Can Toronto still enforce its green building standard? Ontario says no, but the city disagrees
The Toronto Green Standard makes some eco-friendly building features mandatory, such as flood and heat mitigation. Ontario says the city no longer has the authority to apply it
The first level of the Toronto Green Standard requires developers to build bicycle parking and electric vehicle charging stations in buildings over four storeys. The Ontario government says a recently passed bill prevents the City from enforcing it.
Photo: Katherine KY Cheng / The Narwhal
The province said the newly-passed Bill 17 will take away the city’s authority to enforce key parts of the Toronto Green Standard for buildings — though the city continues to deny the law will have any impact.
A spokesperson for Rob Flack, Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, said in a statement that the act — which aims to speed up housing and infrastructure development by doing away with many local planning rules — would render mandatory parts of the standard unenforceable.
“Our government’s legislation, the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, standardizes construction requirements and provides consistency, clarifying that no municipality has the authority to enforce a by-law that supersedes the Ontario Building Code,” spokesperson Alexandra Sanita wrote.
“Through these changes, the City of Toronto’s Tier 1 of the Green Building Standard would not be allowed as they mandate requirements for new development planning applications that go beyond the Ontario building code.”
The Toronto Green Standard are a set of city rules that require housing developers to implement eco-friendly design features in new buildings.
The standard consists of four tiers, with Tier 1 being a mandatory list of assets developers must incorporate within new developments. This includes adding bicycle parking and electric vehicle charging stations to new buildings over four storeys, and taking steps to mitigate flooding and extreme heat, for instance, by building rooftop gardens and planting trees.
Tiers 2 through 4, while not mandatory, provide developers with financial incentives to take on more ambitious climate targets. Developers can get a portion of the development charge fees they pay to the city refunded for achieving these higher targets.
According to the provincial spokesperson, Tiers 2 to 4 “will not be affected” by Bill 17.
City pushes back on province’s interpretation of law
Despite the province’s statement, a spokesperson for the City of Toronto denied that Bill 17 will have any impact on the municipality’s ability to enforce the Toronto Green Standard, reiterating findings from a staff report earlier this week.
“City staff have reviewed Bill 17 and determined that there is no impact to the City’s ability to continue to apply the [standard] to new development,” the spokesperson told TorontoToday.
Last week, the city released an assessment of the impact of Bill 17, which pushed back on the idea that local authority over the standard could be restricted.
“Recent media reports have suggested that Bill 17 has impacted or restricted a municipalities [sic] ability to apply the [Toronto Green Standard],” the report read, going on to deny there would be any impact.
The city’s executive committee received the report on June 16.
Experts previously raised concerns over Bill 17
Before the bill was passed on June 3, experts speculated a provision that updates the Building Code Act of 1992 could bring an end to the Toronto Green Standard.
The provision says municipalities do not have the authority to “pass by-laws respecting the construction or demolition of buildings.”
Some legal professionals interpreted this phrase to mean that Ontario cities would no longer have the authority to enforce sustainable design standard.
“This would appear to make green building standards obsolete and ensure that the same standard (the [Ontario Building Code]) apply province wide,” lawyers from Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP wrote in May.
Environmental experts had also raised alarm that Toronto Green Standard would be “deeply undercut.”
Additionally, the president of an organization representing Ontario’s residential construction industry argued the law was intended to override the standard.
“No municipality has the right to choose not to implement legislation irrespective of how unappealing it may appear to them,” Richard Lyall, president of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, wrote in a letter to the city’s executive committee last week.
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Lyall referenced comments made by Minister Flack in the Ontario Legislature, when he spoke about the need to make building standard across the province consistent.
“It’s bureaucratic; it’s red tape; it isn’t working,” Flack said during legislative debates in early June, adding that green standard are “part of the slowness of getting houses built.”
“That is why we brought Bill 17 forward; that is why we are going to have one code in this province, not hundreds of iterations,” Flack said.
The Residential Construction Council of Ontario is also currently engaged in a legal battle with the city over the Toronto Green Standard. In December, the industry group asked the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to block the city from enforcing construction standards that go beyond the Ontario Building Code.
Another year of keeping a close watch
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In Alberta, our reporting revealed Premier Danielle Smith made false statements about the controversial renewables pause. In Manitoba, we proved that officials failed to formally inspect a leaky pipeline for years. And our investigations on a leaked recording of TC Energy executives were called “the most important Canadian political story of the year.”
Here at The Narwhal, we don’t use profit, awards or pageviews to measure success. The thing that matters most is real-world impact — evidence that our reporting influenced citizens to hold power to account and pushed policymakers to do better.
And in 2024, our stories were raised in legislatures across the country and cited by citizens in their petitions and letters to politicians.
In Alberta, our reporting revealed Premier Danielle Smith made false statements about the controversial renewables pause. In Manitoba, we proved that officials failed to formally inspect a leaky pipeline for years. And our investigations on a leaked recording of TC Energy executives were called “the most important Canadian political story of the year.”
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