I also acknowledge that no illustration is perfect and I’m sure this will annoy a number of people.

But it’s very difficult to explain all of the unnecessary red tape that has pushed housing well outside of the range of what most people can afford.

There are times when this process is good & inspectors need to oversee a build.

But bill 216 is trying to address the many times this process isn’t required—when highly educated, licensed and insured architects and engineers are taking full responsibility for a building project.

I often wonder why they do this. Why orgs like UBCM can’t see that housing is already so well regulated without them, and is overseen by many well educated people who take responsibility for each building.

Many people often wonder why new housing is so much more expensive to build now than in the past.

One of the main reasons is that over the decades, municipalities have inserted themselves more and more in every part of the process, adding more requirements, more costs and fees along the way.

If the municipal micromanaging review process were applied to doctors and nurses, would they find some minor mistakes?Sometimes.

But would care really be better?

Would care be efficient?

Would care be less expensive?

Would patients’ outcome be better?

Once care is finished, the team of doctors submits a final care plan to the municipality (As built drawings and confirmation they’ll assume final liability).

The municipality reviews this plan and may once again require changes before the patient can leave the hospital (occupancy permit).

Doctors would have the option to go to an overseeing body on medical care and seek a many week or many month review of the municipal order, but again, care cannot continue until this is resolved.

The nursing staff and doctors have to agree to these changes, even if they conflict with their opinion of modern medicine (building code again). If they disagree, care of the patient cannot continue.

These officials, who declare zero legal responsibility or liability for the project (see municipal bylaws), critique the work and may require changes before a patient can continue to receive care.

This is often at a critical point in care and after doctors have determined that the care is correct.

Periodically, municipalities would require that they be notified so that they can send someone with typically much less education* (building inspectors) out to review the care being provided by the team of doctors and nurses.

(*Many inspectors, like many builders, are very experienced)

Once the doctors agree to these changes, care would finally be allowed to begin by the nursing team under the watchful eye of the team of doctors.

This group of municipal staff, who are siloed from each other, would then require the team of doctors to make often conflicting revisions to these plans — refusing to allow care to begin until these revisions were included and their conflicting requirements sorted out.

Every carefully developed care plan written by the team of doctors would need to be submitted to a municipality.

This plan would be reviewed over months by a variety of municipal staff who are not doctors, and many of whom have limited experience in the day to day delivery of care.

Now imagine that municipalities were involved in the health care process to the level they are with housing.

Each doctor and nurse must be licensed under a provincially regulated overseeing body, who may sanction the practitioner, or remove their license, if they make a serious mistake or a series of mistakes in their work.

A team of experienced nurses (licensed contractors, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, etc) come in and provide day to day care to that patient under the watchful eye of the team of doctors (architects and engineers) who periodically review progress and direct nurses to make adjustments if needed.

If you go to the hospital with a serious medical condition, you are admitted & put under the care of a doctor (The Architect). That doctor brings in a handful of specialists (The engineers) who together come up with a care plan (Building permit drawings) according to modern medicine (building code).

Thanks for your work on this, Patrick. What a great profile of our cool and growing cycling network.

Congrats on the approval! Although you might set a world record for lowest-risk building to have a pressurized stairway. I doubt there is a single three-story, small residential building in the world with one.