Please see the attached…

Please see the attached commentary.

November 23, 2022
Comments re: Proposed Changes to the Ontario Heritage Act and its regulations: Bill 23 (Schedule 6) - the Proposed More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022
ERO number 019-6196

The Hon. Laurie Scott, Chair
The Hon. Laura Mae Lindo, Vice Chair
Members Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy
Whitney Block, Room 1405
99 Wellesley Street W Toronto, ON M7A 1A2

Dear Chair Scott, Co-Chair Lindo, and Members of the Standing Committee,
RE: Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022: Ontario Heritage Act -- Proposed Amendments

I am a land owner with a dwelling on it in the town of Southampton (pop. 3700-4000 approx.), part of the Municipality of Saugeen Shores on Lake Huron.

For four generations my family has been an intimate part of Southampton, first as vacationing tourists and then as landowners. We love and have loved Southampton from our first visit. We prize its walkability, its many opportunities for activity and socialization and for the immediacy of the natural world including the sand beaches and Lake Huron. And for its undeniable charm! The charm is a combination of original homes and cottages built by the first settlers to Southampton and the later Victorian influenced homes and commercial premises such as the Walker House, 150 years young and still going strong serving the public as a hotel. As well, there are four churches that face each other on four corners at one intersection of High Street, a testament to the deep faith that guided and sustained our founders, a townhall whose bell tower and clock commemorated the young men who enlisted in World War I and a railway station that connected the town with the south - all of which express the architecture of their time and what was significant and utilitarian to these people. Since then, two major developments borrowed from our past architecture to create attractive homes that echo these themes.

It is with dismay and shock to read the proposed changes to the Ontario Heritage Act and its regulations! I am baffled by the amendments and the lack of understanding as to how an economy like Southampton’s actually works.

1. The Numbers

a. How does dismantling the heritage register create new housing? One listed place is torn down and one place is built on the same site. How is that adding “more” homes? I do say “one place”, because in the older parts of the town that single house is replaced by another single house. Secondly, these new-builds are not “affordable housing” by any stretch of the imagination as the real estate listings clearly prove.

b. Saugeen Shores, of which Southampton is a small part, has approximately 4,400 residential properties in total. Of those, 105 are listed on the Saugeen Shores Heritage Register. That is less than 2.3% of all the residential properties in Saugeen Shores. Southampton has 43 listed properties and represents less than 1% of the housing stock. To insist that developers be allowed to demolish these 43 properties or even 105 will not create much of a difference, particularly as they are not likely to be affordable.

c. Moreover, Bruce County projects that there will be a surplus of 1330 residential units in Saugeen Shores in the next 25 years. Bruce County’s chart highlights the numbers.

These numbers make it clear that “more homes built faster” is completely unnecessary in our situation.

Developers have many options in Southampton and Saugeen Shores on sites that do not have heritage merit on which to build truly affordable and varied housing projects. There is also a continuing infill movement and the development of scrub land. A good many developers are way ahead of this Bill and good for them.

2. The Economy

With the decline of the fishery and the furniture industries, Southampton’s economic base eroded. However, the business and civic community realized that instead they could build a tourism industry based on the historical ambience of the town and the access to Lake Huron to generate new jobs to replace the lost ones and, therefore, to create a means of generating new revenues for the town.

The Southampton Business and Professional Association has used the historical elements and buildings such as The Market to attract the tourists. Businesses cater to our visitors, cottagers and seniors whether it is a scoop of ice cream, a high-end meal, a bed and breakfast in a romantic Victorian mansion or a true rustic cottage. These businesses often are also the first opportunity for young people to enter the working world. Not only that, we have an influx of retirees who have chosen to reside here because of the town’s character and the other elements I have mentioned above.

To create a carte blanche permission to destroy homes and buildings that drive the Southampton economy without an examination as to what is to be destroyed, in my eyes, is disrespectful to the existing history of Southampton and definitely not a positive prospect for the people who earn their livelihood here through tourism and the influx of retirees.

3. Who We Are

To walk the streets in the “oldest port on the Bruce” is to walk in the footsteps of the early settlers - builders, fishers, farmers, carpenters, seamstresses, etc. To see the railway station is to see one instance of their craftmanship, hard work, and entrepreneurship. There are many more. Many streets and lanes bear the names of citizens who were leaders of their time. We can see who these people were who built the infrastructure and the community with imagination and drive. We have benefitted from their labour and stand on their shoulders.

And how do we honour these people who built this port into a unique and thriving community? Shall we now destroy what they built with their bare hands in the name of expediency? Shall we put their work into the jaws of a bulldozer to be crushed and discarded and so wipe away the traces of their existence?

To do so is to wipe away our heritage, to shred our roots, to bury who we are. After all, part of who we are is rooted in the people before us, whether they were they low or high.

4. Plans and Drawings

The Act proposes that plans and drawings that show the exterior design of a new building, including its character, scale, appearance, and design features, will no longer have to be submitted for approval. In fact, the Act would specifically add exterior design to the list of matters expressly excluded from site plan control.

To disregard matters such as scale and exterior design is to invite a mishmash of designs, some of which would be jarring in the context of the unique ambience of old Southampton. It would be a flagrant disregard of the unique character of the west side of Southampton. Moreover, such a parachuting into the midst of the established streetscape would not honour our history and our predecessors and diminish the attractiveness of our town to potential retirees.

5. Historical Value and the List

It takes research to deduce if a site is of historical value. And it takes time. Saugeen Shores does not have the kind of money needed to engage researchers and depends mainly on volunteers to carry out such work. How many researchers are there in a town of under 4000 souls? Yet this bill expects Southampton to complete the research in two years and then, in what appears to me a punitive strike, will not allow a site to be re-listed before 5 years have elapsed – enough time to raze the approximately 100 sites that Saugeen Shores has listed?

The restrictions and hurdles that this bill would impose on listing sites are unfair and draconian. A small town like Southampton does not have the means to meet these requirements. This is a deliberate attempt to stifle any conservancy.

Why is our history held in such low esteem? Why is so little funding extended to research our history? Canadians spend millions visiting other countries who are proud to show off their historic places. Why are we not proud of the accomplishments of our settlers and entrepreneurs?

6. Democracy

I also find it disturbing how Bill 23 usurps the roles and powers of our elected officials. We vote for our local politicians because they have an intimate knowledge and relationship to the town and its people. They are in the best position to draw appropriate plans to meet provincial goals. And they have been doing that diligently! What is the use of an Official Plan when the province simply overrides what local people have studied and developed that meets the interests and needs of the local people and their future? How much money has been wasted on Official Plan development that could have been used for other needs? Such treatment of our elected officials and the people they represent, while not perhaps intended, is an overreach of the province’s power and shows a high disregard of the town’s people.

In conclusion, there are many places in Ontario, unique in their own way which will also lose their history and have their tourism income chipped away. If we have nothing to show to visitors and to experience people will go elsewhere. Bill 23 takes a cookie-cutter approach to housing and assumes conditions are identical everywhere. That is not the Ontario that I know. Southampton is not Toronto which is not Thunder Bay, which is not Kingston or Picton or Wawa and so on. It is time to re-think what has been proposed.

Respectfully, I urge you to consider my concerns which I share with many others. Let us meet the goals of Bill 23 in a way that is collaborative and sensitive to the specifics of Southampton and every other municipality of this varied and huge province.

A very concerned Southamptoner and Ontarion.

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