To whom it is concerned, I…

To whom it is concerned,
I am writing to express my concern regarding the proposed changes to the Ontario Heritage Act. As written, the changes will render the heritage register as basically a 2 year waiting period for designation, which is a significant problem for many (if not all) municipalities which are 10 or more years behind in their designations. This sets an impossible pace to catch up, given the already strained municipal resources and will lead to the loss of culturally significant homes and buildings.

Forcing municipalities to try to keep up with the designations will just take more municipal resources away from reviewing and approving development and building permits. Heritage is low hanging fruit for developers to point at as a reason for delays, mostly without merit. If a developer buys and speculates on a heritage listed property for 15 years until it becomes economically profitable to develop and then tries to get it demolished, who’s fault is that? It isn’t a reasonable complaint to claim delay due to heritage at that point.

The current function of the Act forces a city council to act on moving to designation within 60 days already following demolition request, which is a perfectly fine system. No intelligent developer would buy a heritage listed property and believe they would be able to demolish it immediately (unless they are in the pocket of the city council).

To reiterate, the proposed changes will just overload municipal offices trying to catch up on designations, or more likely lead them to give up. You might as well just scrap the Act at that point.

Heritage designations are not the reason why we are a generation behind in constructing housing, let’s not rob future generations of cultural heritage.

Cameron MacCarthy-Tilley, MEng., P.Eng.
Guelph, Ontario