Search around and it is easy to come away thinking the Niagara Escarpment Commission automatically joins the city on every Burlington tree removal. That is not how the regulation works. For most ordinary removals, hazard trees, dead or storm-damaged wood, a homeowner cutting a tree for personal use, routine pruning, Ontario’s own escarpment regulation carves the NEC out of the picture, leaving Burlington’s Private Tree By-law 40-2022 as the only permit you need. The genuine two-permit case shows up when the removal is tied to something bigger: a new build, an addition, grading, a pool. Here is how the two regimes actually interact, and why the answer depends on why the tree is coming down as much as where the property sits.
No official document lays out this interaction as a joint statement from the city and the NEC. What follows is our own analysis of how By-law 40-2022 and the province’s escarpment regulations apply to the same property.
Burlington’s Private Tree By-law Covers Almost Every Removal on Its Own
By-law 40-2022 protects any tree with a trunk diameter of 20 cm or more, measured at 1.37 metres above ground. A tree with multiple stems is not simply added up: the bylaw uses the square root of the sum of the squares, so a two-stem tree at 15 cm and 12 cm works out closer to 19 cm than to 27 cm.
The bylaw applies to private property within the city’s Urban Planning Area Boundary, set out on Official Plan Schedule B. That boundary covers most of developed Burlington, generally south of Dundas Street and Highway 407 (Kilbride, Mount Nemo, and North Aldershot sit in the rural area, outside it). It does not apply to woodland regulated under Halton Region’s own Tree By-law 121-05.
Trees at 75 cm DBH or larger are classified as significant trees and carry the highest replanting ratio in the bylaw’s tiered scale, covered below.
If your tree meets the threshold and sits within the Urban Planning Area, you need a permit from the city, and for most homeowners that is the entire process. Measure the tree before applying, or have us do it as part of the arborist report the application requires. Our Burlington tree permit guide walks through the application steps in full.
Why the Niagara Escarpment Commission Skips Most Ordinary Removals
Ontario Regulation 826/90 sets the boundaries of the escarpment’s Area of Development Control, the zone where a Development Permit is required before land is altered or a tree comes down. That boundary is narrower than the full Niagara Escarpment Plan area, and parts of Burlington sit inside it. It was amended in May 2026 through O.Reg 198/26, so check the NEC’s live jurisdiction map rather than an older PDF.
Falling inside the Area of Development Control does not automatically mean you need a Development Permit for a tree. Ontario Regulation 828/90 exempts tree cutting, removal, and pruning from the NEC permit requirement for a list of reasons, and several cover most homeowner situations directly: the tree is a safety hazard, it is dead or diseased or was damaged by natural causes rather than human activity, the removal is for the owner’s personal use with no sale of the wood, or the work is routine pruning done by the owner. The exemption applies to work listed as a permitted use under the Niagara Escarpment Plan’s land-use policies, not in conflict with an existing development permit, so it is not a blanket pass for every situation, but it reaches the ordinary cases well. A separate part of the same exemption also covers tree work done under good forestry practices where a municipal tree bylaw is already in effect, which Burlington’s is.
The exemption comes with a condition worth reading twice: it applies subject to any applicable municipal by-law. Being exempt from the NEC’s Development Permit never exempts you from the municipal rules that apply to the property, and the two regimes run independently. Where a property under development control also falls within the Urban Planning Area, a hazard tree removal still needs the city permit under By-law 40-2022; it just does not also need the NEC’s sign-off. Whether a given escarpment property falls inside the Urban Planning Area is a parcel-by-parcel question, which is one more reason to check both boundaries before cutting.
When You Actually Need Both Permits
The two-authority case arrives when tree removal is not the standalone project. New construction, an addition, site grading, or a pool, anything counting as land alteration under the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act, falls outside the O.Reg 828/90 exemptions. If your property sits in the Area of Development Control and the removal is part of that kind of project, you need a Development Permit from the NEC on top of whatever municipal permits the project requires, including a By-law 40-2022 tree permit where the property is within the Urban Planning Area.
The NEC’s own guidance notes that municipal building approvals and other permits may be required, but that those can only be issued after the Development Permit is granted. That statement is written about building approvals generally, not Burlington’s tree permit specifically, so treat it as a reasonable read for a project combining site alteration with tree removal, not a guaranteed sequence. There is no published NEC processing timeline: straightforward applications can be approved at the staff level, while more complex ones go to the Commission’s monthly meeting. Call the NEC at 905-877-5191 or email nec@ontario.ca early, before committing to a construction schedule that assumes a particular turnaround.
What Burlington’s Permit Costs, and How Replanting Scales
Burlington’s fee structure has several components, current for 2026. The processing fee is $54.00 plus HST, paid when you apply. The issuance fee for an approved permit is $351.50 plus HST per application covering one to three trees; a fourth tree adds $243.50 plus HST, and each tree from the fifth onward adds $135.50 plus HST. A permit to injure a tree, rather than remove it, runs $81.50 plus HST per tree. Extending, transferring, or altering an existing permit costs $54.00 plus HST. A compliance inspection after a contravention costs $525.50 for one to three trees or $100 per tree for four or more; neither carries HST.
Replanting is tiered to the size of the tree removed, not a flat multiplier: 20 to 35 cm owes two replacement trees for every one removed, 36 to 74 cm climbs to three to one, and 75 cm or larger, matching the significant tree threshold, reaches four to one. Where the property cannot accommodate the replacement trees, cash-in-lieu runs $257.50 per tree, with no HST added.
Exemptions, Fee Waivers, and Emergency Work Are Three Different Things
By-law 40-2022 draws a line that is easy to blur: some situations skip the permit entirely, some skip only the fee, and emergency work follows its own separate rule.
Actual permit exemptions include routine pruning, nurseries and orchards, invasive species, work by municipal or local board staff, licensed Crown Forest Sustainability Act operators, cadastral surveyors, removal required as a condition under the Planning Act or a development permit, utility construction and maintenance, licensed pits and quarries, and trees on land owned or controlled by the Royal Botanical Gardens or Conservation Halton.
Dead, dying, or high-risk trees are not on that exemption list. They are exempt from the fee, not the permit: an application and supporting documentation are still required, but the city waives what you would otherwise pay. The bylaw defines a high-risk tree as one where failure is not yet imminent, which is what separates a fee-waived high-risk removal from a genuine emergency.
Emergency tree work is the one case exempt from the permit requirement itself, and it comes with its own condition: written notice to the city within 72 hours, with documentation of what made the work an emergency. Cutting first and explaining later without that notice puts the work back under the standard permit and penalty rules.
Penalties Scale With How Long a Violation Continues
Removing a protected tree without a permit is a per-day offence, not a flat fine. For an individual, a first offence runs $500 to $100,000, and each day the situation continues counts separately; a subsequent offence starts at $1,000 with the same $100,000 ceiling. Corporations face $1,000 to $100,000 for a first offence and $5,000 to $100,000 for any subsequent one. Multiple offences in the same matter can each draw an additional $1,000 to $10,000 with no stated aggregate cap, and the bylaw allows a special fine above $100,000 to strip out the economic advantage of the violation. Separate from that, Burlington also runs an administrative monetary penalty track under its own AMPS by-law.
Getting Both Applications Filed in Parallel
Most Burlington removals only need to clear the city’s Private Tree By-law. Confirm that before assuming otherwise. When a removal is genuinely tied to construction, an addition, grading, or a pool inside the Area of Development Control, the NEC’s Development Permit applies alongside whatever the city requires for the property, and there is no reason to file the applications one after the other. The Arborist Group prepares both applications so they can move through review in parallel, with one arborist report written to satisfy both authorities. Contact us with your property location and what is planned, and we will tell you which permits your project actually needs.