About 475 Halton Hills properties are expected to come off the heritage register on January 1

What changes on January 1

Ontario's Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022, set a time limit on 'listed' heritage properties, the ones a municipality has flagged on its register without formally designating them. Bill 200 later pushed the deadline to January 1, 2027. On that date, according to a June 25 staff report to Halton Hills Council, every property still listed but not designated comes off the Town's Heritage Register. Staff anticipate about 475 removals, and the report's Appendix E lists each address. That estimate assumes Council also accepted the report's recommendation to take 22 other listed properties off the register early.

Removal ends the requirement for 60 days' notice before a listed building can be demolished. It does not stop the Town from designating a property later, the report says, except where the property becomes subject to a complete development application. The Town cannot put removed properties back on the register for five years, until January 1, 2032.

Appendix E spans communities across the town. It includes more than 20 Mill Street East addresses in Acton, along with properties in Georgetown, Glen Williams, Norval, Limehouse, Scotch Block and the rural area. After January 1, staff say they will keep the former listings on an unofficial, public 'Heritage Inventory' and keep reviewing them for possible designation.

Eight new designations proposed

Before the deadline, the Town has been issuing notices of intention to designate properties under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act. It published seven notices on August 14 and an eighth on September 18:

The Edwardian houses at 9, 13 and 19 Wilbur Street North are tied to local builder Stephen Cordiner, who bought No. 9 in 1921, built the matching homes beside it and served on Acton's town council, according to the Town's notices. The Town calls the Ligny School House the oldest and only frame schoolhouse in Halton Hills.

A notice starts a 30-day objection period. For the seven August notices that period ended on September 13; for the Ligny School House, objections can be served on the Clerk until October 18. For 65 Maple Avenue, for example, Council's June 22 motion directed the Clerk to serve the notice and to bring a designation by-law back to Council once the 30-day objection period had passed, if there were no objections. Separately, on July 20 the Town withdrew its notice of intention to designate the Ivens House at 11309 22 Side Road in Limehouse.

What owners can do

Owners who want to know whether their property is on the January 1 removal list can check Appendix E to report PD-2026-057 on Council's July 13 agenda, or contact the Town's heritage planning staff. The same report recommends that ten properties put forward by Heritage Halton Hills, after it reviewed submissions about Norval's heritage, be prioritized for research starting in early 2027.