Stevens Burgess Architects …

Stevens Burgess Architects (SBA) has worked within the heritage industry for over forty years. As an architectural practice that specializes in heritage conservation, our firm has had the opportunity to participate in the industry from both a heritage planning/conservation and a development perspective. Over these decades our projects have ranged from policy planning, heritage evaluations and assessments, and conservation plans to restoration, adaptive re-use, and conservation projects, many with an aim to provide new life or use to a building. This variety of experience and perspective has helped us develop an insight into the heritage framework of our province.

The proposed Bill 23 is draconian and threatens to dismantle the sensitive infrastructure in place in the industry based upon an ill-founded assumption that heritage is at odds with development, affordable housing, and community growth. Nothing could be further from the truth. This bill and the range of changes to the Ontario Heritage Act that it forecasts has the potential to create more of a problem than it aims to solve.

Our concerns broadly relate to equity, consultation, and transparency. More specifically, the following outlines the issues we think are the most problematic in the proposed changes:

Section 27 – Two Year Maximum Timeframe for Listed Properties
- The Heritage Register will cease to be a repository of municipal or community information with respect to the heritage of that city or town, etc.. The removal of any Listed property not designated within two years curtails the ability to think flexibly about heritage. It forestalls conversation about the myriad of ways forward an owner or developer has with respect to alterations, renovations, or redevelopment. Heritage does not preclude development. Outdated zoning by-laws do. No consultation will be required prior to the removal of the property, which limits transparency and therefore limits great opportunities for collaboration.
- The lack of transparency and the changes to the register will burden smaller municipalities and rural communities. Heritage policy is not meant to be rigid, as this new Bill makes it, but something that can adapt to its particular context and take into account the rich complexities of our built form, our landscapes, and our embodied history.
- Changes to the way the register is managed will equal a loss of information about many built form, which correlates to a loss of the historical record for a municipality with respect to its own heritage. Within the Register, there is evidence of the ways communities have valued properties over time. By making the register merely a planning tool, we lose the ability to understand nuance. It also makes the process far less transparent, which will lend to more issues and objections rather than fewer.

Section 27 – Expanded Objections
- The expansion of an owner’s ability to object to a property being Listed prior to July 2021 creates an onerous burden within the industry. There is a startling lack of information regarding upon what grounds an Owner might object. It is unclear of the process going forward and the ramifications within the industry not to mention the pressure on the currently over-burdened Ontario Land Tribunal.
Section 29
- The criteria for designation are forecast to change under the new bill, a move that will curtail recent efforts to bring more diversity, accessibility, and inclusion into our understanding of heritage. Increasing the threshold from one to two criteria that must be met in order to be designated has the potential to perpetuate outdated and colonial-centric valuations of provincial heritage. The flexibility included in the current O. Reg. 9/06 criteria creates an avenue for deeper understanding of the history of marginal groups, Indigenous communities, and even members of a lower socio-economic bracket. Value ought not to be ascribed to only excellence of architectural design because such a limited “value” perpetuates systemic racism and exclusion.

Section 41
- Heritage Conservation Districts (HCDs) will be subject to increased rigour and will require HCDs to meet the criteria under O. Reg 9/06. The proposed changes to the way HCDs are handled is a good idea. We think, however, that HCDs should be treated differently than single, built form. There is an opportunity to create criteria that captures the nuances particular to landscapes or character areas that will help to create greater flexibility in the mechanisms by which we can conserve heritage, but also work with existing heritage areas.

Part III - (7) Exemption re: compliance
- The exemption from compliance proposed that would grant the Lieutenant-Governor the authority to give leave to a ministry or prescribed public body to circumvent the Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Provincial Heritage Properties for a property when doing so was deemed meritorious for the furtherance of one of a number of government initiatives is particularly alarming. It creates a veto power within the province that is unchecked and without balance. The other changes proposed under Bill 23 all indicate the need for criteria. Rigorous criteria ought to be developed for the use of this particular power so that a high threshold is in place before such authority might be granted.

In light of the above, we suggest that greater consultation occur to create meaningful changes to improve the heritage framework and that will also be to the benefit of all provincial objectives related to affordable housing. For example, the current suggestion that the Register needs to be made available and accessible online is an excellent example of a positive step that increases transparency within the heritage industry, as does the review of HCD plans. Rather than create more prescriptive policies with respect to heritage and planning that are counterintuitive to change, the government could look to empower greater creativity within the industry that encourages density, growth, and design excellence using resources already available. The more constriction is added, the greater the challenge to achieve change in a way that is forward-looking for our province.

Other excellent groups have provided feedback to these changes such as the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, the Ontario Association of Heritage Professionals, the municipalities of Toronto, Ottawa, amongst others, as well as other colleagues. We lend our voices to this chorus and echo the request for greater consultation and for more careful consideration of the changes currently proposed.

This bill will make what is a consensus-building industry adversarial and stymie real efforts to manage provincial priorities while still respecting our past.

Yours sincerely

Jane Burgess, OAA, CAHP, MRAIC, APT
Kelly Gilbride, OAA, P.Eng., CAHP, LEED AP
Sheldon Kennedy, OAA, CAHP, LEED AP
Julia Rady, PhD