After a year of operational upheaval and more modifications to electricity pricing policies, BOMA Toronto’s annual workshop to address the complexities of the global adjustment had a lot of ground to cover.

Economic fallout from COVID-19 is shifting more of the tax burden to this flourishing group of assets via the mill rate, while also driving up the tax rate, for a double-whammy of consequences in jurisdictions that update valuations annually.

The flat license rate will penalize mid-rise and high-rise owners with extra costs if an elevator passes the periodic inspection and does not require a follow-up. It will be a bargain if just one follow-up inspection is required.

A new slate of conservation and demand management (CDM) programs allocates $456 million for commercial, institutional and industrial consumers over the four-year period from 2021-24.

For now, residential and small business customers enrolled for either time-of-use (TOU) rates or tiered pricing under the provincial regulated price plan will be charged the off-peak TOU rate of 8.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for all electricity consumption.

Resident British Columbians own about 30 per cent of the properties subject to the speculation and vacancy tax, but account for just 6.6 per cent of collected revenue.

Although they increasingly rely on professional service providers to keep up with the complexities of compliance, owners/managers ultimately carry the responsibility for life safety and bear the brunt of enforcement.

Efficiency Canada’s second annual provincial scorecard takes a detailed look at commitment, outcomes and potential related to 42 energy efficiency indicators, and charts progress, or backsliding, against last year’s results.

As announced in the provincial budget, the Ontario government plans to equalize the business education tax (BET) rate at 0.88 per cent for 2021, equating to a $450-million tax cut province-wide.

The commercial property tax rate is at least double the residential rate in eight of the 11 surveyed cities, with commercial ratepayers in Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City shouldering the most disproportionate shares.

A recycled title adorns the Ontario government's latest initiative to be framed as red tape reduction. Bill 213, the Better for People, Smarter for Business Act, 2020, is an omnibus effort to amend more than two dozen statutes.

After scrambling to recalibrate their models in the early days of COVID-19-related shutdowns, analysts with Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator faced more uncharted territory when the hot weather arrived.

Proposals address a range of issues that are likely to be of interest to listed real estate entities and their investors, as well as start-up ventures and other publicly traded service providers to the industry.

The World Trade Organization agreed with Canada that the U.S. conflated wholesale and retail electricity rates to arrive at its supposition that B.C. and Quebec hydro utilities overpaid for biomass power.

Commercial real estate specialists are noting a recent Quebec superior court decision with interest, suggesting it could become a beacon for other tenants seeking rent relief.

Residential consumption is identified as a primary concern and opportunity for the 2021-24 period, along with a continued emphasis on reducing system-wide peak demand

Canada once again places in the top tier of “highly transparent” nations in the newly released 2020 edition of the JLL/LaSalle Global Real Estate Transparency Index.