The exemption for property…

The exemption for property in the proposed Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, 2025, feels too broad, and feels as though it could be ripe for potential abuse, potentially allowing a less scrupulous government to simply bypass archaeological assessments entirely, and run the risk of causing permanently damage to the archaeological and cultural heritage of Ontario. The list of provincial priorities already covers a vast swath of the archaeological work being done in the province. As recent events to the south have shown us, which have led to the creation of the proposed act, powers that are intended to be used in a limited fashion, or for emergencies only, can easily be misused by an unscrupulous government.

While the proposed act does include establishing guidelines to help determine whether or not a property is eligible for an exemption, and cites former Indian Residential School sites, burials and significant archaeological sites as examples of what might deny an exemption, much of the archaeology of Ontario is simply unknown, and is only uncovered during the archaeological assessment. A bypass of the archaeological assessment process runs the risk of the development impacting a previously unknown archaeological site or burial, which may cause much more costly delays than it would have had an archaeological assessment been done in the first place.