The focus of these comments…

The focus of these comments relate to the Complete Application, Study Requirements and Certified Professional section of Bill 17 as it leans heavily on certified professionals (including engineers) to take greater responsibility in fast-tracked approvals, while limiting the resources they have to fulfill their duties.

Under proposed amendments to the Planning Act, municipalities will be restricted to only requiring studies already listed in their Official Plans, unless the Minister of Municipal Affairs approves otherwise. This could unintentionally weaken safeguards that have historically protected people from hazards related to building design, construction, and site planning, particularly in areas like climate resilience and infrastructure performance.

For example, engineers are often tasked with producing and affixing their professional seal on studies that demonstrate how a proposal satisfies provincial interests (e.g., FSRs, SWM reports, traffic). These reports have been foundational to a “complete application” with the requirements varying by municipality. Removing or limiting these requirements may reduce an engineer’s ability to fulfill their duty to hold paramount the public interest under the Professional Engineers Act.

While Bill 17 rightly targets redundancies in the planning system, technical engineering reports as well as those deemed necessary by a professional engineer, ideally, should be exempt from the scope of the Bill’s restriction. Municipalities should be permitted to require additional studies on a case-by-case basis, in response to pre-consultation and advice from the professional engineer as additional studies may be necessary to ensure public safety. The Province could outline terms of reference for studies and allow municipalities to amend scope of services for the local context.

Regarding the issue of which certified professionals should be included in the list of professionals whose reports/studies would be required to be accepted as final submissions by a municipality as part of a complete planning application, municipalities should be required only to accept signed and sealed reports prepared by appropriately certified professionals acting within their regulated scope of practice. Engineers, technicians, architects, and land surveyors are regulated, however, land use planners, ecologists, urban designers, etc., are typically retained for these applications so their eligibility should be defined. The Province could publish a standard, publicly accessible checklist of which studies are required for various types of applications, and the required professional certifications associated with each.