I would like to provide the…

I would like to provide the following comments with respect to the proposed “New regulation to focus municipal environmental assessment requirements”. As a past provincial and municipal government employee, I respect the intent to remove redundancies in the assessment of environmental factors as well as have timelines that allow municipal projects to be completed in a timely manner. In my experience infrastructure projects could move quite slowly when the need for their completion was dire. However, the new regulation proposed has the potential to remove the assessment of many environmental factors, in particular, I am concerned with cultural heritage resources and Indigenous and settler burials - cultural heritage resources include archaeological sites, built heritage and cultural heritage landscapes.

So contrary to your statements, in a great many cases, there are no other processes related to infrastructure projects in place to allow for the detailed assessment of cultural heritage resource outside of the current MCEA process. The burden that is placed on municipalities by this new regulation is tremendous. Earlier planning studies can cover huge areas that may or may not be selected for actual infrastructure project locations. It is impossible to imagine that detailed cultural heritage and archaeological assessments can be conducted in the early planning stages. The costs would be prohibitive, assessments of large planning studies’ areas would be hugely time-consuming and many of the areas examined in the planning studies would never end up being selected or impacted by the infrastructure, once projects get to the design stages. Therefore, these larger planning studies’ areas do not require the potentially costly detailed assessments. The current MCEA process ensures the detailed cultural heritage and archaeological assessments are conducted at the appropriate stage of a project.

Also, the proposed new regulation addresses very few of the many MCEA projects. For all other projects that are to be outside of this new regulation, there is the potential for impacts to occur on known or potential cultural heritage resources and burial sites during the construction of infrastructure. The majority of municipalities do not know where the existing resources are, as they do not have the staffing or programs in place to have inventories of these resources. Potential resources are only encountered during assessments. In the case of Indigenous burials, there are no such inventories. Therefore, these sites and Ancestor burials may be encountered during construction. The unexpected discovery of burials and cultural heritage sites can damage these burials or sites, stop projects while expensive equipment is on site, require costly emergency assessments or excavations and will not allow for the avoidance of sensitive cultural heritage sites or burials. The avoidance of damage to burial sites is of tantamount importance. Project locations can be moved if sensitive cultural heritage and burial sites are discovered during a municipal class EA process but, in most cases, under this new regulatory regime, it will be extremely difficult to ever relocate an infrastructure project that negatively impacts these sensitive sites and burials.

The “New regulation to focus municipal environmental assessment requirements” implies the Province no longer cares about Ontario’s non-renewable and hugely important past and does not respect the past and burials of Indigenous peoples. We are a wealthy Province and country and therefore, it is inexcusable that the Province shirks its responsibilities to respect our past.