Ontario Is Building Fast. Engineers Are Making Sure It Gets Built Right.

Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026, moves quickly. That is the point. Ontario needs housing, transit, and the infrastructure to support both. OSPE’s submission to the Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy in April is the engineering community’s contribution to making sure that the province builds with the speed to satisfy the imminent need and the quality to ensure reliable, affordable, and efficient infrastructure for years to come.  

OSPE’s Stance on Bill 98 

1. OSPE supports the proposed Building Code review. Bill 98 proposes a section-by-section review of the Building Code through a new expert advisory body. The process should be guided by evidence-based research and led by professionals with technical rigour. OSPE has asked for a formal consultative role for our members in the new advisory body because it matters that professional engineers are privy to Building Code changes for the safety of the public.    

2. We support fare and transit integration. The Fare Alignment and Seamless Transit Act within Bill 98 takes a systems-level view of transit, which is aligned with how engineers think about mobility. A connected provincial transit network will do more than move people. It will disperse housing demand beyond the GTA core, making communities like Hamilton, Barrie, and Oshawa more viable for people who work in Toronto. When it comes to expanding housing options, this is a key factor in improving affordability. The ministerial powers in this bill will drive fleet procurement decisions, station design, maintenance capacity, and network planning. Engineering expertise needs to be embedded in how those decisions get made. 

3. Housing built under Bill 98 cannot proceed without the water and wastewater capacity to support it. Centralized wastewater treatment has served Ontario well, but it is not the only model. Distributed wastewater treatment and resource recovery facilities offer real advantages for infrastructure resilience, particularly as Ontario communities face the need to adapt existing systems. Bill 98 is an opportunity to evaluate where decentralized approaches make sense alongside traditional systems. 

4. The proposed green development standards give engineers pause. Bill 98 limits what municipalities can require beyond the provincial Building Code baseline on climate and sustainability measures. Our concern is not with the principle of consistency; it is with the timing. If the Building Code is not yet updated to reflect current climate conditions, restricting municipal authority creates a gap where local flood risk, urban heat island effects, and other site-specific stresses go unaddressed in building requirements. Meeting only the minimum standards designed for yesterday’s conditions can produce higher costs over a building’s lifetime.  

5. Procurement practices will have a significant influence on the outcome. Bill 98 will generate a high volume of new development and infrastructure investment. That investment will need professional engineering services, and a lot of them. OSPE has advocated persistently for Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS) as the standard for procuring those services, and our submission to the Committee renewed that call explicitly. 

The logic of QBS is straightforward. Lowest-price procurement in engineering is a false economy. It consistently produces more change orders, higher operational costs, and more expensive retrofits down the line. The apparent savings at the front end get paid back with interest over the life of the project. QBS, which prioritizes demonstrated competence and relevant experience before a fair fee is negotiated is the standard in the United States and in other Canadian jurisdictions and the evidence supporting improved performance and cost savings is clear.  

Ontario should adopt it for all professional engineering and design services connected to projects enabled or funded under this bill. 

Bill 98 is ambitious legislation for a genuinely difficult problem. Ontario needs more housing and it needs it faster. The engineering community is not here to slow that down. We are here to help the province build infrastructure that performs for decades, not just for the ribbon-cutting. 

We encourage you to continue the conversation on this topic by joining OSPE’s Online Community.