Column: Renovation permits cost twice as much in Vancouver as in North Van, where the chief building official says staff pride themselves "with taking the lightest touch possible to get the maximum amount of regulatory compliance."
How many city workers does it take to change a toilet?
It seems like the number of Vancouver City Hall employees handling the paperwork for a bathroom renovation is likely higher than other Canadian cities. But it’s not clear why.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) released a report this week that reviews municipal processes for converting a powder room into a full bathroom in 12 cities across all 10 provinces.
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CFIB policy analyst Emily Boston said the report’s goal is to show that if Canada hopes to make progress on its lofty targets for housing production, major improvements are needed to municipal permitting processes.
“This powder room renovation really serves as a microcosm of what the broader issues are, to get new builds done.”
The CFIB compared the cost of permits and volume of paperwork. Vancouver was at the top of both categories.
That result came as little surprise to Chris Gardner, president of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association, a B.C. construction industry group.
“Report after report, study after study says the same thing,” Gardner said.
A C.D. Howe Institute report released last May and a report from the Canadian Home Builders Association’s annual benchmarking study both looked at cities across Canada and singled out Vancouver for particularly high government costs on and “barriers” to construction.
“That’s commonly known in the industry,” Gardner said.
When Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, a businessman himself, and his ABC Vancouver party swept to power with a commanding 2022 election win, cutting red tape and making it easier to do business with city hall were core parts of their platform.
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The findings of this week’s CFIB report — and the consensus you might hear from people who regularly do business with city hall — suggest that not all the red tape has been cleared since ABC and Sim took over.
Reached for comment, Sim sent an emailed statement saying: “We’re dedicated to making Vancouver more efficient and business-friendly by streamlining processes and cutting bureaucracy.”
Sim pointed to two new changes that came into effect this year: a simplified rainwater management process for new homes will reduce the wait from 56 weeks to three, Sim said, and certain types of sprinkler permits can now be issued within 24 hours.
Asked about the CFIB findings, the City of Vancouver said the federation’s calculations were inaccurate. But the city’s own estimate — around $1,179 — would still make Vancouver the costliest permit, by far, of any of the 12 municipalities tallied by the CFIB.
Why are these permits more expensive in Vancouver than elsewhere?
The city didn’t answer that question. Neither did Sim.
Both did, however, provide updates about work underway in Vancouver to improve permit times and cut red tape. Some of this work predates the current city council, like the force struck in 2020 under the previous council, aiming to identify opportunities to reduce processing times and clear backlogs.
Other moves have come from the ABC council, like the “3-3-3-1 initiative” Sim cited, which council approved last year directing staff to work toward reducing approval times to three days for renovations, three weeks for single-family homes and townhouses, three months for mid-rise projects and one year for large-scale projects.
Asked whether there were any publicly accessible metrics to track progress on the 3-3-3-1 goals, Sim’s written response said: “We are hopeful to make this data available to the public in the future.”
Gardner said he’s glad that Sim and ABC have at least raised this as a priority and publicly committed to cutting red tape, but after a little more than one year into ABC’s four-year term in office, it’s still too early to expect huge changes in this area.
But Gardner hopes “they make a lot more progress” in this area between now and the 2026 election. For many people, he said, that will influence their decision on whether this council has “earned another mandate.”
Vancouver was the only B.C. municipality included in CFIB’s national study. Postmedia News reached out to some other Lower Mainland cities, and it appears at least some other nearby city halls can permit a bathroom renovation for a fraction of the cost of Vancouver.
B.C.’s second most populous city, Surrey, was lower than Vancouver’s permit cost, but not by much: Surrey’s estimate came to $1,009.
Estimates provided this week by other B.C. cities were also lower than Vancouver, including New Westminster (where necessary permits totalled $1,020), Coquitlam ($968), Richmond ($777) and Abbotsford ($604).
The City of North Vancouver, meanwhile, appears to be able to permit bathroom renos at a fraction of the price of its neighbour across Burrard Inlet.
North Vancouver City’s chief building official, Tim Ryce, ran the numbers and estimated this reno would cost $226 for the building permit, $100 for plumbing and just $153 for electrical — a total of $479, less than half of Vancouver (or Surrey or New West).
Despite North Van’s cheaper permitting, the city doesn’t appear to be plagued by exploding toilets.
The city sticks to its safety standards, Ryce said.
“It’s not the Wild West here, it’s not fully unregulated and you have your way with everything,” Ryce said. “But we do pride ourselves at the city with taking the lightest touch possible to get the maximum amount of regulatory compliance.
“The more challenging that a municipality is, the more likely that applicant might do that work without permit.
“And that’s a real risk for everyone involved. Not just for the city, but for the homeowner, the future tenants, someone that’s going to live there. We want to know that that project has been renovated or built in accordance with the minimum requirements that we are accustomed to: you lean on a guardrail, it stays in place. You put a plug into a wall, and it works, it doesn’t shock you. We take that for granted, and a lot of that comes from the fact that most of our work is not chased underground by onerous challenges.”
In Vancouver, where the permitting process has long been widely viewed as onerous, there are real examples of people doing work without permits — including some of those who should know better.
A decade ago, Vancouver’s deputy chief building official was caught doing renovations on her home without the necessary permits. Following an investigation launched by a complaint from an internal whistleblower, the staffer resigned from her $137,676-a-year job, former Vancouver Sun city hall reporter Jeff Lee reported in 2014.
“When you are the statutory officer that is responsible for enforcing that bylaw, it is a much, much higher level of scrutiny and significance, obviously,” former city manager Penny Ballem said at the time.
dfumano@postmedia.com
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