EA Modernization puts…

EA Modernization puts Ontario's cultural heritage seriously at risk

This proposal paves the way for the destruction of Ontario's cultural heritage in two ways:

1. It absolves almost all municipal infrastructure projects of their responsibility to consider their impact on built heritage resources and cultural heritage landscapes.

2. Even in the four types of projects which still require Municipal Class Environmental Assessments, the process has been truncated. Only one possible solution, the proponent's preferred option, needs to be evaluated.

Previously, a Class EA evaluated the impacts on natural and cultural features, infrastructure, traffic patterns, local residents and businesses in the community as well as existing and future land uses.

Class EAs led many municipalities to preserve and repair their heritage bridges, instead of following their first impulse to destroy or replace with a flat cement structure. These bridges have gone on to attract film shoots and tourists and brought economic gains to the community -- advantages these municipalities would never have discovered if they had not been compelled to consider more than one option.

Identified cultural heritage landscapes, such as the West Montrose Covered Bridge area, have also been noted and protected through Municipal Class Environmental Assessments.

This attention to Ontario's cultural heritage resources is ALL GONE in the proposed new regime.

Ontario's ministries would support each other. Instead, it seems the Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks is deliberately undercutting the mandate of the Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship to enforce the Ontario Heritage Act.

Please, please reconsider this flawed proposal.