Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives want to fast-track construction of thousands of homes — including affordable housing — at more than a dozen new transit stations to help Ontario rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Star has learned.

The Tories on Tuesday will introduce sweeping legislation designed to make it easier to build “transit-oriented communities” atop or adjacent to stations on the forthcoming Ontario Line, the Scarborough subway, and the proposed Eglinton West LRT and Yonge North subway extensions.

“This would just apply to new stations, not existing TTC stations,” said a senior government official, who, like others interviewed Sunday, spoke on background in order to discuss internal deliberations about Ford’s $28.5-billion transit expansion plan.

“The thinking is that we take the lands that we’d be purchasing for the transit stations and use these same lands for the construction of housing, including affordable housing,” a second official confirmed.

Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney and Associate Transportation Minister Kinga Surma are expected to unveil the initiative on Monday before legislation is tabled the following day.

One potentially controversial aspect of the bill is a proposal to give transit projects an exemption from the “hearing of necessity” process. Such hearings, which are non-binding, can create red tape that leads to 12 months of construction delays.

That complements measures Mulroney announced in February’s Better Transit Faster Act that expanded the province’s power to expropriate land and reduce the need for environmental approvals.

A third government official says Tuesday’s legislation would also “give the province more flexibility to enter into joint ventures with developers and landowners.

“We would have individual agreements with each station project,” said the third official. “As you can imagine, some sites are going to have more potential than others.”

There are 15 proposed stations on the new Ontario Line, running from Ontario Place to the Ontario Science Centre; seven on the proposed LRT extension of the Eglinton Crosstown, the initial phase of which was supposed to be finished in September 2021, but has been delayed until 2022; three on the Scarborough subway; and a still-to-be-determined number on the Yonge North extension to Richmond Hill.

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