Assessment Matters: Your Provincial Property Perspective

March 2021

La version française

Note from MPAC President and CAO, Nicole McNeill

Welcome to the first edition of Assessment Matters, MPAC's new quarterly newsletter for Members of Provincial Parliament, their staff and constituency offices. We know that sharing insights and information with you is key, and this newsletter is designed to keep you up-to-date on our latest work and initiatives.


We value your input as we continue to deliver property assessment insights across Ontario. We want to hear from you. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us

Nicole McNeill

One point of contact for MPPs and their staff

James Harvey

MPAC is committed to providing MPPs and their staff with exceptional customer service. Recently we have introduced a single point of contact for all provincial government stakeholders – including MPPs, their Queen’s Park staff and constituency staff. While we continue to manage your inquiries centrally, our local teams are still on hand to provide knowledge and understanding and will still be part of providing you with the support you rely on. This step will make sure that we are consistently anticipating and responding to your needs.


Please send all inquiries to James Harvey our Account Manager for Government Relations at [email protected]

Property inspections during COVID-19

Property inspector

MPAC continues to align to the Ontario government’s COVID-19 Response Framework and have developed our own framework to ensure a consistent approach to office access and field work across the province.


Inspections

  • In the ‘Grey-Lockdown’ zones, inspections are still paused.
  • For areas in the ‘Red-Control’ zones, inspections will be permitted to resume immediately but are limited to exterior property inspections only, for all property types, when required.
  • For all other areas – ‘Green-Prevent’, ‘Yellow-Protect’, ‘Orange-Restrict’ – where the stay-at-home order has been lifted, inspections are permitted, including exterior and interior inspections as required.



Learn more about MPAC’s approach to serving your community, safely.

Looking to send out government initiatives to local businesses? Let MPAC help.

MPAC is now offering a Business Data File for each electoral riding in Ontario for MPP’s to use for sending out information on government programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. This list provides the MPP’s office with the owner name and full address for any physical mailings your office plans on sending out.


If you are interested in receiving this data please reach out to James Harvey, Account Manager, Government Relations at [email protected] or 647-484-1555.

MPAC launches a new and improved Municipal Connect

Municipal Connect

MPAC has begun rolling out a new and improved Municipal Connect, our data-sharing platform for municipal staff. The new system responds to the changing needs of municipalities, offers improved functionality and a streamlined user experience while adhering to the highest security standards.


Built by MPAC’s IT team in just five months, the new Municipal Connect brings information about assessment bases to the fingertips of municipal staff. With geospatial mapping, improved search capabilities and more sophisticated analytics and reporting, it responds to municipalities with the tools they requested as part of our consultation process.


It also lays the foundation for plans to expand the ways municipalities can use MPAC data and collaborate with each other to support strong local governments across the province.

Safeguarding property data remains top priority at MPAC

In 2020 we earned the ISO/IEC 27001 certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), for a second time. The certification recognizes rigorous best practices for information security management systems.


This year we also achieved the ISO/IEC 27017 Standard on Cloud Security, demonstrating our best-in-class cloud service security. Just over 100 companies in Canada hold the ISO 27001 certification, and even less hold both certifications.

MPAC once again named a top employer

Property inspectors

With headquarters in Durham Region, we are proud to be named one of Greater Toronto’s Top Employers for the second year in a row! You can read our story which includes personal reflections from Judith Regis, a Municipal and Stakeholder Relations Account Manager who talks about why MPAC’s decision to feature speakers from Black Lives Matter and Indigenous communities on its all-staff Virtual Leader Chats made an impact on her.

Read More

Upcoming webinar - Modernization opportunities for Ontario’s building permit process

One of the most important things MPAC does is transform new development and building construction into assessment that provides taxation revenue – it’s a critical part of our daily work to support Ontario municipalities. A key ingredient in this work is the collection of building permit and plan information.


With the pandemic, MPAC had to work with municipalities to adapt how we collect this important information. We launched an online portal for the collection of building plans, supported some municipalities in their adoption of new e-permitting software, and worked to identify new ways to support the modernization of the building permit process.


Join Mary Dawson-Cole, Regional Manager, who will discuss some of MPAC’s learnings during the pandemic, insights we’ve gathered from our building permit data, and a number of the initiatives we are exploring to support municipalities and the Province in the modernization of the building permit process.

Date: Thursday, March 4

Time: 1 to 2 p.m. EST

Register now!

View recordings of past webinars on our YouTube channel.

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