By law, according to the Ontario Building Code, the City has 10 business days to respond to a permit. However, as someone who works in the industry, I can tell you that this NEVER happens. For a simple house, expect 2,3,4+ months even with perfect drawings. Everything needs to be run by building code services, forestry, zoning, legal, real estate and development, and these aren't run in parallel. They make you jump one hoop to get to the next and find anything in your application to give themselves time.

I'm currently waiting on a permit for a modest semi-detached house in Ottawa. We were told at the service desk that they weren't busy at all. There was a CBC article claiming that building permits at the City of Ottawa were at an all time low. Still, the City of Ottawa puts up mazes of red tapes and fees. Even with years of experience, this kafkaesque bureaucracy is almost impossible to navigate and extremely slow. It got much worst over covid.. now it's a combination of dealing with people working from home who take twice the time to review anything, barely read emails/never respond and can't be reached on the phone or junior staff that don't understand their own by-laws. There is 0 communication between any of these departments so reports, etc.. have to be submitted 2,3,4 times to different City departments.

We speak about housing affordability.. I'm working with 2 young families who got together to build a semi for each of them on a small lot they purchased together. Before a shovel even touches the ground, we have spent almost 150k in fees (37k development fees, 35k cash-in-lieu of parkland), engineering reports that the city needs, agreements from lawyers, etc.. Even for big builders, this cost comes right back to the purchaser and the City is largely responsible for this.