ERO # 025-0418 I am writing…

ERO # 025-0418

I am writing to comment on the Proposed Amendments to the Ontario Heritage Act, Schedule 7 of the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, 2025

After reading the proposal in its entirety, I have the following comments to make.
To qualify my statements, I have worked in Ontario’s Cultural Resource Management (CRM) industry as a Professional licensed consultant archaeologist for over 20 years. This is the first time I have seen a provincial government propose to set back Heritage legislation into the early 20th century, which is not in keeping with the prestige of any modern world society that values history, culture, and tourism in the twenty-first century.

I want to state that I do not think all the proposed amendments are detrimental, particularly those related to enforcement and compliance with respect to the protection of artifacts and archaeological sites, authorizing investigations, and “enhancing powers to seize and direct artifacts and archaeological collections”. However, given the rather vague amount of detail on how this will be put into practice, I have reservations about how this will be put into play. It requires serious revision or expanded explanation of how such actions will effectively be put into practice.

As the amendments currently read, I can tell that the people who drafted these proposed amendments are not aware of how the OHA is actually being utilised in today’s land use planning and development economy.
For instance, in regard to existing “inspection authorities”, which I understand to mean the professionally licensed archaeologists who work in government at the Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism, they have not had the ability to undertake inspections of archaeological sites, storage facilities, or licensed consultants’ compliance practices in corporate or field offices for many years. The biggest holdback on this action is that archaeology and heritage staff employed in the government have not been appropriately program funded, staffed to capacity, or supported by provincial governments for over two decades. This is the largest part of the problem when it comes to the misguided belief that archaeological assessment is a “red tape” process when it comes to project planning and delivery. If the government will not invest in the staffing and training of their own archaeologists, then these staff and the government they work for also cannot function to the best of their abilities and powers under the OHA.

Having worked in the private sector for many years, I know that archaeology is not the problem with slowing development. The problem is that developers cannot be compelled to build in an economy in which they are not guaranteed the return of a certain amount of profit. We are living in one of these times. Even before Trump had been re-elected in the USA, the current Ontario government had been re-elected, and this Bill 5 proposed, developers were pausing or cancelling planned developments across Ontario based on projected profits alone, not the processes that are required to develop housing or infrastructure improvements. The supposed “red tape” that the OHA, ESA, or other land developing and planning processes allegedly contribute to slowing down development does not exist. It is the fact that developers actively choose when and how development occurs according to the economic outlook for their own profitability. The province should want to trigger investment by supporting all industries currently engaged in responsible planning and delivery of infrastructure. This is how jobs are protected in industries the government is focused on aiding.

The most significant and concering proposed amendment in Bill 5’s proposed OHA amendments is the “Exemption for Property”. If the government is truly aware of Ontario’s history, then they should acknowledge that the province is blanketed in archaeological and cultural heritage resources almost everywhere you turn. Attempting to exempt properties from archaeological assessment is a very risky when aiming to achieve efficient development planning and delivery in the sense that archaeological discoveries that occur during construction create delays and cost increases which all taxpayers loathe. Keeping appropriate planning processes in place is how such instances are avoided and alleviated when encountered.
While Bill 5 states that exemptions for property would only be for provincial priorities (housing, transit, health and long-term care, infrastructure, etc.), it is also clear that these priorities, which are some of the primary triggers for archaeological assessment, are going to create an opening in which assessments are not universally undertaken. This in turn will eventually bring private sector proponents developing projects in these categories to lobby for the same exemptions. How will the criteria for property exemptions be established? Is that going to be a transparent and inclusive process involving archaeologists or will it be handled by the Lieutenant Governor’s in Council orders?

The dangerous element of eliminating archaeological assessment is that many of the current big projects that Ontario wants to complete, including the new highways (Hwy 413 and Bradford By-pass), regional highway improvements, infrastructure, and the Ring of Fire run through undeveloped areas with identified archaeological resources or they exhibit high potential for archaeological resources. Mitigating impacts to these resources will run into construction delays when they are uncovered or encountered without appropriate planning and assessment strategies in place. This is not a “maybe it will happen” situation, it is a “definitely will happen” situation. For example, if the new Hwy 413 corridor is almost 60 kilometres long and runs through undeveloped swaths of land in the GTA where archaeological resources are abundant, the province will quickly find itself stuck in work stoppages as more and more sites are discovered concurrently during construction. The environmental assessment process that archaeology slots into under both the Planning Act and the Environmental Assessment Act helps identify, plan, and effectively navigate and mitigate these types of discovery challenges ahead of time.
Any archaeologist in this province will tell you that archaeology must be considered from the earliest planning stages of any development project. Additionally, access to archaeological heritage is not only every Ontarian’s right, but it is an Indigenous right under Section 35 of the Constitution Act. Provinces cannot extinguish Aboriginal Rights through regulation, which this Exemption for Property attempts to do. The Ontario Government will find itself in court and on the losing side if they try and circumvent their Duty to Consult with Indigenous Peoples via regulation. It’s not something that the courts have permitted Provincial or Federal government to do thus far in the precedent-setting case law, and as these precedents have builtupon each other over time, strengthening the argument that Indigenous rights cannot be circumvented or ignored, it is highly unlikely that they will now do so.

The proposed authorization for the Lieutenant Governor to issue exemptions in Council is also questionable. How is the LG to responsibly consider such requests without having been presented evidence-based data (that would require some amount of archaeological assessment and results) that may support justification for an exemption?
Establishing any criteria that in regulation must be met for an exemption to be granted is also unjustifiable without some archaeological assessment work.
The example list of properties where exemptions cannot be applied, specifically “Significant archaeological sites” is interesting because for such sites be considered exempt, they have to either be previously known about (as a handful already are) or be discovered and protected in the future. If the archaeological process isn’t being conducted in the first place because of a property exemption, then we are losing the opportunity to discover new significant sites that could be meaningful to Ontario’s history. By not engaging in appropriate archaeological process to begin with, the government is robbing the province (i. e. the people or electorate) of access to its own heritage whether that be related to Indigenous, Euro- or Afro-Canadian occupation and settlement history.
This is cart before the horse logic and opens up legal risk even if immunity from such disastrous consequences is legislated for.
This property exemption proposal will damage the government's already fragile relationships with Indigenous Governments throughout the Province, whom the Crown is legally required to be consult and negotiate with in good faith. Attempting to disable the majority of archaeology and heritage resource legislation and practices out of existence imperils the government to be accused of undeniable lack of due diligence when it comes to the impact of infrastructure construction on cultural heritage resources.

My last concern is that the proposed OHA amendment related to Exemption of Property imperils the jobs of over 1,000 people who currently work in the CRM (Archaeology and Heritage) industry and that number does not include the hundreds of Indigenous peoples from Nations across the province who work alongside Ontario’s archaeologists and heritage professionals.
If Bill 5 is called the “Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act” then this bill should have the government working to actively preserve the industries and jobs which are not directly impacted by Trump’s policies and trade tariffs – archaeology, heritage, and environmental assessment are not detrimental impacts to our economy. In fact, these industries contribute to the economy, stimulate it, and protect archaeological and heritage resources for Ontarians to enjoy and engage with, which is a legacy any government should want to protect and promote.
As proposed, Bill 5 represents the opposite of what the government says it is trying to achieve for protecting Ontario and is antithetical to the public messaging that Premier Ford embraces – that he and the government will protect jobs and stimulate industries in conjunction with the Federal government for the good of all Ontarians and Canadians.
The people who work in Ontario’s cultural resource management sector earn money in Ontario and invest it back into the local economies in which they live and work. If the volume of people employed in archaeology and heritage is envisioned as representative of a small factory that could be wiped out of existence, I think this government would be working to actively save these jobs by keeping them integrated in the land use planning and development sector.

As one of the persons whose job who is going to possibly be impacted by Bill 5, as a taxpayer and investor in our local economy, and as a proud Ontarian who wants to contribute to the province’s success in surviving its current economic challenges and ultimate successes, I implore the government to revoke the Exemption to Property amendment and revise the overall body of amendments to the OHA to have more clarity and transparency as to how they will be enacted.

Thank you for your time and consideration of an action that is of great concern.