I think the proposed…

I think the proposed amendments to the Ontario Heritage Act are absolutely abhorrent. It's essentially a free pass for development to happen on lands without any prior assessment to see if there is anything of value to the archaeological record. What the government is trying to do is rip Indigenous heritage from the hands of the Indigenous communities who want to reconnect with their ancestors. The government of Canada has a genocidal past with the Indigenous communities and it's clear that this is another method of continuing that genocide by erasing their history and heritage on this land. And once again they haven't even been consulted on this. The government has no right to make these assumptions that they can do whatever they want to the land - it's not their land! Indigenous communities have rights to the land and their heritage! Where is the so-called goal of reconciliation in these new amendments?

The archaeological record of Ontario is of vital importance. The majority of Canadians live in southern Ontario which means a lot of development is happening and if it were allowed to happen at an accelerated pace, vital information of this land's past for both Indigenous communities and settler communities would be lost forever. The amendments state that certain significant archaeological sites would be excluded from this streamlining. However, ALL ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES ARE SIGNIFICANT. Every site no matter how small can tell us something about the people who lived here before us. It gives us another piece of the puzzle of what it means to be human. The Ford government is once again showing its bullying tendencies. They don't care about our environment or our rich past or the indigenous communities that have lived here since time immemorial. It's clear that based on the way Ford has been aggressively trying to rip away the protection for the Green Belt that this is yet another strategy to rip away protections in order to make his development friends happy and line his own pockets. The Ontario Heritage Act BARELY protects archaeological sites as it is and this is just going to make things worse. Not to mention the fact there is an ENTIRE INDUSTRY dedicated to doing these archaeological assessments. What happens to them when the work dries up because the government deems none of the sites are significant enough to warrant investigation? The work we do relies on incredibly knowledgeable and educated individuals who have dedicated their lives to protecting the cultural heritage of this province. If these amendments happen, thousands of people will lose their jobs and for what? To ravage the environment up north for mining? To create jobs? What about all the jobs that will be lost if this happens? I've dedicated my entire professional career to excavating sites in Ontario in order to protect the archaeological record.