City of Waterloo council summary, March 21, 2022

** The council summary provides a snapshot of the major items presented at the council meeting. Please refer to the minutes for an official record of the meeting.

Council calls on province to adopt stronger energy building code standards

City of Waterloo Council once again demonstrated its commitment to addressing the current climate emergency by calling for stricter and significant changes to the Ontario Building Code.

Council unanimously approved a motion calling on the province to implement stronger energy performance standards as Ontario considers changes to the provincial building code.

The motion, which was written and brought forward by Coun. Jeff Henry, is requesting that timelines, milestones and tiers are established within the Ontario Building Code that would impact the construction of new builds.

Specifically, Council is requesting that the province include energy performance tiers and timelines for increasing minimum energy performance standards step-by-step to the highest energy performance tier in the next edition of the Ontario Building Code.

Council would like the Province of Ontario to adopt a more ambitious energy performance tier than what is currently proposed.

In addition, Council would like to see the province provide authority to municipalities to adopt a specific higher energy performance tier than the Ontario Building Code. Council is also requesting that the government support building additional capacity through education and training in the implementation of the National Model Building Code for municipal planning and building inspection staff, developers, and homebuilders.

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Media contact:
Tony Iavarone
Director, Corporate Communications
tony.iavarone@waterloo.ca