I am strongly opposed to the…

I am strongly opposed to the changes proposed in Bill 23, particularly the changes restricting the traditional process for including non-designated properties (that is, "listed properties") on a municipal heritage register.

The existing Heritage Registers contain thousands of properties that are listed. The accumulation of these listings represents a huge body of effort by citizens, historians, city staff, and past municipal councils over a period of several decades. This considerable effort should not be set aside.

Given that many early listings predated current regulations and approval processes, and given that listing is merely a tool to record the interest in a property as having potential heritage value, with minimal restriction on the continued changes to the property, it is not surprising that there is less than full information available about these listings. The amount of “catchup” work to research and document the heritage attributes of these thousands of listings, to the standard now required of the Designation process, is beyond what is possible of municipal governments in the period set out ie 2 years.

If the Province is determined to cull the existing listed properties and reduce the future use of this tool - which I oppose on the merits, the listing process is constructive - there should be a much longer period of grandfathering - potentially up to 10 years - to allow interested parties to make the case for designation.

Lastly, the entirety of Bill 23 and particularly the impacts on the Heritage process are hugely slanted in favour of hungry developers who will gladly trade off the Province’s heritage in favour of short term profit. This entire proposal is wrongheaded and I strongly oppose it.