Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act

An Act To Protect Heritage Lighthouses (French: Loi sur la protection des phares patrimoniaux), officially known as Bill S-215, is a federal act to designate and preserve historically significant Canadian lighthouses. It was passed by the Canadian Parliament in May 2008. The act set up a public nomination process and sets heritage building conservation standards for lighthouses which are officially designated. First introduced in 2000 as Bill S-21 in the Senate of Canada the bill enjoyed consistent multi-party support despite the unpredictable legislative agendas of minority Parliaments and was repeatedly re-introduced. The final vote of approval was made by the Canadian Senate in 2008 and the bill received Royal Assent on May 29, 2008.

The Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act (S.C. 2008, c. 16) came into effect on May 29, 2010 and established a deadline of May 29, 2012 to nominate lighthouses for heritage designation. However an announcement in June 2010 to declare almost all Canadian lighthouses as surplus caused critics to accuse the Canadian Coast Guard of emasculating the bill.

The first designations under the Act were announced on 3 August 2012: the St. Paul Island (Nova Scotia) in Dingwall, and three in Saugeen Shores, Ontario, McNab Point and both the Front and Rear Range lights at the Saugeen River Front. As of February 2017, a total of 92 lighthouses had been designated.

With the world's largest coastline, Canada built a large network of lighthouses and developed a unique Canadian style of lighthouses following Confederation in 1867. Advances in navigational technology have lessened the critical navigational role of lighthouses while at the same time their cultural role and potential for tourism development has grown. Lighthouse groups seeking to preserve lighthouses soon found that in Canada, the landmark buildings fell into a heritage Catch-22. As federal buildings, they are exempt from municipal or provincial laws, but they are not protected by any federal heritage laws. Lighthouses are instead merely subject to a property management program called the Federal Heritage Building Review Office (FHBRO). A survey of lighthouses across Canada in 1998 by the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society showed that fewer than 4 per cent of Canadian lighthouses have been protected from demolition under FHBRO, while in the United States, 70 percent of lighthouses over 50 years old have heritage protection by the National Register of Historic Places. The FHBRO process has also been criticized for lack of public consultation with most communities having no idea when local lighthouses were evaluated and for the fact that when lighthouses are sold privately or transferred to other levels of government, even the minimal FHBRO protection evaporates.

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