Inspecting a Residential Building

Standard BNQ 3009-500
Residential Building — Inspection Practices in a Real Estate Transaction Context

By adopting Bill 16 in December 2019, an Act mainly to regulate building inspections and divided co-ownership, to replace the name and improve the rules of operation of the Régie du logement and to amend the Act respecting the Société d’habitation du Québec and various legislative provisions concerning municipal affairs, the Government of Quebec granted the Régie du bâtiment du Québec (RBQ) the power to regulate building inspections by determining the terms and conditions that a natural person must comply with, including the rules regarding continuing education and technical standards, to obtain a certificate to be authorized to act as a building inspector. Quebec thus joined the majority of U.S. states and three Canadian provinces, Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, who had already taken the necessary steps to regulate residential building inspections.

The consultations held in tandem with the adoption of Bill 16 enabled the RBQ to identify the existence of a National Standard of Canada (NSC), document CAN/CSA A770 Home inspection. However, despite its recent publication, in 2016, this document proved inappropriate for Quebec’s specific context. No association of building inspectors in Quebec had adopted it, all preferring to continue using their own association rules as to how an inspection should be performed.

The Bureau de normalisation du Québec (BNQ) therefore received a mandate from the RBQ to set up a standards committee to undertake the process of developing a consensus standard that would ensure that residential building inspection practices were established and standardized, by consulting with and bringing together the various stakeholders in the Québécois community. The BNQ’s standards committee thus set itself the goal to standardize and enhance the provision of services, while enabling the consumer to really understand the scope of an inspection. The standards committee also undertook to make these standardized inspection practices applicable to all categories of residential buildings and all kinds of property.