The City of Toronto has among the best archaeological conservation
legislation and policy in the world. The City recently won an award by the Society of Historical Archaeology for their Master Plan of Archaeological Resources, which is essentially a management plan. You can find out more about that on the Planning Section of the City's website. The corporation Waterfront Toronto has also recently completed a management plan for archaeological resources that involved a detailed Stage 1 assessment of all resources within their area of concern - that too is available on their website. Those extant features within the waterfront area were graded with respect to future management actions. That work benefited from citizen input including some University of Toronto student input. The City now has funding in place for emergency situations in the waterfront area
and they regularly apply development charges for interpretation of
resources found on development sites throughout the City.

The policies I speak of were not always present and the development
property that contained that portion of the Queen's wharf was approved for development before any of the policies were enacted regularly and uniformly. Development properties are often approved years before the developer begins to construct (or excavate as in this case). The property had not been subject to Stage 1 assessment when it was approved for development by the City and when the remains were found, the developer was actually excavating the basement for the condo structure with full approvals. What those people who were concerned about the situation and wanted the project stopped do not realize is that to stop the development at that moment would have cost the City millions and would have likely involved litigation. Instead, the remains were subject to very detailed assessment and rendered drawings were prepared in a monitoring context. If the property had been subject to usual assessment, the same record of the
remains would have been prepared and it is my opinion that the wharf section would not have been retained or conserved. The City currently has no facility whatsoever to take, conserve or interpret a large section of wharf. Sections such as the one witnessed on this site are recorded
annually.

Fort York, by the way, secured a portion of one of the corners of one of the cribs which was taken for exhibit and they also took a piece of rail and additional timbers. The rest of the timbers were salvaged and provided to a furniture company. All of that salvage work was provided by the developer who was under no obligation to do so.

Hopefully this helps address your questions.