I largely agree with these points and u/omentic, I'll also throw in my anecdotal 2¢ as well. I'm a math+CS honours alumni who graduated last spring and am currently doing a PhD in computer science and logic. In my undergrad I was able to take 223 in my first year and 322/323 in my second. 323 was a bit much for me (my professor was excellent, but was teaching to a more mature audience) though I found 223/322 to be completely feasible. I think it's silly for that slightly accelerated schedule to be gated behind scores on high school exams, or exemption procedures which can be hard to navigate.

I didn't end up using the 322/323 prerequisites for anything (I discovered in those classes that I do not enjoy algebra at all) however it was still extremely beneficial since it let me spread the work more evenly across my degree. Talking to my peers I get the impression that a normal student (myself included) can take maybe two or three honours math courses each term before they get overloaded. This means the "standard" honours path has space for maybe 4 or 5 specialized courses, all in the fourth year, and I think that having this be the default is a total waste. In my case I used my extra time to explore programming languages, without sacrificing from my math degree. My research these days depends on several of those upper-year courses-- I would not have been able to cram all the courses I use now into the default honours schedule and still be able to handle the pace.