Re: Proposed Changes to the…

Re: Proposed Changes to the Heritage Act
ERO number 019-6196

Having personally led the successful effort to save a Heritage school building in my former community of Oakville, and as the owner of an officially designated heritage home in Niagara, I have many concerns about the proposed changes to the Heritage Act.

Our heritage buildings are what distinguishes one community from another, they remind us of our past and provide us with a sense of place as we grow in the future. There is a reason so many people travel to Europe and other areas of the world that value and preserve their past. We don’t need to make it easier to erase our heritage and cultural landmarks to build for the future.

Allowing the Minister of Citizenship and Multiculturalism (MCM):
• to revise the determination of cultural heritage value or interest by a ministry or prescribed public body respecting a provincial heritage property, and
• Enable the Crown in right of Ontario or a ministry or prescribed public body exempt themselves with complying to protections for designated heritage properties if the exemption could potentially advance one or more of the following provincial priorities: transit, housing, long-term care and other infrastructure or other prescribed provincial priorities;
disregards all the work local groups do to identify the heritage buildings that have meaning in their community and sets a dangerous precedent that no building, no matter what it’s historic or cultural significance is safe.

As well, the MCM is making it much harder for municipalities to protect properties and Heritage Conservation Districts (HCD) by requiring that they now must meet two or more criteria for conservation. MCM is also making more difficult by: requiring that municipalities must drop listed but not designated properties within two years; making it easier for properties that have been designated to be removed from the register; introducing a regulatory authority that will create a process for amending or repealing existing HCDs.

The requirement that municipalities drop listed properties that haven’t been designated within 2 years is an especially callous and a cruel blow to the ordinary citizens who sit on the local heritage committees and are tasked with doing all the work to find, list and potentially designate their communities’ built heritage assets.

Canada is a new, rapidly growing country but that doesn’t mean we don’t have important historic and cultural buildings worth saving. In fact, it is deeply disturbing how many iconic and beautiful buildings have been lost to the wrecker’s ball around the Province, especially through the middle of the last century.

These changes, if enacted, will herald in a new era of destruction that is both unnecessary and unwise.
The Architectural Conservancy Ontario has called the proposed Heritage Act changes a “bomb” dropped into the system that will make it virtually impossible to protect most of Ontario’s identified heritage properties.

I agree. Please do not pass these changes.