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A growing number of Canadian municipalities are integrating sustainability in their planning process — through sustainable community plans, integrated community sustainability plans, local action plans, long-range sustainability plans, smart growth initiatives, community improvement plans and Local Agenda 21 plans.
Planning is a complex process in itself, but developing the policies and bylaws needed to support the plans can be an added challenge. GMF recently launched the Municipal Sustainable Bylaw Collection — a resource highlighting excellent examples of bylaws, policies and procedures implemented by small and large Canadian municipalities in each sector of activity supported by GMF.
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The energy sector features several examples of bylaws and policies on sustainable buildings*:
- The City of Vancouver’s Green Building Strategy Bylaw (2008) establishes criteria for housing components such as windows, light fixtures, energy use display meters, hot water tanks, gas-fuelled fireplaces, toilets, heat recovery ventilators, and EnerGuide rating system audits.
- The City of Calgary's Sustainable Building Policy (2004) ensures that city facilities are designed, developed and operated to demonstrate leadership in environmental conservation, protection, improvement and sustainability.
- The Town of Canmore's Green Building Policy (2007) requires applicants for development or building permits to achieve third-party sustainable development certification through a recognized program — such as LEED®, Built Green™
or R-2000 — or to comply with the town’s Green Building Checklist.
- The Town of East Gwillimbury’s Energy Star Policy for Residential Developments (2006) requires all new residential developments needing site plan or subdivision approval to be built according to Energy Star guidelines.
- The City of Kingston’s Municipal Green Building Policy (2008) requires new municipal buildings to achieve a minimum LEED® Silver certification and a minimum energy-efficiency level of 42 per cent, and all major retrofits to undertake a feasibility assessment to achieve LEED® certification and an energy-efficiency level of 33 per cent better than the Model National Energy Code.
- The City of Ottawa’s Green Building Policy (2005) requires all new construction with a footprint of greater than 500 square metres to achieve LEED® certification and encourages all retrofit and renovation projects to apply sustainable design principles.
- The City of Montréal’s Politique de développement durable pour les bâtiments municipaux (2009) requires all new municipal buildings to be LEED® Gold certified and all major renovations to be LEED® Silver certified.
*websites available in English (or French) only.
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