Ontario’s Bill 23 is an open…

Ontario’s Bill 23 is an open demolition permit designed to systematically destroy or render ineffective all the policy and planning tools and resources municipalities have to guide growth and protect built and natural heritage.

Many of the Bill 23 proposals specifically target the existing stock of built and natural heritage. Existing designated heritage buildings will lose their current protections, and future designations will undergo complex yet ambiguous qualifying criteria, thereby greatly diminishing the range and number of protected properties.

Also threatened are all listed properties on Heritage Registers – the proposal that those listed on the register could be protected by designation would make sense, but only if there were previsions to greatly increase the municipal heritage staff and to greatly increase the time limit. These required staff and time increases have not been provided, and as a result, these properties will be at risk as they will lose listed status and lose any record of ever being considered worthy of heritage designation.

Heritage Conservation District plans will be endangered. Existing HCDs would be subject to a process that would allow Heritage Conservation District Plans to be amended or repealed, again throwing away countless years of municipal work, and leaving them exposed to policy-free development. The creation of any future HCD is questionable as they would be subject to non-specific proposed regulations.

The loss of the municipality’s ability to issue an Intention to designate a heritage property at risk removes a valuable tool from the municipality, a tool that has been used in exceptional circumstances to preserve exceptional heritage.

Bill 23 proposes changes that eliminate both the public voice; public meetings will no longer be required for applications for approval of a draft plan of subdivision, and the threat of being found for costs in Ontario Land Tribunal procedures will effectively restrain the public voice. These are just two of the many ways that the public is to be excluded.

These are a small sampling of the questionable Bill 23 proposals that will tie the hands of municipal staff and volunteers Bill 23 has the power and seemingly, the intent to destroy our heritage, both natural and built, and create a future free of the municipal tools needed to control development in a manner that makes our municipalities livable.