Thank you for your continued support. The City of was made aware of all the signatures coming through this petition today, October 7th, 2019.

Sad to say, after the City considered Tannery house for listing/designation to protect the house as a Heritage house they said no.

A few issues became clear today noted below:

1. The City do not interpret the laws/regulations for Ontario Heritage Act in favour of designating Tannery house despite evidence of it's historical associative value etc and some criteria are debatable. 

2. The City appears not to want to list/designate Tannery house because they will have likely to allocate funds to stop the developer from demolishing it in other proceedings. 

3. No one on the Heritage Advisory Committee wants to see Tannery house demolished, but discussion of whether there were other avenues to save it such as allocating the house as rental stock in the new development took place. This would be based on the new rental housing protection bylaw in force that the developer has ignored so far and does not want to consider. 

4. Carolyn Parrish, Ward 5 Councillor, has seen the house and been inside it before. Her opinion was that removing valuable interior Heritage pieces in the house so it could still be demolished was repugnant and suggested the City find a way to move Tannery house forward or put it elsewhere if possible. Carolyn felt it needs to be saved and seems concerned/committed to relevant affordable housing issues. 

5. A strong "housing is a human rights argument" was advanced in the meeting. The Human Rights Code is binding on the City in planning but this meeting was not focussed on that issue, only the Heritage issues. The human rights issues issues intersect with saving the house regardless.  

6. The house is still not safe from demolition. The City has yet to make a decision on the development application. More argument will go forward at the next meeting, date unknown.

Your signatures are still needed and will be promoted at the City level.