The Cana­dian Press

It’s up to Pre­mier Dal­ton McGuinty and his gov­ern­ment to save the Ontario legislature’s impres­sive vista from being per­ma­nently destroyed by high­rise con­do­mini­ums, Speaker Steve Peters said Friday.

Two condo tow­ers are slated for con­struc­tion behind the 118-year-old build­ing in down­town Toronto, which Peters said will under­mine the structure’s grandeur and impor­tance as the seat of provin­cial parliament.

His fight to pre­serve the view has put him at odds with his own party, which has so far refused to step in with leg­is­la­tion that would pro­tect it.

“I just con­tinue to come back to why: why won’t the gov­ern­ment step in?” Peters said Fri­day in an interview.

“They have an oppor­tu­nity now to pro­tect the sight­line in per­pe­tu­ity. I think on behalf of both present and future cit­i­zens, that they should exer­cise that abil­ity to pro­tect those sightlines.”

An Ontario court has turned down his request to appeal approval of the project by the government-appointed Ontario Munic­i­pal Board, leav­ing him no other option but to plead his case directly to the gov­ern­ing Lib­er­als, he said.

“From the legislature’s stand­point, to the best of our knowl­edge, we’ve exhausted all of our avenues to pro­tect the sight­line,” Peters said.

“Now it’s up to the gov­ern­ment.… They need to step for­ward to pro­tect that view of the legislature.”

The rul­ing can’t be appealed, so Peters is writ­ing directly to the gov­ern­ment in a last-ditch effort to per­suade it to pro­tect the view of the his­toric building.

He said he tried to per­suade Jim Bradley, the for­mer munic­i­pal affairs and hous­ing min­is­ter, and Tourism Min­is­ter Michael Chan to inter­vene, but his pleas were ignored.

“I argued and con­tin­ued to argue that it may be a munic­i­pal deci­sion, but this is a mat­ter that is of provin­cial inter­est,” he said.

He fears that if the gov­ern­ment fails to act, it will open the door to more devel­op­ment around the legislature.

“I’m just really frus­trated and dis­ap­pointed that they won’t step into this,” Peters added.

Two oppo­si­tion crit­ics share those feel­ings, say­ing the Lib­er­als should have moved sooner to pro­tect the sky­line that greets vis­i­tors from all over the world as they approach the legislature.

Pro­gres­sive Con­ser­v­a­tive Lisa MacLeod said she’s per­son­ally dis­ap­pointed that the condo project will go ahead and that the Lib­er­als haven’t lifted a fin­ger to stop it.

“Again, it goes to lead­er­ship and Dal­ton McGuinty could have led by exam­ple,” she said.

“He chose not to, and now there’s no turn­ing back.”

New Demo­c­rat Peter Kor­mos said he’s still hold­ing out hope that some­thing can be done to pre­serve the view.

“What’s tragic is that this gov­ern­ment has failed to join in this issue, has failed to express its sup­port for the Speaker in his pur­suit of main­tain­ing the pris­tine qual­ity of the site of Queen’s Park,” he said.

Peters, who served in McGuinty’s cab­i­net, took the unusual step of push­ing his own party to halt the planned con­struc­tion last May, when the munic­i­pal board gave the project a green light.

The New Democ­rats backed him up at the time, say­ing they would sup­port leg­is­la­tion that would pre­serve the view of the building.

A his­tory buff, Peters takes his job as guardian of the leg­is­la­ture very seri­ously and took spe­cial pre­cau­tions last June to pro­tect the build­ing from pro­test­ers dur­ing the G20 sum­mit of world leaders.

The struc­ture wasn’t fenced off, but many of its large win­dows were boarded up and jour­nal­ists were for­bid­den from shoot­ing pic­tures or video from inside the building.

Over its long his­tory, the leg­is­la­ture — or Queen’s Park as it’s known in Ontario — has sur­vived destruc­tive fires, bloody riots and even the slow ero­sion of its unusual, pink-hued bricks.

Although height restric­tions exist in cities like Wash­ing­ton, D.C., gov­ern­ment sources have said there are no plans to enact sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion for the Ontario parliament.

They argue that tall build­ings already exist around the leg­is­la­ture. But Peters said the two planned condo build­ings will extend even higher at 127 and 133 metres each.

There have been calls for the City of Toronto to do more to pro­tect its her­itage struc­tures in the wake of a fire that destroyed a his­toric build­ing down­town ear­lier this month.

The empty struc­ture at Yonge and Gould streets had gone through many changes in past decades — at one time hous­ing the Empress Hotel — before it was gut­ted by a six-alarm blaze Jan. 3.

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Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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sight­lines realty

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