GUEST SUBMISSION: Ontario’s property assessment freeze began as a temporary pandemic-era measure intended to provide stability during a period of unprecedented economic uncertainty. Six years later, that temporary pause has effectively become government policy, despite a commercial real estate market that looks nothing like it did when assessments were last updated.

Today, Ontario commercial property owners are still being taxed based on January 1, 2016 property values. That means office towers, shopping centres, retail plazas and other commercial properties are being assessed according to a market that existed nearly a decade ago — before the pandemic, before hybrid work reshaped office demand, before e-commerce accelerated structural changes in retail, and before values for warehousing and flex industrial real estate surged across the province.

A modern economy cannot operate indefinitely on a decade-old property tax base. Yet that is exactly where Ontario finds itself.

How Ontario got here

Since 1998, Ontario has reassessed properties at least every four years. The province’s last reassessment occurred in 2016 and was intended to be used for taxation in 2017-2020. On March 25, 2020, the provincial government postponed the reassessment scheduled for 2021. At that time, the province (and much of the world) was in lockdown due to the recently announced COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, postponement made sense. Workers and students had all been sent home, and all but essential businesses were closed. Governments were focused on economic stability. But while the pandemic rationale may have justified a temporary delay, it no longer explains why reassessment remains suspended in 2026 with no roadmap for resumption.

Markets and interest rates have stabilized. Transaction activity has resumed. Values have been reset, and entire asset classes have fundamentally repriced. What began as an emergency measure has now become a prolonged policy position with significant consequences for Ontario’s commercial real estate sector.

A tax system increasingly disconnected from market reality

The longer reassessments remain frozen, the more disconnected Ontario’s property tax system becomes from actual market conditions. Commercial real estate values have not moved uniformly since 2016.

Warehousing and logistics properties have experienced substantial value growth driven by supply chain demand and e-commerce expansion. Meanwhile, many office and retail assets have faced persistent valuation pressure due to changing tenant demand, higher vacancy, elevated financing and operating costs and structural market shifts.

Ontario’s frozen assessments do not reflect any of those changes. Properties that have experienced exponential value growth since 2016 are paying taxes based on outdated assessments that represent a fraction of current market value.

Conversely, many struggling office buildings, enclosed malls and small retail properties continue paying taxes based on valuations that reflect their peak performance, rather than today’s market reality.

This has resulted in uneven and inequitable distribution of the tax burden across the commercial property sector. Property tax is intended to be levied based on market value, as a proxy for ability to pay. Reassessment restores the relationship between taxation and value.

A reassessment does not increase the amount of tax collected; it reallocates the same amount of tax based on updated values. If all values go up at the same rate, every taxpayer will pay the same amount of tax as before. If some property values go up more than the average, those taxpayers pay more. Those whose values did not keep pace with the average pay less.

Frozen assessments mean that taxes are not aligned with market value. Every dollar being saved by one property owner comes from another’s pocket.

The commercial sector is bearing the impact

The effects are increasingly visible across Ontario’s commercial real estate market. Ryan analyzed more than 3,000 commercial property sales across Ontario between 2023 and 2025, comparing sale prices against frozen 2016 assessed values. The findings point to a clear pattern: many retail properties, smaller office buildings, enclosed malls and properties in slower-growth areas are paying property taxes based on values materially above what the market currently supports.

In Toronto, Mississauga and London alone, Ryan identified 293 commercial properties that collectively overpaid an estimated $26.7 million in property taxes in 2025.

To understand the scale of the disconnect, consider the following examples. A retail property in Mississauga assessed at $1.65 million recently sold for approximately $771,000; reassessment in 2025 would have saved this taxpayer an estimated $27,000 in property taxes. A Toronto storefront assessed at $2.13 million sold for $1.3 million and would have paid roughly $31,000 less tax. 

These are not isolated cases. They are symptoms of a tax system increasingly detached from present-day market conditions. Tens of thousands of commercial properties across the province are paying more taxes as a result of the assessment freeze. 

Ontario risks becoming uncompetitive

Ontario is increasingly at risk of becoming an uncompetitive environment for commercial real estate owners, tenants and investors. Property taxes are a major operating cost that directly affects investment decisions, tenant occupancy costs, redevelopment feasibility and asset values.

An inflated tax burden leads to lower achievable rents, higher vacancies and further value declines. For properties that are underassessed, the spectre of looming tax changes, with no timeline or framework, contributes to economic uncertainty. Developers evaluating projects, investors underwriting acquisitions, and businesses negotiating leases all rely on predictable and equitable taxation systems. Ontario’s prolonged reassessment freeze undermines that confidence.

Every other Canadian province continues to update assessments regularly. British Columbia, Alberta and the Atlantic provinces conduct annual reassessments. Ontario conducted a major overhaul of its assessment system three decades ago, implementing a functional reassessment cycle over three short years of intense reform.

Today, however, Ontario stands alone in maintaining a provincewide freeze with no announced end date.

The concern within the commercial real estate sector is growing. A recent survey of commercial property owners and operators found that 75 per cent said the current system is unfair, while 86 per cent supported a return to regular reassessments consistent with other provinces.

What needs to happen next 

Ontario has the technical capability to resume reassessments. The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) continues to model updated property values internally each year, and municipalities already possess mechanisms to phase in valuation changes and manage tax impacts.

What has been missing is a clear commitment from Ontario’s government to undertake the challenge of restoring fairness and predictability. The province should establish a timeline for resuming regular reassessment cycles and provide greater transparency around expected assessment changes in the interim.

A clear date and framework for the next reassessment, combined with updated assessment data, would give taxpayers and municipalities the tools they need to plan and invest. 

The pandemic justification for freezing reassessments no longer holds. Ontario is open for business. It is long past time for the province to take on the business of updating property tax assessments to reflect today’s economic realities and to give struggling taxpayers paying the price of the assessment freeze some relief.