Richard Lyall is president of RESCON, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario. He has represented Ontario's building industry since 1991. To contact him, reach out to [email protected].
RESCON is seeking an order that would enforce the Ontario Building Code Act and prohibit Toronto from imposing building regulations on planning applications as they are beyond the legal authority of the city.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.
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. 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.
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. The province moved away from this practice in 1975 when the OBC was established to unify the design and construction of buildings province-wide.
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