St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, Kinkora, Ontario Photo: Dan Schneider
First: A win for heritage! Municipalities and heritage groups welcomed the May 27 announcement of Bill 200’s extension of the deadline for the designation of currently listed properties for two years — from January 1, 2025 to January 1, 2027. [1]
The legislation signals an important understanding by the government and the Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism (MCM) of the sheer magnitude of the task of deciding and implementing the status of some 36,000 listed properties in Ontario, and a recognition that municipalities need more time to help get it right.
Will two more years be enough? Of course not, and it seems the province implicitly acknowledges this in Bill 200’s inclusion of a provision for possible further extensions by regulation.
This means that in 2026, in less than two years’ time, we all — MCM and its stakeholders — will find ourselves in a place similar to where we were a few months ago. And so should already be starting to think about the best policy response to the situation at that time.
OHA+M will certainly have some ideas about that.
But not today. Today’s focus is not about future possibilities — but rather something, alas, we are stuck with now.
In less than a week, on July 1, more amendments are coming to the Ontario Heritage Act. Bill 139, the Less Red Tape, More Common Sense Act, made changes to the alteration control powers of the OHA. Certain alterations to designated churches and other buildings used for religious purposes will get special treatment. Applicants for alterations to the building’s heritage attributes under section 33 of the Act will be entitled to the municipality’s consent to those alterations. A unique “self-service” scheme will allow applicants to sidestep the alteration approval process that has been in place since 1975. [2]
To implement this peculiar policy the OHA has acquired nine (!) new subsections to section 33 along with four new sections in regulation — detailing procedures, conditions, “additional conditions”, time periods, information and materials required, definitions, etc. Simple it’s not.
One naturally wonders what problem or issue these changes are meant to address. But, as in many recent government initiatives affecting heritage, there is nary a word of explanation to justify this unprecedented exemption from a core heritage protection power, just a vague statement about the need to “enable streamlining of approvals.”
Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue, Windsor Photo: Dan Schneider
What’s actually going on out there with churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and other buildings in religious use? Which big meanie municipalities have been cramping liturgical practices with unyielding deafness to faith groups’ pleas to alter heritage features? Shame on them … if they exist at all.
The environmental registry (ERO) comments submitted by Community Heritage Ontario (CHO), representing scores of municipal heritage committees across the province, hit the nail on the head:
The current legislation appears to be working
- This appears to be a solution in search of a problem. CHO is not aware of any wide-spread concerns associated with conservation of buildings being used for religious purposes.
- Under existing legislation, staff, municipal heritage committees and Councils have been working with applicants to achieve an outcome that is mutually beneficial to all parties. … (emphasis added) [3]
No “wide-spread concerns” is being kind. There are virtually no concerns. Except from one quarter: the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto.
Which most likely also came up with the “solution” to the “problem.” And peddled it to the government.
Two things support this view. First, the submission of the Archdiocese of Toronto to the government on the proposed changes. It is the only submission posted on the ERO that appears to understand the specifics of the new policy and supports it. [4]
Second, there is history here. Oh yes. The Archdiocese vociferously objected to the 2005 changes of the Ontario Heritage Act and has long chafed under the strengthened legislation. The story is a complicated one; it is told from my perspective in a 2015 blog post on OHA+M here.
The article describes events from the period 2004 to 2015, concluding on an upbeat note:
More recently — after years of continued badgering [by the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto in particular] — the culture ministry created a working committee of faith groups, heritage professionals, and municipal staff to grabble with the outstanding issues, work that resulted in a 2013 Heritage Tool Kit guide on conserving heritage places of worship.
And perhaps also since time has gone by and the results of Bill 60 [the 2005 amendments to the OHA] for religious properties have not been as dire as some faith groups feared, this particular church/state policy squabble seems at last to have died away.
Well … not died away after all.
Zombie-like, the “policy squabble” seems to have resurrected and infected the OHA via Bill 139, with the result that we get a flawed and cumbersome mechanism we (including faith groups) don’t need, an extraordinary carve-out from bedrock heritage protection powers — and a whole lot of not-user-friendly legislative clutter.
Further: We have somehow lost the valuable Heritage Tool Kit guide referred to above and the work that went into it. [5] To rub more salt in the wound, there is no new guide to replace it.
As one former heritage ministry policy staffer observed:
Legislative changes and a new regulation seems like overkill for something that could easily be clarified with a couple of sentences in an updated guidance document. [6]
Ironic for a “less red tape, more common sense” act, eh?
MCM, which presumably got talked into this hash, should keep a close eye on it.
Editor’s Note: Next time, hopefully, it’s back to the intriguing question of the Provincial Policy Statement and “minimum standards” we looked at last month.
Notes
Note 1: See the ERO posting and decision here: https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-8738.
Note 2: See the ERO posting and decision here: https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-7684.
Note 3: CHO’s submission is here: https://ero.ontario.ca/comment/95176#comment-95176.
Note 4: The Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto's submission is here: https://ero.ontario.ca/comment/94539#comment-94539. The submission includes the following:
It was our experience in restoring St. Michaels Cathedral Basilica in Toronto that approvals for the renovations were required. While the building was not designated when the project started, the City of Toronto moved to bring a designation by-law forward during the process. There was considerable negotiation and study to determine how to balance heritage element alterations with the need for restoration and specific faith requirements.
A successful ‘work-around’ was found at the time that mirrors the proposed legislation. The City agreed to specifically exclude a list of the liturgical elements in the worship space, such that alterations would not require a permit under the Heritage Act provisions. This process was time-consuming. The new provisions would have reduced the time and cost of a permitting process and certainly will for any similar situations in the future.
Observations:
- It seems likely the whole Bill 139 scheme now entrenched in the OHA grew out of the experience with one building — St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto.
- This experience, of working with the City of Toronto on the designation of the cathedral, was, by the Archdiocese’s own account, a generally positive and productive one; but it was “time-consuming.”
- One might anticipate that working up a designation by-law for one of the most prominent religious structures in the province, which presumably includes many interior as well as exterior heritage attributes, would take time. (The approach taken with the cathedral — of excluding certain elements from the list of heritage attributes in the by-law, and therefore the need for municipal approval of their alteration — is not unusual.)
- Compared to the development from scratch of a heritage designation by-law for a big cathedral, the review and approval of alterations to heritage attributes of already designated buildings is normally quite simple and straightforward. The “time and cost of a permitting process” is modest, typically involving some minor negotiation with owners — discussion which routinely produces a satisfactory result for both the owner and municipality (and the private/public interests they represent). “[A]n outcome that is mutually beneficial to all parties”, as the CHO submission puts it.
- It is inaccurate and misleading to say, that the experience with St. Michael’s Cathedral “mirrors” the new legislation. Legislatively pre-empting types of alterations from the standard review and approval process eliminates the need and opportunity for discussion and negotiation between faith group owners and municipalities — and can be expected to result in one-sided and poorer outcomes for heritage places of worship.
Note 5: The “Heritage Places of Worship” guide seems to have disappeared from the ministry’s website.
Note 6: Email of November 27, 2023 from [name withheld] to Dan Schneider and [names withheld].