Table of Contents
Context
About the National Capital Commission
The National Capital Commission (NCC) is a federal Crown corporation created by Canada’s Parliament in 1959 under the National Capital Act. This statute defines the NCC’s mandate as being “to prepare plans for and assist in the development, conservation and improvement of the National Capital Region in order that the nature and character of the seat of the Government of Canada may be in accordance with its national significance.” The NCC’s mission is to ensure that Canada’s National Capital Region is of national significance and a source of pride for all Canadians.
The NCC fulfills this mandate through the following roles and responsibilities:
- setting the long-term planning direction, and regulating the use and development of federal lands in the National Capital Region;
- managing, conserving and protecting NCC assets (including Gatineau Park, the Greenbelt, urban parks, real property, and other assets such as bridges, pathways and parkways), as well as maintaining heritage sites in the National Capital Region, such as commemorative sites and Canada’s official residences; and
- acting as a value-added partner by encouraging creativity and innovation, and building strong relationships throughout the region and across the country, including with local municipalities and Indigenous communities.
The NCC’s regulatory responsibilities are predominantly defined by the National Capital Act. Key areas of regulatory administration under this legislation include the following:
- The federal land use, design and transaction approval (FLUDTA) process established by the National Capital Act requires NCC approval for projects and property transactions in the National Capital Region described in the legislation, involving the federal government, federal lands and buildings, or on private land that is subject to related restrictive covenants.
- Real estate transactions are a second fundamental tool applied by the NCC to fulfill its mandate and advance the priorities of the Government of Canada. These transactions are an instrument for shaping the character of the capital, enabling significant projects, supporting federal partners and other orders of government, and contributing to the vitality of the region’s economy. The National Capital Act, the Financial Administration Act, and the Crown Corporation General Regulations, 1995 define the NCC’s authority to enter into real property transactions.
- The National Capital Commission Traffic and Property Regulations include rules governing vehicle traffic on NCC roads; the use of NCC recreational pathways; and the protection of NCC property.
- The National Capital Commission Animal Regulations outline where domestic animals are permitted on NCC lands and prescribe rules that their owners must follow on these lands.
- The Leamy Lake Navigation Channel Regulations include rules, prohibitions and obligations related to entry and use of the Leamy Lake Navigation Channel, which connects the Gatineau River to Leamy Lake, a small lake in the core area of the capital that is used for recreation and leisure.
As a federal Crown corporation, the NCC is also subject to legislation and policies, which apply more generally across the government, such as the Financial Administration Act and Impact Assessment Act, along with their associated regulations, or the Contraventions Regulations, which set applicable fines for contraventions of various federal regulations.
Executive Summary
The NCC welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Government of Canada’s Red Tape Review of the federal regulatory framework to address complicated or outdated processes, unnecessary, duplicative or overly burdensome rules, or inefficient or unpredictable regulatory administration or service delivery that may present barriers to investment and growth.
The NCC has approached this initiative with a view to proposing red tape reductions across all four dimensions of regulation:
- regulatory text;
- compliance and enforcement practices, policies and guidance;
- programs to support administration; and
- service delivery.
It is striving to propose reductions that are bold, comprehensive, collaborative and impactful.
The corporation has made considerable strides in recent years through the NCC Lands for Homes program, reducing red tape in real property management; FLUDTA; and long-term land use planning. This has been done especially to support the federal government’s priority to facilitate growth in the housing supply.
The NCC’s procurement policy and practices have also recently undergone a comprehensive review, which is expected to reduce administrative burden and accelerate procurement activities, while ensuring proper oversight and adherence to procurement requirements and best practices. Procurement processes that are based on best practices also benefit the economy by reducing the burden and uncertainties for the businesses from which the NCC procures goods and services.
Through the Red Tape Review, the NCC is striving to go further. The corporation is proposing further updates to federal land use, design and transaction approvals intended to classify and triage reviews to focus time and resources on projects with the greatest potential impact on the nature and character of the National Capital Region. Changes to this approval process will enable faster and more certain outcomes for proponents submitting projects for approval, thereby facilitating investment and growth in the economy and defining the character of the capital.
The NCC has communicated to Public Services and Procurement Canada that it is interested in working with the department and central agencies to modernize the statutes and regulations that define the NCC’s roles, responsibilities and authority. Changes to the statutes and regulations could be oriented around ensuring appropriate levels and types of authority are delegated to the NCC to efficiently and effectively deliver its mandate; removing unnecessary complexity in some processes; and reducing or removing the NCC’s involvement in scenarios where other departments, agencies or orders of government are already providing sufficient regulatory oversight.
By aligning the legislation to the present-day context, there are considerable opportunities to accelerate processes, cut costs, reduce duplication, and more efficiently advance the priorities of the Government of Canada through the NCC’s mandate, while removing or reducing red tape that inhibits growth and investment in Canada’s capital.
Progress Achieved
Item 1: NCC Lands for Homes Program
Context
In accordance with its legislated mandate, the NCC has traditionally pursued land use planning, real property, land management, and regulatory activities to advance the political, administration, symbolic, heritage and conservation functions, which define the character and national significance of the capital of Canada.
As responding to the housing crisis has become a central priority for the Government of Canada, the NCC has adapted the application of the regulatory tools available to it to facilitate housing development and remove regulatory barriers to investment in housing, while continuing to support the other pillars of the NCC’s legislated mandate.
Actions
As a form of red tape reduction for housing development, the NCC is implementing the NCC Lands for Homes program across three dimensions:
- The first dimension of the program has been to work with partners to facilitate and accelerate offerings of underutilized public lands for housing development through the Canada Public Land Bank, as well as through direct transactions by the NCC.
- The second dimension has been to integrate further opportunities for housing development into the NCC’s long-term land use plans for the National Capital Region. These long-term land use plans provide guidance to the NCC when it is making determinations in its other areas of responsibility, such as the FLUDTA process.
- The third dimension of the program has been to streamline the FLUDTA process as well as its approach to fulfilling its responsibilities related to impact assessment.
More specifically, recent refinements to FLUDTA have included establishing new guidelines for ground leasing proposals, by considerably reducing the review requirements for ground leases that are unlikely to impact capital functions but nonetheless fall within the scope of the FLUDTA provisions in the National Capital Act. The proponent is provided with augmented guidance and a clear framework for completing the FLUDTA review. The NCC coordinates the federal review with municipal approvals to integrate and accelerate the reviews.
For federal land disposals, the NCC has considerably reduced documentation requirements for FLUDTA submissions. Proponents can now submit a declaration form attesting that they have met other federal policy requirements, so these considerations are not duplicated by the FLUDTA review.
In coordination with the changes to the FLUDTA process, the NCC has also continued to update and streamline its approach to environmental impact assessment, increasing coordination and reducing duplication with other departments, agencies, and other orders of government in making environmental determinations, while complying with applicable legislation and new government-wide policy direction, such as the latest ministerial Order Designating Certain Excluded Classes of Projects under the Impact Assessment Act.
Outcomes
The NCC has set an ambitious goal of facilitating making adequate lands available to support the development of up to 20,000 new homes by 2032. As of July 2025, 10 of the 90 federal properties listed on the Canada Public Land Bank are NCC properties and additional properties will be made available in the future.
The NCC has begun reviewing its existing land use plans to incorporate greater consideration of housing opportunities, beginning with the updated National Capital Core Area Plan, published in June 2025.
The recent refinements to the FLUDTA program have enhanced the predictability of processes, reduced workload for proponents and the NCC, and reduced the standard timeline for the FLUDTA review process to be between four to six weeks for ground leases that are unlikely to impact the region’s character or functions as the capital of Canada (down from two to four months). The NCC is working with federal and municipal partners to ensure the FLUDTA process supports the NCC’s legislated mandate, without duplicating or impeding the work of its valued partners.
In impact assessment, the NCC now strives to only recommend additional mitigation measures if there is a clear, significant gap in what has been recommended by other federal, provincial or local reviews. NCC impact assessments now distinguish legal requirements from best practices, as well as avoid repetition between the FLUDTA analysis (completed under the National Capital Act) and the environmental impact assessment (completed under other legislation, such as the Impact Assessment Act). Projects that meet the criteria for exclusion or reduced evaluation under the requirements of the Impact Assessment Act are fast-tracked through the NCC’s environmental review process, wherever possible.
Item 2: Comprehensive Review of NCC Procurement
Context
The NCC is required to ensure that its procurement activities are exercised in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, including but not limited to, the Financial Administration Act, the National Capital Act, the Official Languages Act, the Accessible Canada Act, the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, and other trade agreements ratified by the Government of Canada.
The NCC must also comply with its own Procurement Policy, Procurement Service Standards, Code of Conduct, and internal processes. Treasury Board directives, such as the Directive on the Management of Procurement, often exclude Crown corporations from their scope, but the NCC nonetheless incorporates procurement best practices and the principles of these directives into its own policies and procedures.
This layering of regulatory and policy requirements is common across governments, and it is important for ensuring appropriate oversight, accountability, risk management, value-for-money, and advancement of government priorities through procurement. However, a common criticism is that the accumulation of requirements can contribute to inefficient, ineffective, and costly procurement processes, both for the governments purchasing goods and services and the businesses supplying those goods and services.
Actions
In April 2025, the NCC completed a comprehensive review of its procurement framework, including its procurement policy, as well as the underlying practices and procedures through which it is implemented.
This review was undertaken to streamline and update the NCC’s procurement structures; clarify responsibilities; integrate current best practices in procurement risk management; and examine procurement thresholds to ensure appropriate authority is centralized or delegated depending on the risk involved in the procurement that is proposed.
The review included internal consultations to identify the corporation’s opportunities and challenges in procurement. The NCC also benchmarked its procurement policies against the procurement policies of other Crown corporations and directives from the Treasury Board that apply to other departments and agencies.
Outcomes
The procurement review led to substantive improvements, which will enable the corporation to manage procurement risks, while shortening timelines and being responsive to procurement needs for the delivery on core responsibilities of the NCC and priorities of the Government of Canada.
Efficient and predictable procurement processes reduce workload, costs and uncertainties for the NCC, as well as for the businesses from which it procures goods and services.
Improving the NCC’s procurement processes also benefits partners (e.g. government, non-government, business) with whom the NCC collaborates to deliver common objectives. As an illustrative example, the NCC often collaborates with other government stakeholders on capital projects. The duration of the procurement process can influence the schedule of a project. By completing procurement processes more efficiently, the NCC can implement projects more quickly and reduce the project schedule overall, which benefits the NCC and its partners.
The NCC’s Procurement Policy has been considerably streamlined and clarified where necessary. New procedures and guidance materials have been established around expectations, roles, responsibilities and exceptions.
Thresholds have been increased according to risk assessments and the benchmarking activities that were conducted; this will allow procurement activities to proceed more efficiently in low-risk scenarios, while escalating review requirements when appropriate.
Internal service standards have been updated to ensure client branches have a clear understanding of timelines for different types of requests, so that these timelines can be built into project plans. Service standard changes have reduced the turnaround time by up to 20 days on some categories of procurement request.
Risk-based criteria have been established to assist client branches and the procurement team in selecting the procurement method that is best suited to an identified need.
Internal templates and workflows have been overhauled to reduce preparation time, while ensuring necessary information is appropriately included. The NCC is also leveraging digital tools to accelerate internal approval processes; for example, using these tools to automatically involve the NCC’s procurement specialists early in the process, as well as enabling some review and approval actions to be completed concurrently, rather than in sequence.
Next Steps
Item 1: Strategic and Leaner FLUDTA Processes and Environmental Impact Assessment
Context
The NCC intends to ensure FLUDTA is a leaner process, strategically focused on subjects that are specific and central to the NCC’s mandate. FLUDTA applications are evaluated according to three project levels, ranging from Level 1 to Level 3 depending on the potential impact of the project on the National Capital Region’s character and functions as the capital of Canada. Level 3 projects must meet more significant information requirements and conditions to obtain approval. The NCC is aiming to take this approach further, scoping the FLUDTA review for different categories of projects to reduce red tape on more minor projects.
There are interrelationships between the FLUDTA review process under the National Capital Act and environmental assessments that are required under other regulatory requirements. For example, if a project requires FLUDTA approval, the Impact Assessment Act also requires the NCC as a federal authority to determine whether the proposed project is likely to cause any adverse effects as defined by the Impact Assessment Act. Consequently, the NCC is integrating its review of FLUDTA with a review of how it complies with impact assessment and environmental legislation.
Actions
In early 2025, the NCC adopted new criteria for how it categorizes projects as either Level 1, 2, or 3 for FLUDTA review. One objective was to limit the application of Level 3 and its more comprehensive application requirements to only the most significant projects. The NCC is monitoring this change to validate whether it is achieving the intended result. Starting in 2025–2026, the NCC has begun and will continue reporting each quarter on the performance of FLUDTA processes to its Executive Management Committee and Board of Directors.
Through consultations with project proponents, the NCC has heard that it would be beneficial to standardize and reduce the approval requirements associated with some project categories. The NCC is also working with federal partners to determine what parameters could define project classes (e.g. defined project type, geographic area, and other criteria). The intention is that once a project class is approved, a proponent could apply for a single approval for multiple projects that meet the definition and approval conditions of that class. The NCC is assessing these project classes from the perspective of FLUDTA as well as environmental impact assessment.
The NCC is continuing refinements to the FLUDTA process and impact assessment in consultation with federal, provincial and municipal partners to accelerate, streamline and remove duplication in approval requirements.
Traditionally, FLUDTA approvals for large federal land disposals depended on the proponent establishing a master plan for the land being disposed. As an alternative to this requirement, the NCC is now working with federal partners to introduce restrictive covenants registered on title. This alternative would reduce the regulatory burden, cost and time for proponents associated with obtaining approval from NCC for a proposed disposal, while protecting any long-term interests of the Government of Canada in the lands proposed for disposal.
Expected outcomes
Through the proposed and ongoing changes to FLUDTA and the approach to impact assessment, the NCC intends to reduce the resource and cost requirements for proponents applying for federal approvals, as well as accelerate the timelines through which proponents can obtain approvals. This will remove barriers to advancing federal government priorities, such as encouraging housing development, delivering federal construction projects, and efficiently disposing of surplus federal land to stimulate growth and investment opportunities in the National Capital Region.
By reducing the number and scope of FLUDTA reviews and impact assessments, there are also potential savings in cost and time, for the proponents that have to comply with review requirements, as well as for the NCC as it administers the review and assessment processes. The NCC can focus its resource commitments on efficiently and effectively reviewing projects that have the greatest potential to impact the functions and capital character of the National Capital Region.
Item 2: Modernizing the NCC’s Legislated Authority
Context
The legislative framework governing the NCC’s roles, responsibilities, and authority adds considerable complexity and inefficiency to the Crown corporation’s capacity to deliver its ongoing legislated mandate and the priorities of the government. The National Capital Act has not been substantially amended since the NCC’s inception in 1959. Its provisions could be modernized to better align with the NCC’s responsibilities and operating context and with current government priorities, which have evolved considerably over time. For example, the NCC is considerably more involved in managing land for nature conservation and outdoor recreation than the provisions of the National Capital Act would suggest. The NCC’s legislated authority to execute real property transactions (for instance, the provisions in section 15 that the NCC may not acquire real property over $25,000 in value or enter into leases for a period in excess of five years without approval of the Governor in Council) do not correspond with present-day property values and real estate practices, which makes it challenging for the NCC to support the priorities identified by the Government of Canada and its Board of Directors.
Regulations under the Act (e.g. NCC Animal Regulations and NCC Traffic and Property Regulations) and those more broadly impacting the authority of Crown corporations (e.g. the Crown Corporation General Regulations, 1995, under the Financial Administration Act) were also each prescribed some years ago and could benefit from a review to reduce red tape and align their provisions with the modern-day context.
Actions
Although the NCC Board of Directors and executive leadership work diligently within the parameters of the existing legislated authority to ensure they advance the priorities of the government, the NCC will be exploring opportunities to work with federal partners to review the legislation that grants the Crown corporation the authority to carry out its mandate.
In particular, Bill S-229 (An Act to Amend the National Capital Act [Gatineau Park]), introduced in the Senate by Senator Galvez on June 10, 2025, represents an opportunity to considerably modernize the NCC’s enabling legislation.
In addition to achieving the initial intent of the bill (establishment of legislative protections for Gatineau Park and its management) by introducing appropriate amendments to the bill, there is an opportunity to address other known challenges with the National Capital Act that would further serve to protect NCC-owned lands and assets, and allow the NCC to remove unnecessary, overly burdensome, and inefficient processes to support compliance and enforcement practices and service delivery.
Key actions could include modernizing real estate transaction authorities as defined in section 15 of the National Capital Act to allow the NCC to conduct business concerning real property on modern terms and align with other federal custodians. This would facilitate the implementation of major federal initiatives such as the development of housing. It could also reduce unnecessary red tape by modernizing the NCC’s ability to manage its leasing portfolio, allowing the corporation to enter into low-risk leases without requiring the approval of the Governor in Council.
Furthermore, by amending section 12 of the National Capital Act to allow the NCC’s Board of Directors to delegate FLUDTA decisions to NCC executives or personnel (as appropriate based on project complexity), the FLUDTA process would be more efficient and cost effective for both the NCC and proponents, resulting in timelier approvals.
Expected outcomes
Modernizing the NCC’s legislated authority to align with its present-day roles and responsibilities is important for visitors and residents of the National Capital Region and the NCC’s collaborators, as they look to the NCC to contribute to projects and initiatives conserving natural and built heritage, enhancing how people experience Canada’s Capital, enabling efficient and sustainable transportation, and ensuring the Capital is a source of pride for Canadians.
There are potential opportunities through statutory and regulatory amendments to modernize and optimize the legislation’s provisions to advance priorities (such as increasing the supply of housing, opening investment opportunities, enabling partnerships, animating significant places in the National Capital Region, facilitating projects of national significance, and protecting areas in the National Capital Region, such as Gatineau Park and the Greenbelt) for environmental conservation and outdoor recreation, in accordance with the NCC’s mandate.
There are also potential time and cost savings for the NCC and the government overall in simplifying, clarifying and aligning provisions to the modern context. As one example, there are potential opportunities to apply risk-based analysis to the legislation that governs the NCC’s decision-making authority: the Governor in Council and Minister could retain authority over the most significant decisions, while the Board of Directors, CEO and executive leadership are provided greater authority and the necessary tools to continue routine, regular business and service delivery. Through a comparative analysis of the NCC’s authority and that of other federal departments, Crown corporations, and agencies, there are likely opportunities to better align the delegated authority of the NCC to that of other federal entities.
Centralizing or delegating authority according to the risk and significance of decisions, as well as providing the NCC with appropriate delegated powers, would enable faster decisions and streamline administrative processes. Reducing the administrative burden associated with securing approvals could reduce costs and timelines for the NCC and central agencies, as well as reduce costs and uncertainties for the departments, agencies, other orders of government, and businesses with whom the NCC collaborates to deliver projects that shape the character and functions of the National Capital Region and generate opportunities for investment and growth.