The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is proposing to hike the application fee for seeking approval to use innovative building systems, materials or designs in the province by thousands of dollars.
"As you can appreciate, there has been some concern," says James Douglas, manager of building code operations and technical support in the ministry’s building and development branch. Douglas says the ministry received a "fairly small number" of comments — less than 10 — during its 45-day comment period that ended Sept. 14.
If approved, the proposed Building Code regulation amendment would increase the fee to $5,000 per application to the Building Materials Evaluation Commission (BMEC) on Jan. 1, 2015 and then annually raise it in $2,000 increments until 2018, when it would reach $11,000.
Currently, it costs $950 to make an application to the Commission.
Douglas says that the change will only affect "a fairly small number of practitioners," noting the Commission only receives about 10 applications a year.
"This is not really about generating revenue," he says, noting the goal is more in keeping with the 2012 Drummond report on public service reform which called for finding ways to reduce costs and find efficiencies in public services. The Commission provides services to the manufacturing community and is supported by the ministry, "so basically there are program costs," he says. These include the costs of the commission itself, such as per diems for members and travel expenses, as well as the ministry’s administrative and legal costs.
"So the revised fee schedule has moved towards eliminating the government’s subsidization of the program and will help move the BMEC closer to cost recovery for the services it delivers," he says.
Any fee increase will have impacts on manufacturers, he adds, but points out that the advantage that the Commission provides is that "it authorizes the use of a building, system or material design in Ontario and that provides a market for manufacturers."
The next step is for the proposed regulatory change to go to provincial cabinet for consideration for filing. Douglas said he could not comment on a timeline for a decision.
"That’s a government decision," he says.
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed