RESCON: Paying the price for a cumbersome planning and permitting process

Approval timelines have barely budged., this should alarm the housing sector and anyone who cares about housing affordability,

Published Jul 10, 2026  •  3 minute read

Cumbersome planning and permitting processes have become one of the most persistent barriers to getting shovels in the ground. Every delay adds cost, erodes project viability and makes it harder to deliver homes when and where they are needed..

Ontario has spent the last several years talking a good game on housing. Queen’s Park has pledged billions for housing acceleration, permitting modernization and municipal technology upgrades and it has pushed cities to speed approvals, loosen red tape and get more homes built.

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Yet approval timelines have barely budged.

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That should alarm the housing sector and anyone who cares about housing affordability, supply or the health of Ontario’s residential construction industry. It is also why the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) decided to formally join One Ontario’s AI for Housing Coalition.

The goal of the coalition goes to the heart of one of the province’s biggest self-inflicted housing problems, the fact that Ontario still runs development approvals through a fragmented, inconsistent and often painfully slow patchwork of municipal systems.

That is the key point behind One Ontario’s pitch for a unified, province-wide, AI-enabled permitting platform. The coalition argues that Ontario continues to operate hundreds of disconnected permitting environments, each with its own rules, software, workflows and data standards.

Builders, planners and consultants often have to navigate multiple portals, inconsistent requirements, repeated requests for the same information and endless back-and-forth between departments and agencies. Even when municipalities invest in new software, those systems frequently remain isolated from one another.

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Cumbersome planning and permitting processes have become one of the most persistent barriers to getting shovels in the ground. Every delay adds cost, erodes project viability and makes it harder to deliver homes when and where they are needed.

RESCON is not a peripheral voice in this debate. It represents builders, the ones who are most affected by approval bottlenecks. If anyone understands what fragmented approvals do to timelines, budgets and housing supply, it is the people trying to move projects through the system every day.

For years, RESCON has warned that the homebuilding sector is operating in one of the toughest environments it has ever faced. In our 2026 Ontario budget submission, we pointed to cumbersome planning approvals, restrictive regulatory policies and weak housing starts as major obstacles to meeting demand.

Delayed approvals mean delayed homes, higher carrying costs, less predictability and fewer projects that pencil out.

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By joining the coalition as development partner, RESCON is doing more than lending its logo to a policy cause. It is taking a seat at the table in the design of a proposed solution.

One Ontario’s coalition structure is meant to combine three different kinds of expertise. LandLogic provides the technology backbone – the end-to-end AI, data and platform infrastructure required to build and operate the system. RCI Lab brings regulatory intelligence and compliance expertise, with the aim of ensuring the platform’s rules, workflows and automation are transparent, explainable and aligned with planning and permitting requirements. RESCON contributes the housing delivery perspective through

industry leadership, policy expertise, strategic guidance and government-relations insight to keep the platform grounded in real-world development challenges.

Permitting reform has too often failed in Ontario by tackling only one side of the problem. Governments announce new funding or legislative tweaks. Municipalities buy new software.

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Industry groups publish reports and plead for action. But without common standards, shared data and a co-ordinated process, the system remains disjointed.

The long-term vision of this coalition is a single permitting dashboard that manages approvals from start to finish. In theory, the platform would identify project requirements, prepare and submit applications, co-ordinate reviews, track progress and guide applicants through decisions.

AI has the potential to automate repetitive administrative work, flag missing requirements early, co-ordinate workflows, surface regulatory issues faster and reduce the maddening amount of manual re-entry and document chasing that clogs the system today.

Technology is not a magic wand. A province-wide platform will not, on its own, solve policy disagreements, staffing shortages or local political resistance to growth. Municipal buy-in will be essential.

But if Ontario is serious about housing supply, it has to be just as serious about approvals infrastructure.

RESCON’s decision to join the One Ontario coalition signals that the industry most affected by delays wants to help build something more coherent. If the coalition can help change that, it deserves serious support.

Richard Lyall is president of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON). He has represented the building industry in Ontario since 1991. Contact him at [email protected].

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