Bill 17, the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, is intended to simplify and standardize development charges, bring in consistent building construction standards and streamline development applications, land use planning approvals and contents of municipal official plans.
“We are pulling out all the stops to protect and build up Ontario during this time of economic uncertainty,” said provincial Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma in a statement. “Our expanded investments will ensure we can build even more homes, create more jobs and protect the most critical infrastructure that people depend on every day.”
The bill is part of the province’s economic development strategy in the face of tariffs coming from the United States, and is aimed at cutting red tape and speeding up home construction. The Ontario government has already introduced legislation to reduce trade barriers between provinces and speed up development of mining projects.
“We are taking bold action to protect Ontario in the face of economic uncertainty by speeding up construction so we can lower housing costs and keep workers on the job,” said provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack in a statement. “The legislation we’re tabling today responds to recommendations and requests from municipal leaders, and will help build the homes and infrastructure Ontario needs.”
And observers are saying the bill is positive, but has aspects that legal practitioners need to be aware of. Michelle Cicchino of Gowling WLG (Canada) LLP said based on her experience she agrees the housing development process can be very lengthy.
Michelle Cicchino, Gowling WLG (Canada) LLP
Ray Mikkola of Mississauga’s Pallett Valo Lawyers said it takes approximately seven or eight years to construct a multi-unit housing project — a design and development phase of three to five years, a year or two for the approval and permitting process, and then construction.
“And so, everybody’s looking for a way to speed that up — but what has to happen is a multi-faceted approach, because I don’t hear anybody saying we have to build shoddy, dangerous homes just to solve this crisis,” he said. “There is no magic bullet here.”
Cicchino noted a lot of the requirements of the bill will be left to future regulations, but if it passes she said lawyers need to be aware of several things, such as controls on inclusionary zoning, which allows for affordable housing in major transit areas.
“I think keeping an eye on inclusionary zoning will be important — that’s still fairly new in the province, but now the government is looking to put some controls on it,” she said. “And the province is also looking at what can and can’t be included in calculations of development charges, and when they will actually need to be paid. So, keeping an eye on what options are available to developers in the development process and how that can impact their project, I think is going to be really important for all practitioners.”
And Mikkola said there are several things of interest from a legal perspective about the legislation — its concentration on faster transit project delivery, ensuring municipalities abide by the building code, deferring development charge payments, minor variances for setbacks and amending building and fire codes to “improve economic viability” of four-story town homes.
“I would say the bill continues the process of the provincial government applying a granular solution to perceived problems but doing it broadly and throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, and maybe in the end it will actually build houses faster,” he said.
For his part, Nicholas Reynolds of Singleton Urquhart Reynolds Vogel LLP said what caught his eye in the bill was its expansion of the province’s Building Transit Faster Act from 2020, which applied to large transit projects under the auspices of Metrolinx.
“I think that's a very positive development, because in my experience on these projects, there can be some pretty significant roadblocks when it comes to expropriation and interacting with utility providers,” he said.
But Reynolds also pointed out that he could foresee some municipalities resisting province-wide standardization, because in certain circumstances there is a good reason to have idiosyncrasies from one municipality to another.
“For example, roads in northern Ontario are subject to different deterioration than roads in Toronto, which would be more heavily trafficked and suffer from more wear-and-tear of that nature,” he said. “So, you could rationalize why you would want a different standard up north as compared to Toronto.”
Bill 17 has passed first reading and is currently before the Ontario legislature.
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