This one-day public meeting of the CBHCC (Board) followed a day of in-camera meeting of the Board with the Chairs of the Standing Committees.

Transition to the New Codes System - The meeting marked the launch of the new operation procedures and new committee structures and process adjustments, which were explained by Codes Canada Staff and the two Co-Chairs (NRC Construction Director General, Thomas Ferguson and Jun'ichi Jensen from the BC Building Safety Standards Branch)).

Code Process Timelines - NRC announced that

• an 'ad-hoc' winter public review will take place for the proposed change related to overheating from January 20 to February 24, 2025
• the Code User’s Guides, including the illustrated guide for Part 9, are expected to be published in the Fall 2024
• a callout for Association Stakeholder memberships should come in the near future (this is similar to the key stakeholder category that CHBA staff currently fills on the standing committees)
• the last possibility of approvals for proposed changes to make it into the 2025 codes is at the next public Board meeting in winter 2025 (probably March)

New Committee Structure - The Board thanked the Standing Committee Chairs and all the volunteers and announced the incoming chairs for the committees, which are now called National Model Code Committees. Rick Gratton, CHBA member and from Brookfield in Calgary Alberta is the going to be the Chair for the new Housing Supply Committee, which will review codes to remove barriers for innovative forms of housing (modular, tiny homes, single-exit buildings, etc) 

The Fenestration industry expressed concerns with approval of important changes (PCF 1823, max. Solar Heat Gain coefficients) and the lack of continuity with completely new committees. The Board Chairs confirmed that arrangements like Task Groups will allow continuity from the current to the new systems.
The Board had a good discussion with observers on the future of Part 9 (which is not reflected in the current committee structure) and the role of Association Stakeholder members (which cannot attend Working Groups anymore). A Board member assured the associations that the operating procedures and committee structures can be and likely will be adjusted to fit the needs of the new codes system and that the intent of the Board and Codes Canada is to engage and involve the industry associations as much as they are currently involved.

Triaging the backlog of code change requests (CCR) - NRC presented the new process for CCRs and reported that over the last year a backlog of 700 CCRs has been triaged. The title of the CCRs will soon be available status on the CBHCC website. The triage process has categorized the CCRs into those aligned with the strategic priorities and those that are not as well as those coming from governments and those coming from code users. Some CCRs have been slated for 2035 codes, which prompted suggestions to simply reject them and asking proponents to resubmit them, when appropriate. All triaged CCRs are available in full on NRC's teamwork site (free account login req'd)

Approval of Proposed Changes (PCF) - The Board approved the proposed changes going into the next public review. After industry expressed concerns about code change subjects being split across different public reviews, Codes Canada confirmed that PCF 1950 will be attached to PCF 1951 during public review as they both address water drainage at door and window rough openings. 

After a detailed review of the possible committee actions on PCF 1998 (New Firefighter Objective) the Board agreed to approve the PCF for the 2030(!) code pending the outcome of the research and analysis that NRC Staff is doing. While they approved it rather than abandon it, which some commentors (including CHBA) suggested, the deferring to the 2030 codes is welcome news for this politically-motived

Updates to the Impact Analysis Guidelines - The Board approved the report from the Joint Task Group on Impact Analysis Phase 3, which introduces the need to regional impact analysis, which was already applied to the current cycle. The report also propose a cumulative cost-benefit analysis across all applicable proposed changes related to dwelling units (Part 9 and other buildings) over a set of 5 housing archetype plans, which was not applied in the current code cycle. NRC confirmed that there are no plans to perform such analysis for the 2025 code changes. The Board and the Advisory Council Chairs also confirmed that there are no plans to continue the work of this Task Group or any other work on housing affordability.