a. Maximum Two-Year Listing…

a. Maximum Two-Year Listing Requirement
The proposed changes to the Act will institute a maximum 2-year period for which properties can be Listed on the Heritage Register. Municipalities will be given 2 years to designate all buildings currently Listed. There are nearly 4,000 Listed properties in the City of Toronto. Each individual (Part IV) designation requires substantial research and a report to City Council. It is completely unreasonable for the City of Toronto’s Heritage Preservation Services to write nearly 4,000 heritage designation reports in the next two years. This proposal can therefore be viewed as an attempt to purge nearly 4,000 buildings from the Heritage Register. Heritage Listed buildings do not stop redevelopment. There is no onus on the owners of listed properties, as they are only required to provide the City with 60 days’ notice if they intend to demolish the building. Heritage buildings can and have been incorporated into housing developments on numerous occasions. The proposed mass listing purge is a pointless initiative that will result in the unnecessary destruction of Ontario’s built heritage while failing to create housing.
b. Multiple Designation Criteria Requirement
For a building to be designated it must meet one of the three criteria; Architectural, Cultural and Contextual. The proposed changes require buildings to meet a minimum of two criteria. This is a change which will make it more difficult to designate buildings, and lead to the destruction of buildings with heritage value, if they only meet one of the three criteria.
c. The proposed changes to the Ontario Heritage Act will create chaos at municipal planning departments and result in the destruction of buildings which are both currently listed and buildings which merit designation. The proposed changes to the Ontario Heritage Act will not create new housing. In addition to creating urgency to designate all listed buildings, the Bill will place an additional hurdle to designation, as two criteria will need to be satisfied to designate each building.