Bill 109 Summary and Implications

Bill 109 was introduced by the provincial government and passed first reading, on March 30, 2022 with the second and third reading swiftly occurring on April 4, 2022 and April 14, 2022 respectively. On April 14, 2022 Bill 109 passed royal assent providing legislative 8 direction to the provinces slew of changes implementing the More Homes for Everyone Act, 2022.

Bill 109 amended four separate Acts in order to implement the More Homes for Everyone Act, 2022, including:

  • New Home Construction Licensing Act, 2017 – No impacts to the City;
  • Ontario New Home Warranties Plan Act – No impacts to the City;
  • Development Charges Act – Limited impacts to the City;
  • Planning Act – High-impact to the City.

A comprehensive list of impacts of Bill 109 can be consulted in Document 1, but below is a list of high level legislative changes:

  • Site Plan Control (SPC) approvals appointed to Staff
  • Removing Council as approval authority for SPC • Removes the ability of Cities to refuse SPC
  • Modifying SPC timelines to 60 days
  • Reducing Zoning By-law Amendment applications (ZBLA) timelines to 90 days
  • Requiring refunds of fees for SPC and ZBLA that don’t meet the timelines
  • Introduces appeal rights to clients related to complete applications
  • Allows the Minister to suspend timelines for approval, and send approval for a New Official Plan to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT)

Site Plan Control Report

On July 6th, 2022, Ottawa City Council also approved report ACS2022-PIE-GEN-0011 as part of the response to the Provincially mandated changes resulting from Bill 109.

The report recommended:

A phased approach to implement the Provincially mandated changes resulting from Bill 109:

Phase Description Deadline
1 Site Plan Control Delegation: Implement the Site Plan Control delegation of authority to staff and create internal capacity. July 1, 2022
2 Internal Changes: Refunds of SPC / ZBLA: Addresses any internal processes and procedure updates to create additional capacity and ensure Staff can deliver approvals within the updated timelines prescribed by Bill 109, and implement Refunds of SPC and ZBLA, should the new timelines not be met. January 1, 2023
3 By-law Amendments: Refunds of SPC/ ZBLA: Addresses any By-law Amendments requiring Council approval, to ensure that Staff can deliver approvals within the updated timelines prescribed by Bill 109 and update the development application Fee By-law with respect to refunds January 1, 2023
4 Implementing Outstanding Bill 109 Requirements: Entails monitoring progress, complete outstanding items from previous phases, developing a Ministerial Zoning Order procedure, address Surety Bonds, and implement any other items which did not have a specific implementation deadline. 2023


Amendments to the Delegated Authority By-law 2022-29

The updated Planning Act provisions required amendments to the City’s Delegated Authority By-law 2022-29 with respect to Site Plan Control approval and include:

  • Appointment of the Director of Planning Services or his/her delegate for all SPC applications approvals;
  • Amends several locations of the By-law to effectively remove Councillor involvement, as prescribed by Bill 109, from:
    • Requiring Councillor concurrence;
    • Councillor ability to withdraw SPC delegation ability;
    • Councillor imposing of terms and conditions on SPC applications;
    • Threshold of when delegation of SPC applications can be applied for (it is now all types of SPC applications.

Approve the repeal and replacement of the Development Application Study Policy By-law 2001-451

Bill 109 Subsection 7(1) and 7(2) and Planning Act Subsection 41(3.1) and 41(2) were amended to require applicants to consult with a municipality before submitting plans and drawings and require the information prescribed to be submitted to the municipality. To implement this, Staff are proposing to repeal and replace the Development Application Study Policy By-law 2001-451, which has not been updated since 2001 and will serve to both meet the updated study requirements of Bill 109 and implement the policy intent from the new OP.

Receive the amendments to the Public Notification and Consultation Policy

The Public Notification and Consultation Policy must be updated to align with the changes to the Delegation of Authority By-law (as per Recommendation 2) with regards to delegating SPC to staff, as prescribed by Bill 109. Below is a table of the current Site Plan Control engagement opportunities, what staff propose as part of this report, and the extent of changes that Bill 109 could have justified.

Item Current Staff Proposal Change available under Bill 109
Councillor concurrence on SPC
 Yes No No
Council as final authority for SPC
 Yes No No
Community/ Councillor heads up of SPC
 Yes Yes No
Community/Councillor comments SPC
 Yes Yes No
Notice of decision to Community/Councillor
 Yes Yes No


Approve the amendments to the Site Plan Control By-law

The report recommends altering the Site Plan Control By-law to align the inner urban Site Plan Control exemption threshold with the exemption threshold for applications located outside the greenbelt. The By-law would permit buildings with 4-5-6 units to be exempt from Site Plan Control. This change reprioritizes the departmental effort to create capacity internally, reducing workload to enable adaptation to shorter and more intense timelines. Further, this change directly supports the efforts of solving for the Affordable Housing and Homelessness Crisis and Emergency, declared by Council on January 29, 2020 with Motion NO 26/14, and the New Official Plan intensification targets. The documents below provide further details on the implementation of exempting buildings with 4-5-6 units from Site Plan Control:

Site Plan Control Highlights
Site Plan Thresholds

City Staff in the Planning, Real Estate and Economic Development Department continue to work to implement these approaches with a follow up report to Committee and Council anticipated in 2023.


Categories: Bill 109
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