their LTFP for 2025 specifically says that they are assuming low provincial investments beyond what they already received. This means we’re all on the hook for this forced development to appease the province.