Latest News

New and Amending Regulations Under the Planning Act and the City of Toronto Act, 2006 - Certified Professionals

March 3, 2026

The Province has provided an update regarding the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, 2025 (Bill 17) which received Royal Assent on June 5, 2025. Bill 17 made changes to the Planning Act and the City of Toronto Act, 2006 to create regulation-making authority for the Minister to scope complete application requirements by, among other things, providing greater recognition of planning studies and reports prepared by certified professionals. 


New and amending regulations under the Planning Act and City of Toronto Act, 2006 have been filed to specify professional engineers as "certified professionals" for the purposes of a complete application. 
The identification of professional engineering as a prescribed profession for the purposes of a complete application is intended to help speed up planning approvals and reduce some initial application costs for development applications. This provides greater recognition of reports prepared by professional engineers and requires municipalities to automatically accept these studies or reports in the first instance as satisfying complete application requirements. 

These changes were filed on January 22, 2026 and took effect upon filing.

Below are links to the new and amended regulations:

Updates have also been made to the ERO posting available through this link https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/025-0462