New home builders in Ontario are among the most sustainable in the world and want to be part of the solution to climate change, however, we maintain that the approach by municipalities to building greener must be consistent and based on facts that are tried, tested, and true.
Unfortunately, some municipalities have taken it upon themselves to develop and pass their own independent standards which are creating barriers to new housing, gumming up the development approvals process, and escalating construction costs at the worst possible time.
We are in a housing crisis, with starts over the next few years and employment in the industry expected to weaken. This is not the time for individual municipalities to be going off-script and developing their own separate standards that only make life more difficult for homebuilders.
In Ontario, housing starts in the third quarter of the year declined by 16.9% compared to the same period last year, the Financial Accountability Office reports. Alarmingly, detached homes are on track for the lowest level of annual starts since 1955.
Yet, some Ontario municipalities are complicating matters by arbitrarily imposing their own separate green building standards independent of the Ontario Building Code (OBC) and in violation of the Ontario Building Code Act (OBCA).
If municipalities enact their own independent benchmarks, no matter how well-intentioned they might be, it will be like the Wild West in Ontario and cause chaos in the residential construction industry.
RESCON recently filed a legal application in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice against the City of Toronto over the escalation of its Toronto Green Standard (TGS) performance measures.
Under the Planning Act, the city does have the authority over land-use planning matters, and it can impose site-specific controls over the development of land within Toronto’s boundaries. However, we argue that the manner of construction as well as construction standards are not subject to site plan control. Those matters are, in fact, already governed by the OBC.
We are seeking an order that would enforce the OBCA and prohibit Toronto from imposing building regulations on planning applications as they are beyond the legal authority of the city.
In other words, the standards passed by Toronto are out of line as the OBCA and OBC supersede all municipal bylaws regarding construction of buildings. The city’s powers are subject to the limitations set out in the OBCA.
This is a critical distinction. Otherwise, we’d have a hodge-podge of different green building standards across the province. The standards under the building code were developed as a result of the progression in building science and rigorous cost-benefit analysis done by experts.
We can not permit individual municipalities in Ontario to impose standards that are different than the provincial act. Municipally created green building standards are often geographically inconsistent
Toronto is overstepping the scope of its authority by bringing in technical building measures that exceed the predictable and uniform standards set out in the OBC. Simply put, the city can’t do it.
The province moved away from this practice in 1975 when the OBC was established to unify the design and construction of buildings province-wide.
In addition to Toronto, other municipalities have also forged ahead and passed their own green development standards. The Town of Caledon has implemented a one-year green development standards pilot. The program is now in effect for all development applications that are received by the town. King Township also has a new program that requires development applications to follow five sustainability metrics that affect the design of buildings.
However, municipalities are not technical standards development bodies and not well-equipped to deal with such regulations. This is exactly why building codes are developed at the federal and provincial levels. Allowing municipalities to impose their own standards defeats the purpose.
We must build more housing, or the province will be in trouble. We can not have different green building standards in different municipalities. All municipalities must be playing by the same rules.
