Bill 79: The Need to modernize municipal planning regulations

Mélissa Gélinas

On December 5, 2024, during the committee meeting at the National Assembly of Quebec, Nathalie Prudhomme, President of the Ordre des urbanistes du Québec (OUQ), and David Alfaro-Clark, Communications and Government Relations Advisor, spoke on Bill 79, which aims to modernize the contractual management framework of municipalities and reduce the administrative formalities affecting municipal organizations.

“The context of the housing crisis has largely been attributed to the regulatory burden in municipalities,” said Prudhomme. “It is one of the causes, but not the only one.”

According to Caroline Murray, municipal councillor for the district of Deschênes, cities play a front-line role as local governments. “Working so close to the ground means being directly confronted with concrete and complex issues, whether they are housing, transportation or the environment,” she said. “It requires a unique ability to land projects and implement adapted solutions. That’s why it’s important for Quebec to recognize these challenges by adapting the laws to facilitate the work of municipalities.”

Furthermore, the government’s Bill 31 granted municipal councils the power to approve housing projects that do not comply with urban planning regulations, and this, through discretionary measures. Although the OUQ supports densification and redevelopment, it nevertheless calls for an overall vision where densification is considered, planned and ordered.

“In Bill 79, the power is expanded to explicitly authorize mixed projects, provided that they are predominantly residential,” commented Nathalie Prudhomme. According to her, this expansion could be beneficial if it promotes local services for new residents.

“However, we believe that this expansion should not be used to authorize major redevelopment projects with a strong commercial component,” she emphasized. “In this sense, we should not give a fast track to projects that are up to 50% non-residential by invoking the housing crisis,” she continued. According to Prudhomme, it would be recommended to reduce the non-residential proportion, by increasing the rate of the minimum residential threshold or by limiting non-residential uses to the ground floor only.

Beyond these changes, the government must pursue reforming the Land Use Planning and Development Act, which allows residents to participate in consultations on decision-making in land use planning and urban planning.

Concerning the reduction of time limits for government notices, the bill proposes a reduction in the legal time limits for submitting notices on compliance with government guidelines and at the level of metropolitan land use and development plans (PMAD). “The government would have 45 instead of 60 days to respond to changes to the PMAD plan,” explained Prudhomme. “The Order welcomes this change, because one of the challenges of the Quebec land use planning system is the existence of different planning levels and the delays created by this reality,” she added.

For these reasons, the OUQ wishes to make adjustments while proposing various amendments to the Land Use Planning and Development Act.

“However, for cities to fully play their role as partners in major national projects, it is urgent to resolve the underlying problem: municipal taxation,” said Murray.