TORONTO - Ontario may finally mandate the use of sprinklers in high rise residential buildings, but not in single family homes, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday as he admitted the province lags behind the rest of Canada in the fire safety systems.

Provincial governments of all stripes in Ontario have traditionally sided with developers who warned that sprinkler systems would drive up the price of a home and were not being requested by customers, but Premier Dalton McGuinty said it's time to reconsider that approach.

"I think the fact is that we're a bit of a laggard in that regard in comparison to the rest of Canada,'' McGuinty admitted to reporters before a cabinet meeting. "It's time for us to ensure that we are doing more.''

The Association of Ontario Fire Chiefs has been lobbying for years to have the government mandate sprinklers in all new homes in the province to help save lives.

They say 70 per cent of the nearly 13,000 building fires in Ontario each year occur in residential structures, claiming an average of 90 lives annually and causing $347 million in property damage.

McGuinty said he'll likely follow the firefighters' advice on mandating the use of sprinklers for new buildings, but only when it comes to high rise apartments and condominiums, not single family homes or low-rise units.

"They want us to adopt the federal building code standard, which requires that sprinklers be put in place -- on a go forward basis -- in buildings that are three stories and higher,'' he said. "To me, that sounds like some pretty solid advice, and that's what we're going to look at, but we'll see if we need to do anything more beyond that.''

McGuinty said any new sprinkler law in Ontario would not be retroactive, and he has asked Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Jim Watson to meet with the fire chiefs and suggest necessary changes to the province's building code.

"I think there's a lot of merit to what they're asking for,'' he said.

"I spoke with Minister Watson about this just a few days ago, and asked him to take a very close look at it to see what we can do. The issue is how far do we need to go?''

Liberal backbencher Linda Jeffrey failed in two separate attempts to have private members bills passed requiring sprinklers to be used in residential construction in Ontario, but she never had McGuinty's support for her earlier efforts so those pieces of legislation died on the order paper.