One of the biggest issues…

One of the biggest issues with municipal building departments is that when the OBC is updated, the building departments (CBO and inspectors) do not get sufficient advance notice to incorporate the changes into their code books (and into their jobs).
It is also rather ridiculous that the printed materials for code changes do not come out until sometime (weeks or months) AFTER the code changes take effect (yes I know that updates can be found on E-laws - have you ever tried figuring that out within the OBC?).

Continuing education is important, who will be putting together these courses? Are you going to let the Ontario Building Officials Association (OBOA) continue to run their own courses, or will these be Provincial courses? You can't have both, it isn't practical. The OBOA seems to want to take over the entire Provincial building code industry with their own agenda(s), the Province should be mindful of not allowing an association of municipal officials to 'take over' the Provincial codes and training without some stringent oversight.

As for the oversight, coordinators and allowing the public to go to a different authority (other than the municipal CBO) for advice on Code related matters, the Building Code Act (BCA) already permits appeals of inspector and CBO decisions. Putting other factors into play is a slippery slope, what is going to happen when a member of the public calls the "buildings branch" (or whatever this will be called) to 'overrule' the CBO?

Unless the Province is going to be ENTIRELY responsible for the building industry (reviewing permit submissions, issuing building permits, conducting inspections, collecting fees etc.) in Ontario I think that the BCA is sufficient for dealing with appeals as it is.