I am very concerned that the…

I am very concerned that the government has decided it is necessary to threaten heritage protection of buildings in order to build new housing. It seems like an unnecessary and draconian wiping away of any impediment to developers putting up giant new condos. I do know something about this, as a resident of downtown Toronto. My neighbourhood has been transformed by the construction of huge - really huge - towers on tiny lots. In the St. Lawrence area where I live, there is a development notice on every block. Especially in the Old Town, i.e. the original 10 blocks of the Town of York. The towers are tall. They all have Shoppers Drug Marts and cannabis shops at street level. Some aspects of the street heritage on some has been maintained by the keeping of small parts of facades, but that is not heritage protection.

Why are you not promoting moderate densification in suburban areas instead?
Downtowns are bearing the brunt of the development and, ironically, becoming ever less liveable as more thousands of people pour in.

Another perspective I bring to this is as a leader of architectural and historical tours for ROMWalks, a volunteer program of the Royal Ontario Museum. For the past several years I have had the privilege of pointing out to interested citizens how certain buildings have been preserved and repurposed, with careful attention to their history, and have also pointed to sites where beautiful old buildings have been destroyed. The ones that have been saved, we owe to the dedicated efforts of citizens who stepped up to counter the prevailing politicians of the day, and now those efforts are lauded and appreciated. This is what heritage designation is for, to save us from ourselves! From you!

Making it harder for municipalities to protect their heritage properties by increasing the criteria and decreasing the time will not help to create more housing. Old buildings that are important to the history of communities are not the problem. Developers and architects have shown that they can work with the fabric that is there to create interesting repurposed structures. The recent solution that was found to the proposed demolition of the Foundry buildings in the West Donlands is an example. Y'all were going to just bulldoze it in the middle of the night. But when active citizens forced your hand, a proposal was approved that does get housing built and also protects the most historically valuable parts of the complex. Why can't you just do that? Talk to people. People who are not NIMBYs, who want affordable housing built, but not at the expense of the history and heritage that is all of ours to enjoy into the future.