Ontario makes emergency 24-hour movement of goods permanent for retail and restaurants

Yesterday, Ontario issued letters (French here) to all 444 Ontario municipalities indicating that the two off-peak delivery legislative changes introduced in Bill 215, Main Street Recovery Act, 2020 to the Municipal Act, 2001 and City of Toronto Act, 2006 will come into force on September 19, 2021. The Ontario government directly engaged with RCC over Bill 215 to ensure that this policy was made permanent for both retail and restaurants.

Those changes make permanent certain emergency orders that exempt retailers and restaurants from all municipal noise by-laws for the purposes of delivery. In addition, warehouses, depot or distribution centres owned or operated by a retail business, restaurants, couriers or messengers have the same exemption. For more granular definitions, see StatCan’s NAICS, specifically codes 44, 45, 492 and 72. In other words, retail and restaurants can deliver 24-hours a day to and from distribution centres.

This success comes after years of piloting off-peak delivery by RCC and members, and following successful advocacy by RCC for the emergency provisions.