More than fifteen…

More than fifteen municipalities across Ontario have developed Green Building Standards which aim to make new buildings more energy efficient, improve the public realm, provide greater resilience to climate change impacts like flooding, protect human health, and as a result have also created thousands of local and regional jobs. Cities such as Mississauga, Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Durham, London and Vaughan have all taken steps to address and mitigate the impacts of the built environment on the climate crisis and enhance the sustainable development market. Bill 17, the proposed ‘Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act’, aims in part to disenfranchise municipalities and undermine or eliminate their ability to protect health, safety, and the environment by “clarifying” that municipalities do not have jurisdiction to determine their own best course of action, for example, by setting green development standards.
Due to the unclear language of the Bill, the precise intent remains a mystery and the need for more specific regulations, but Bill 17 is intended to override green building performance standards in Toronto and elsewhere. This would result in higher costs for building owners down the road due to a loss of energy efficiency upgrades, and a loss of green roof area, much of which is now being implemented to support stormwater management and biodiversity. A loss of green roofs and other landscaping standards will mean fewer products from the nursery and landscaping industry.
Green building standards also require more integrated design practices, which support higher performance buildings at lower costs. An analysis of the Toronto Green Standard (TGS), which has been applied to more than 4,000 building applications since 2010, has shown that many of the required measures actually save developers money, and that overall, the TGS has not slowed development.