The Canadian Board for Harmonized Construction Codes (CBHCC) met publicly online for 3 hours and had 125 attendees including the Board members, which are the heads of provincial/territorial building safety authorities, the newly appointed National Model Code Committee (NMCC) chairs, Codes Canada staff and observers. The Board is chaired by an annually rotating provincial Co-Chair (currently Quebec) and the NRC Co-Chair (Director General, NRC Construction). The purpose of the meeting was to approve all proposed changes for the publication in the 2025 editions of the National Harmonized Construction Codes.

Board Update 

The Co-Chairs gave an update of activities since October, including highlights like

• the publications of the first Errata & Revisions for the 2020 Codes (E&Rs to Part 9 can be found on p.11) and the second printing of the 2020 National Building Code  (including all E&Rs)
• updated status descriptions for the public database of code change requests (CCR) to reflect the new process which featured a triage of all CCRs

The first activities of the NMCCs were reported by the NMCC Chairs. The NRC Co-Chair noted that the NMCC on Housing Supply had attracted a lot of attention. 

Approval of Proposed Changes

The Board made the following decisions

• approved a list of over 200 proposed change forms (PCF) for publications in the 2025 codes
• deferred the approval of all PCFs related to the regulation of operational greenhouse gas emissions to an in-camera Board meeting after provincial Board members from Ontario and Alberta voiced their concerns about the impact of the changes and their implementation. The in-camera Board discussion will assess whether these PCFs should
  • be approved with additional impact analysis being done (currently not stating quantitative benefits)
  • be approved in principle for a later code cycle to allow the embodied GHG work to take place and further impact analysis to be done
  • not be approved in this code cycle

During the discussion about the approval of the changes, where observers like CHBA could ask questions, the provincial Co-Chair noted that:  

• The Impact Analysis report of the Phase 3 work (in which CHBA took part) would be published on the CBHCC website soon. The provincial Co-Chair also clarified that the impact analysis for changes in the 2030 codes would require a regional costing and a cumulative (all changes) costing for all changes that relate to Part 9 Housing (rather than just single-family homes). This is important since  a large portion of new housing will likely be multi-family type housing.
• A new 'appeal'-like process had been introduced, called Process Review Request, which could be requested within 15 days of a committee decision being made, but that this 'appeal' process could not apply to decisions taken by the CBHCC itself. Rather the accountability for CBHCC decisions would lie with the provincial Deputy Ministers for local governments, called the Canadian Table for Harmonized Construction Codes.

For more information, contact Frank Lohmann