I am reviewing the changes…

I am reviewing the changes to the Ontario Heritage Act in Bill 23 from the perspective of a professional planner having lived and worked in southwestern Ontario for the past 45 years. I appreciate the opportunity to comment even after the Bill has been rushed through the legislature with minimal review, public discussion and debate.

I’m reviewing the specific propositions being put forward as they impact the cultural heritage resources for Ontario, and more specifically (where my experience/knowledge is situated) onto the City of Guelph, the Royal City. Overall, I disagree with what is being propositioned here as it reflects a ‘blunt instrument’ to enact change for the benefit of development interests without considering the more subtle endeavour of building a community that people want to care about as they go about their busy lives, today and into the future.

I understand the premise of the current government to go out and cut what they refer to as development ‘red tape’ respecting our common historical heritage, but what the rest of us consider valuable regulation to give substance and character to our communities. This is especially important for a City such as Guelph that was a British town-designed community from its inception in 1827, and is now facing the onslaught of new infill development that impacts the character and substance of the overall community. My basic fear to all the Bill 23 change is that the community known previously as Guelph, becomes known as an ‘outer ring’ settlement area within the Greater Toronto megalopolis, i.e., the one size fits all Bill mantra will remove vestiges of a former ‘character full’ Guelph community to one of the faceless, placeless sameness of all the other GTA places.

The City of Guelph has thousands of buildings and landscapes comprising historic and cultural value. Bill 23 with its ruthless short-term time horizons of 2 and 5 year timelines for the community to do something with its heritage resources is nonsensical. There are insufficient staff and funding resources within the City to complete the necessary background work to investigate and determine the specific and detailed heritage value of all of these resources. From the background of the Bill 23 proposal, there is insufficient justification analysis that I can find warranting the significant changes to the Ontario Heritage Act at this time.

My following comments are focused on the provisions of the Government’s Provincial Policy Statement (PPS), the primary policy document that guides development within the Province. This Statement is quite clear that all policies in the document need to be considered to create healthy, safe and vibrant communities, now and into the future, i.e., not simply removing perceived short term barriers for new housing development. The PPS is very clear in Policy Section 2.6.1 that, “Significant built heritage resources and significant cultural heritage landscapes shall be conserved.” The setting of arbitrary dates in Bill 23 to enact local decisions on existing heritage/cultural resources does not meet the intent of the PPS. From first hand experience in the community, some property investors have already diminished the available heritage resources in the community by not properly maintaining the resource, i.e., demolition of cultural heritage ‘by neglect’ or mysterious fire. Bill 23s provisions of either designate something or forget it does not bode well in the conservation of resources/landscapes into the future. Guelph City Hall staff prepared an ‘emergency meeting report’ to Council on November 22, 2022. See attachment with cogent commentary from City staff as to the impact of Bill 23 on the City’s heritage resources (Table 9 on pdf pgs 24 through 26).

The current government’s push to permit development to happen everywhere will have deleterious impacts on the protection and encouragement to preserve cultural heritage resources of our community. In addition, there are several other logistical questions that can be generalized to places across Ontario: 1) How was the rather arbitrary 2-year time clock established to determine ‘significance’ for a community heritage asset? Heritage asset determination needs to stand up to the strict classification standards of the Ontario Heritage Act; the heritage certification professional field is not that extensive in Ontario, and will the imposition of this timed deadline put incredible (also unreasonable) stress on available experts? 2) How are archeological assessments being considered as these may also be deemed to hold up potential housing developments, i.e., ‘red tape’ as classified by this government? It is my assertion that Bill 23, on its simple overall premise to require municipalities to permit development to happen (with minimal government requirements), will not in the long run provide for healthy, resilient places to ‘discover’. Instead, the current government’s approach may/may not aid in making Ontario ‘a place to grow’ but in a poorly designed and non-sustainable monolithic manner.

As a conclusion, I would urge the government to abandon its bull-headed approach to planning against the accepted best practices of broad community engagement and dialogue, i.e., not simply having the development sector sit at the planning table. The public interest to building sustainable, distinctive communities is built on a foundation of trust, mutual respect and dialogue – something that is sadly missing from Bill 23 and its impacts on the cultural heritage resources of Guelph and I suspect other communities throughout Ontario.

Sincerely yours!