May 14, 2026 Ministry of…

May 14, 2026

Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing
Planning and Housing Policy Branch
13th Floor, 777 Bay Street
Toronto, ON M7A 2J3

RE: Consultation on proposed legislative changes to the Planning Act, City of Toronto Act, 2006, Building Code Act, 1992 and Municipal Act, 2001 through Bill 98, the proposed Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026.

Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), representing Canada’s property and casualty (P&C) insurers, appreciates the opportunity to provide feedback on the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing consultation regarding Bill 98, the proposed Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026.

Bill 98 – Overall Impacts

Bill 98 represents an important step toward addressing Ontario’s housing supply challenges and improving affordability by streamlining approvals and accelerating construction. IBC supports the Ontario government’s ambitious plan to build 1.5 million homes by 2031 and recognizes the need to respond quickly to the housing crisis across the province. We also acknowledge that a consistent set of building requirements can help facilitate faster project delivery. However, our analysis raises concerns that Bill 98 could weaken municipal capacity to advance severe weather resilient development through land-use planning.

In particular, section 2(2) of Schedule 7 would repeal section 16(14) of the Planning Act, removing the requirement that official plans include policies to adapt to increasingly frequent and severe weather events, including through increased resiliency measures. Removing this requirement eliminates a clear statutory expectation to plan for increasingly severe weather events in official plans and reduces the ability to use planning approvals to secure resilient outcomes.

This change is especially consequential given that, in Ontario, municipalities already have limited authority to require building practices that exceed provincial code requirements. While some municipalities have relied on planning tools (such as zoning provisions, site plan control, and green development standards) to encourage or require certain resilience features, these tools have more often been used to advance sustainability or greenhouse gas mitigation objectives. Their use for securing resilience features is less common, but becomes critical where it occurs. Bill 98 appears to further constrain these remaining local pathways, potentially undermining municipalities’ ability to implement resilience measures at the local level.

Municipalities also rely on planning and regulatory tools such as lot grading and drainage bylaws, sewer use bylaws, and zoning provisions to reduce flood risk and protect homes from basement flooding (for example, through zoning restrictions on reverse slope driveways). To the extent that Bill 98 limits the use or enforcement of these mechanisms, it could have significant implications for local flood resilience and severe weather risk management – issues that directly affect homeowners, including whether they experience basement flooding.

Implications for Insurability and Long Term Housing Affordability

From an insurance perspective, accelerating housing construction is a critical opportunity to ensure homes are built to withstand increasingly frequent and severe weather events, recognizing that the most expensive home is the one that must be built twice. For this reason, weakening baseline resilience measures is concerning, as it will increase exposure to flood and weather related losses and, in turn, undermine the availability and affordability of insurance for homeowners, in addition to exposing them to preventable damage and disruption.

Limiting municipal tools that support resilience can result in more housing being built to code minimum standards in higher-risk locations. This does not eliminate risk; rather, it shifts it downstream to homeowners, insurers, reinsurers, and ultimately governments through disaster assistance programs. Over time, increasing the housing supply without sufficient resilience safeguards risks creating homes that are difficult or expensive to insure, eroding public safety, as well as the affordability and long-term availability of insurance coverage.

A more holistic approach to cost assessment, one that emphasizes lifecycle costs and total cost of ownership, rather than upfront costs alone, should be adopted. Making modest upfront investments in resilience can help prevent losses, reduce the need for rebuilding, and lower long-term costs over a home’s lifecycle.

As the province advances Bill 98 alongside an upcoming review of the Ontario Building Code, there is an important opportunity to ensure that updated standards incorporate resilience-focused measures that reflect evolving risks and help protect the province’s long-standing legacy of housing development by building durable, safe homes.

Reinsurance Risks

From a reinsurance perspective, lowering the baseline for severe weather resilience in new residential construction could increase the perceived long-term risk profile of Ontario’s housing stock. Reinsurers may respond by viewing new developments as higher-liability exposures, leading to increased retentions for primary insurers and requiring insurers to absorb greater losses before reinsurance coverage attaches. If severe weather resilience is weakened, reinsurers may also reduce their appetite for this risk or require higher premiums, which could ultimately result in coverage gaps.

Recommendations

The stated purpose of Bill 98 is to streamline application and approval processes to enable homes to be built more quickly in Ontario. While this objective is important, it is equally critical that Ontario focus on building homes not only faster but smarter, so that new housing is able to shelter Ontarians for generations to come.

If the government proceeds with removing or constraining municipal resilience requirements, Ontario should establish binding, province wide resilience standards to replace those being removed through the Ontario Building Code. Rather than eliminating resilience measures, the streamlining exercise presents an opportunity to standardize baseline resilience requirements across the province. These standards should be sufficiently detailed and regionally risk sensitive, reflecting variations in flood, wildfire, extreme weather, and other related risks. Standardized minimum resilience measures would improve risk predictability, reduce future loss volatility, and support long term housing affordability and insurability.

This need for province-wide standards is not met by the Provincial Planning Statement (PPS) alone. While the PPS provides important high level policy direction, it lacks the detailed, enforceable, and locally risk responsive building resilience requirements that municipalities can currently advance through planning tools. As such, it cannot substitute for clear, building code-level standards necessary to ensure that new housing is both located appropriately and built to withstand future risks. Province wide resilience requirements must therefore come into force concurrently with Bill 98 to prevent a regulatory gap during which new homes could be approved and constructed without adequate resilience measures in place.

From an insurance claims perspective, it is important to note that Bill 98 is primarily focused on new home construction and process streamlining. As a result, it is unlikely to provide near term relief for current claims related challenges in rebuilds, which continue to be driven by material availability constraints, skilled trade shortages, and permitting delays. Meaningful resilience gains in the claims environment are more likely to come from clearer guidance on material standards, targeted public infrastructure improvements, and a better definition of homeowner versus public responsibility during claims related rebuilds.

Lastly, skilled trade shortages remain the most significant long term risk to claims outcomes and cost pressures in Ontario and should be considered alongside any efforts to accelerate housing delivery.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this consultation. IBC would welcome the opportunity to discuss these recommendations further.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Amanda Dean
Vice President, Ontario & Atlantic
Insurance Bureau of Canada
adean@ibc.ca
902-402-1028

Reinsurance refers to insurance purchased by an insurance company from another insurance company (reinsurer) to provide it protection against large losses on cases it has already insured. Essentially, insurance for insurance companies.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/provincial-planning-statement-2024