The Kyrax Brief
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Vancouver Put a Price on Filing Before September 30. It Comes to $370 Million.
Vancouver's new Amenity Cost Charge takes effect September 30. Applications in-stream before then are exempt — and the City's own report projects it will forgo $370–380 million because of it.
Read the analysisView Royal Hit 4% of Its Housing Target. Six Months Later, 263%.
Ten BC municipalities must file Year 2 housing target reports by September 14. We read all ten Year 1 reports and every ministerial order behind them. The Province's half-year numbers predicted almost nothing.
Read moreBC Is Rewriting the Law That Cost Lytton Homeowners $82,000
The Heritage Conservation Act is being overhauled, with amendments expected this fall. We read the technical policy paper. Rebuilding a house on the same footprint would need no archaeological assessment at all.
Read moreVancouver Halved Its Permit Time. Calgary Is Slipping.
Every builder in BC believes Vancouver is slow and Alberta is fast. We measured 246,000 building permits. The gap has narrowed from 6.7x to 2.6x in three years, and Calgary is the one heading the wrong way.
Read moreFive Years, Twenty Homes: What Actually Slows a Wildfire Rebuild
Rebuilding a house takes about a year. In BC it has been taking three to five. We pulled the permit records from Lytton, Jasper and McDougall Creek to find out where the time actually goes.
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Join the listThe figures, one question at a time.
- Which Metro Vancouver city takes the longest to issue a building permit? Of the municipalities that publish both an application and an issue date, the City of North Vancouver: its median permit took 112 days in 2026 against Vancouver's 62, slower in every year we can measure. Surrey, New Westminster and Delta publish no application date in their open data, so they cannot be ranked.
- Does the City of Surrey publish building permit approval times? Yes, as a rolling average: Surrey's permitting timelines page reported 5.7 weeks for a new single-family or duplex building permit and 3.3 weeks for a residential addition or renovation as of September 14, 2026, but its open data carries no application date, so those figures cannot be independently checked.
- How much will Vancouver's Amenity Cost Charge rise in 2027? For residential above 1.5 floor space ratio, from $53.82 to $110.87 per square metre on September 30, 2027. That is a 106% step rather than the 3% inflationary adjustment every other category gets, because Council phased that one rate in at half price for its first year.
- How long does a building permit take in Vancouver? The City of Vancouver issued its median building permit 62 days after application in 2026, down from 118 days in 2022; by the City's own type of work, additions and alterations took a median 32 days and new buildings 168.
- How long does a building permit take in Calgary? The City of Calgary issued its median building permit 24 days after application in 2026, the high point of a pattern that has alternated year to year since 2021 (23 in 2024, 16 in 2025); residential improvement projects took 21 days and commercial or multi-family projects 41.
- Do you have to live on the property to have a secondary suite in Metro Vancouver? Only in the City of Langley, of the four municipalities checked. Its Zoning Bylaw 2025 No. 3300 requires the registered owner to live on the lot and caps a suite at 100 m². Burnaby's zoning has no such condition, though it requires a business licence if you rent without living there.
- Do I need a plumbing permit to replace a toilet in Metro Vancouver? Not in Vancouver, Coquitlam or the District of North Vancouver, whose by-laws exempt replacing a toilet (Vancouver and the District only where no piping changes). Surrey's permit page exempts it too, but Surrey's Plumbing By-law No. 6569 does not.
- Do I need a building permit to renovate a bathroom in Surrey, BC? Usually, yes: the City of Surrey requires a building permit for interior renovation work in a house, with plumbing and electrical permits after it, and fines unpermitted work $400 to $50,000 per offence. Its plumbing permit page exempts fixture replacement; its Plumbing By-law does not.
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