M216: Professional Reliance Act

TLDR: There’s a private member’s bill from George Anderson (NDP MLA for Nanaimo-Lantzville), under which engineers or architects rather than municipal regulators would bear the responsibility for technical work, and the liability in case of problems. This seems like a reasonable idea. I’m not sure why it’s a private member’s bill.

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Who’s responsible for an unsafe design?

RidgeView Place is an 11-storey, 90-unit apartment building in Langford, completed in 2019. It’s been vacant since April 2023 because it’s unsafe.

The owner, Centurion, is currently suing the engineering firm and the engineer responsible, as well as the Langford municipal government. Negligence claims in twice-evacuated highrise case cast shadow over Langford. Ben Furion, Victoria News, November 2025. The lawsuit was dismissed by the BC Supreme Court, but their decision was set aside by the BC Court of Appeal.

Langford is one of several defendants listed in Centurion’s lawsuit, first filed in October 2020, alleging “negligence in the design and construction of the building.” Also listed are DB Services, Loco Investments and several people linked to Sorensen Trilogy, including engineer Brian McClure.

McClure was fined and stripped of his licence to practice professional engineering in B.C. in 2022, after he admitted to Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia (EGBC) during disciplinary proceedings that he was unqualified for the job and failed to design the building to code.

Centurion is also suing the Langford municipal government for failing to detect the design problems during the approval process.

According to an updated civil claim submitted by Centurion in October, Langford issued a building permit in January 2018 without confirming the original design complied with the building bylaw or the BC Building Code.

Centurion’s filing says the plans submitted by builders DB Services to Langford “lacked design criteria, calculations and other pertinent information necessary to verify compliance …”

The original design drawings prepared by engineers Sorenson Trilogy, also “contained deficiencies” making them “non-compliant.”

When Langford considered the application in late 2017, “missing details and other omissions” were identified. However, they “failed to identify any of the structural drawing code compliance issues,” Centurion claims.

Should municipal planners be responsible for finding this kind of error? It seems difficult, given that they’re not engineers themselves.

M216: it’s the responsibility of the engineer

George Anderson served as a city councillor in Nanaimo, one of the youngest ever elected, when he was a full-time criminology student at VIU. He went on to study law at Osgoode Hall, and to practice law in Toronto and Vancouver. He’s now the NDP MLA for Nanaimo-Lantzville.

Anderson has proposed a private member’s bill, M216, which addresses the question of responsibility, putting it entirely on the engineer or architect, and not at all on the municipal government. It seems pretty clear:

2 A local government must accept, as meeting permit or bylaw requirements, any submission certified by a PGA professional [registered with a professional body governed by the Professional Governance Act] acting within their regulated scope of practice, unless

(a) the submission is incomplete, or
(b) a complaint in respect of the submission has been made to the superintendent.

7 A PGA professional who has provided a certification referred to in section 2 or 5 [peer review] is liable for damages resulting from any harm that is caused by reliance on the certification for the purposes of this Act.

8 No legal proceeding for damages lies or may be commenced or maintained against a local government in respect of a submission certified by a PGA professional.

Sasha Izard of CRD Watch (like a Victoria-focused version of CityHallWatch) has posted a letter by George Anderson to municipal councillors. It includes a briefing note, a Q&A section, and letters of support from Homes for People (a pro-housing group in Victoria), the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, and UDI.

From the briefing note, describing how it works:

• If a professional certified under the Professional Governance Act (PGA) seals their work, local governments can accept it without a second technical peer review.

• The professional remains fully liable and accountable through their regulatory body (Architectural Institute of British Columbia, Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia, etc.).

• Municipalities maintain control over zoning, design guidelines, and policy decisions — this reform only streamlines technical approvals.

• Disputes between professionals can be referred to the Office of the Superintendent of Professional Governance (OSPG).

From the Q&A section:

Q9: What about Ridgeview Place in Langford? Couldn’t this potentially lead to more of that?

A: The issues at Ridgeview Place occurred under the existing system and partially informed this bill. This bill would make it clear that the professionals remain fully liable and accountable through their regulatory body. Further clarifying that local governments will not be liable for the actions of certified professionals.

The letter also links to an op-ed by Mark MacDonald, describing the basic problem:

Why is housing in B.C. so much more expensive than most provinces in Canada?

There are several reasons, but the duplication of professional services within cities is one of the biggest. Not only is it a waste of taxpayers’ money, but it makes each jurisdiction legally liable for construction deficiencies. While every project requires professional sign-offs on everything from architecture to engineering and geotechnical services that guarantee their work, the cities have created another layer of duplicate services to needlessly check that work and sign off. Except signing off on it makes the city liable for any problems with the structures.

This is expensive in terms of staff, slows the development process immensely as “busy staff” can’t approve projects as fast as necessary, and puts the city, aka taxpayers, on the hook for possible future legal action. Why? Because the city’s own professionals have taken the liability by being the last to sign off on any project.

Third-party plan checking elsewhere

Anderson notes that Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, and other BC municipalities already have programs to allow third-party certified professionals to do reviews.

Both Texas and California have introduced third-party plan checking, using a “shot clock” system. A municipal government has a specified length of time to issue a permit. If it doesn’t do so, the applicant can hire a third party to do the review and issue the permit.

A Proven Way to Ease L.A.’s Housing Crisis. Grimes, Nolan Gray, and Nicole Nosek, February 2025.

Take Texas. Until recently, cities and suburbs across the state faced similar shortages—in their case, due to a massive influx of new arrivals. In places such as Dallas, where home prices increased by roughly 50 percent from 2020 to 2023, city hall often took months to respond to applications to build housing. According to one study in Austin, every three and a half months of delays were associated with rent increases of 4 to 5 percent.

In response, a bipartisan coalition of Texas legislators passed H.B. 14 in 2023. (One of us—Nicole—advocated for the bill as the chair of Texans for Reasonable Solutions.) The law grants applicants the right to hire licensed third-party architects and engineers to review permit applications and conduct inspections if local regulators fail to act within 45 days. As a result, housing permits have surged. In Austin, home prices and rents are falling.

California YIMBY (where one of us—Nolan—oversees legislation and research) is now sponsoring A.B. 253, a state bill introduced in mid-January that would allow anyone proposing to build a project under 40 feet tall and with 10 or fewer housing units to turn to licensed third-party reviewers if regulators don’t act in 30 days.

More

• AIBC: “The bill has passed second reading and is now proceeding to committee stage, which includes an invitation for feedback from the public. Access to information about the bill and the public consultation is available on the committee website: consultation-portal.leg.bc.ca/consultations/154

  All feedback must be submitted by 3 p.m. PT on December 2, 2025.”

• Metro Vancouver mayors outraged over bill that would restrict professional peer reviews on development. Lauren Vanderdeen, CBC News.

• Owners beware? Kim Do, Clark Wilson, January 2023. Analysis of the initial BC Supreme Court decision dismissing Centurion’s negligence lawsuit.

• Alumni Spotlight on George Anderson. VIU, March 2025.