I have a 30-year career as a…

I have a 30-year career as a professional heritage consultant undertaking projects for property owners, municipalities, developers, architects, and planners on the evaluation of cultural heritage resources. The Bill 23, Schedule 6 proposal to amend the Ontario Heritage Act illustrates to me how some politicians and developers fail to educate themselves on how critical heritage resources are to the supply of affordable housing, lowering carbon emissions, and extending the lifespan of landfills. By annihilating the s.27 OHA Register, the management and evaluation of the potential for adaptive reuse of older housing stock (much of it small-scale, detached or multiple units, with food garden areas, in neighbourhoods with character); and the reuse of vacated industrial, commercial, and institutional buildings (ideal for conversion to small housing units) is being discounted. The corollary proposal to elevate to a Regulation the threshold for listing on the Register, confirms that the drafters of Bill 23 and the Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism have no concept of how this will increase the cost and effort to simply compile a planning tool intended to quick identify a resource for future study. To remove a listed property from the Register at two years, with no renewal for five years, is poor asset management. Heritage conservation is not driven by a few who like the look of historic architecture and the stories they preserve. These qualities are the value-added of utilizing heritage resources. Schedule 6 should be removed from Bill 23. It is ill-conceived, short-sighted, and damaging to all Ontarians.