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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Is City Hall’s climate change buzz for real?

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Spacing is happy to have Keith Stewart join the Spacing Wire team. Keith spent many years keeping tabs on City Hall as a key member of the Toronto Environmental Alliance. He’ll write periodically on climate change issues in Toronto.

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The buzz on climate change may yet turn out to be more than just hype. Not only do we have it percolating through both the city’s arts community (see Coach House’s GreenTopia project) and the city’s establishment (see next week’s Toronto City Summit Alliance confab), but if enough citizens stay angry long enough, we might just see a decent community climate plan make its way through 100 Queen West.

Talking green on climate change may be all the rage, yet breaking through the active inertia of the carbon status quo is never easy. But the City of Toronto’s Parks and Environment Committee may have just pulled off an interesting bit of policy judo as they kicked off their climate plan.

Traditionally, politicians respond to political pressure for action by asking staff to write a report on what can be done. This report is watered down internally until there is nothing left that anyone could conceivably object to — and hence nothing interesting, creative, or terribly effective — before it goes to a Committee of Council. Then eco-activists jump up and down and say it’s not good enough and try to draw out a few extra crumbs.

This time, the new Parks and Environment Committee (with Mr. Get-it-Done Deputy Mayor Pantalone in attendance) asked the green policy wonks and dreamers in for a public conversation on what could be done if we really tried. This sets the bar a little higher, creating room for the staff and pols who really want good things to happen.

Most of the ideas centred around re-shaping the city’s built form — its streets, sidewalks, buildings, energy and transit systems — and greening the basic services the city already delivers — transit, energy, waste and water management, parks, health…. Cyclist will be happy to hear that decent long distance bike lanes (separated from traffic, even if it takes lanes away from cars) was #1 on Medical Officer of Health Dave McKeown’s Top 10 recommendations. Hopefully they’ll post the presentations somewhere on the City web-site.

I walked away from a Council committee meeting feeling optimistic for the first time since… well, ever.

Now it’s all about keeping the political heat on Council and moving it out into the culture if we are to be successful in getting Toronto to do its bit to turn down the heat on the planet. Stay tuned.


photo by Bouke Salverda

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9 comments

  1. hmmmm… City Hall has buzz just after David Suzuki passed through town… seems like the topic de jour to me

  2. Yes, it’d be nice if City Hall were intent upon doing something real about climate change, instead of making it worse. I fear another love-in though, and more years of sustained bull.
    We’re not green now, about 20% above mere 1990 stabilization goals, and nowhere near the Toronto Target according to a chart in the back of the Waterfront Environmental Scan, a few years back. The accounting of greenhouse gases is complex, but it’s easier and better when entire areas are missed.
    Transport emissions lead ghg growth. Was there a push for a long bike lane on Bloor St. for instance? Did Joe Pantalone forsake the Front St. Extension road folly and push for the exploration of all transit options to it, including GO and a conversion of the road folly to a transitway, along with say, looking at a King or Queen ROW or combinations that use the Weston rail corridor?
    Would Keith ever criticize Joe? Gord wouldn’t.
    What about not going ahead with the building up of Waterfront – another wall of buildings will further inhibit lake breezes from flushing out the bad air and cooling the City inland in ever-smoggier and hot summers? I don’t think we’ve looked at that either.
    Stabilization isn’t good enough folks, and with some respect to all involved, that’s all we’re doing, which is better than nothing, just it’s about 20 years after the Toronto Target was set, sigh.

  3. If only I could ride my bike on hypothetical bike lanes…

    I’m tired of hearing about cycling issues, if only because my heart can only afford to be broken so many times. I feel used.

  4. Hi Hamish – I’m not naive about how hard it is to get something done. Pessimism of the Mind, Optimism of the Spirit, and all that.

    But as I’ve said many times publicly, to you personally, and included in black and white in the 2004 TEA Toronto Smog Report Card (p. 7), building the Front Street Extension would be a mistake (if the Gardner stays up – if it comes down then we might have an interesting new little neighourhood).

    Whether or not you agree with everything he does, Joe Pantalone is one of the most effective politicians I’ve ever seen in action. Which makes the tale of why the FSE hasn’t been built – and will likely remain in limbo – an even more interesting tale, one that is about strategy rather than sighs.

    It also speaks to being willing and able to work with people to get good things done even if you don’t agree on everything under the sun.

  5. Regardless what issue we are talking about, climate, transport, parks, whatever….the issue is the City is broke and understaffed. So when the transit people get happy about the size of the budget it will use up, the parks people cry as much needed rec centers and repairs get pushed down the line again. Its sad but when I hear about something good, I wonder what is suffering to make that happen. I am dubious that any real climate action will happen (as there is no money).

    I would like to add that many people are against the Front Street extension. As sombody who lived in that area for over 20 years and has seen the kind of density that is being built one has to ask …where are all the cars going to go. If you have driven anywhere in the Liberty area then you will know how great it is that there are lots of people living there but traffic is congested, not because there are too many cars, it really more because there are not enough local roads to service the area properly. Downtown people drive too. Regadless of what transit/road plan one may want, something will have to give in that area.

  6. I’ve been pushing for maybe $200m to $300M of transit expansion through this area for about 4 odd years. I haven’t merely been against a road folly but for a transit gem as I see it of converting the Extension to a transitway that serves Liberty Village AND connects to Etobicoke while serving many dense and varied destinations in the core.
    The lack of institutional (including envirocracies) pickup on our avoiding of examination of transit solutions to all the problems in that area is somewhat staggering and leads to the “sigh” – I know there are lots of issues, but if we could save maybe $200 million while spending $300M on good, and effective transit including simply adding some extra GO trains, isn’t this of concern/interest?
    TEA has been slow on this like most everyone else, and maybe their collective softness is related to how associated they are to the NDP.
    Joe did champion the TREC windmill at the Ex, very good for him, and the FSE is born from limited tri-government co-operation with Harris, Lastman and Chretien, but the FSE EA hasn’t even looked at what will happen to core streetcar transick with the cars getting off the Gardiner at Bathurst.
    The WWLRT is “the” transit response to the FSE but it’s about $350M, and it doesn’t include expansion to the Union Station Loop at c. $150M, and maybe some other incidentals, and we still have the FSE lurking in the sewers, and not repudiated.
    Again, “sigh”.

  7. Hamish, I know you do lots of good work but to insinuate that the TEA is not doing something becuz of their association with the NDP is sad, unprofessional, and helps demean a lot of your good work. TEA is an independent org that takes its own directive. The fact that they receive money from the auto workers does not stop them from talking passionately about climate change. The fact the TEA writes reports that scold city does not stop them from getting contracts to do work for their agencies like the Atmo Fund or TCHC.

    If you want your discussion points to be taken seriously, please act with some integrity and do not accuse groups  of collusion without any info to back it up.

  8. Of course TEA does a lot of good work. And I’ve been rather focussed on a single issue as you know, the FSE, a mere-quarter-billion $ roadway, which has a most peculiar set of politricks about it, most in evidence in the Feb. 21/05 council vote, which I’d love to send you a copy of.
    The NDP/”progressives” have clearly voted along party lines to keep this alive, and avoid looking at a full range of transit options instead of this project.
    Miller once saw a Front St. transitway eg. NOW Nov. 21?/02 (don’t have exact date here) but changed his tune in large part I think (unproven) because Joe P. gave Miller early support.
    Adam G. was originally opposed to FSE, but after elected (with help from Joe) he changed his mind.
    Maybe you’re aware of some public comment or form of opposition to the FSE that Gord Perks made before his election campaign – I’m not, though Gord not only had his print column, but the “luxury” of having his time paid for when he was at City Hall to lobby. There was about four years of time to be against this road by the way, and ask for transit options.
    Gord’s campaign benefitted from Mr. Miller and Joe helping him, and of course he’s done some good work in a few other areas. I believe there was a good woman NDP-linked candidate in that area as well as Gord, but less-sanctioned/anointed.
    As for TEA itself, I think I remember a Royson James column that pointed out some linkages and softness in one of TEA’s report cards, maybe 2 years ago.
    Now their head/Chair is Mr. Michael Shapcott. He has run for the NDP quite a few times.
    The party loyalties also extend up to the provincial
    level in that some MPPs and former MPPs won’t or did not exert themselves to push for transit because of the party loyalties and owing Joe.
    To ignore the fact that party loyalties and ties may, repeat may, (I used the term maybe in the Feb. 24 post) be clouding their view and positions about the FSE and perhaps Waterfront transit is, let me think, naive?, and not really doing the public the service that you’re trying to do.
    As for me being somewhat unprofessional – nobody has been paying me, that’s true. It absolutely shows. And it’s quite uphill trying to fight a $255,000,000 buck road project while somewhat busted/bankrupt over at least four years, though transport air emissions are a big problem, moreso on the lakefront because of the incoming lake breezes.
    May I suggest that you should really think about the lakefront transport issues, whether more GO trains are a better fix to congestion than the FSE or the WWLRT, can we afford to spend the money on the WWLRT if there’s a better option for the goal to move folks in from Etobicoke like, say a King St. ROW, or a Front St. transitway which is something I’ve been pushing in my unprofessional amateurish way for 4-odd years because there are a real set of problems in that area and yes, something does have to give, and I’d be fairly happy with a corridor study first, (which hasn’t happened as we prefer Metro-era road follies). Maybe that corridor study should be set to include the alignment of the 1949 Queen St. subway as all the waterfront transit/transport projects add up to c. $750M or more as I think I’ve missed some. (FSE + WWLRT + Union Loop + modifications to the Bathurst St. bridge. (And I’ve been mulling over another quick-start idea that if anyone has access to a photocopy machine I could bring the paper.)
    If you do decide to do something on all this, and for extra perspective on the party politricks of all this please don’t rely on just my warped perspective but try Adam Vaughan, Ken Greenberg, David White, Ms. Sylvia Watson and Howard Levine to name a few. I could share the Jane Jacobs interview too – she was against the road and I found soulace in how I heard her thank me.
    Please also try to find out what the local road might cost – I’m guessing at between $90M and $140M and it’s really not worth it at this time because now that Liberty St. is linked between Strachan and Dufferin, the poor cars can travel south on Strachan and get over to Fort York Blvd and then to Bathurst and it’s really not too big a detour in my view. Do you think we could spend $140M on a King St. ROW, or should we buy buses with it instead. (Yes, I’m most unprofessional in thinking that a tax dollar is a tax dollar – silly me)
    Yes, the CAW has a really good position on climate change, but we also have a really good position on putting transit first in our OP and I have a lot of principles that I don’t live up to as well. (I can’t believe I may have coined the term “carrupt” but it has a lot of applicability here).
    As for sadness about an “insinuation” look at the associations please, and for real sadness try being aware of climate change and thinking of how transit options – about 10 or so – are being ignored or prevented in this old and limited view of “fixes”.
    Enough, eh?
    thanks for the efforts, and I didn’t totally appreciate your comments, and I can be wrong on some aspects of some things – but have we looked at all the transit options through here? Nope. Why not?

  9. Hamish, I can personally recall Gord explaining his strategy for opposing the Front Street Extension to you, so I really don’t see where this is coming from. As for evidence (as opposed to the innuendo of saying ‘loyalties may, I repeat may be clouding their judgement’), aside from the previously-cited Smog Report Card where our opposition was clear (and repeated in the press conference), a quick google search came up with the following 2002 EYE article where TEA also clearly opposed FSE:
    http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_10.31.02/news/front.php

    When we lost the direct vote on Council (and hey, we lost more than a few votes), Gord cleverly got a motion passed delaying the FSE until a decision was made on what to do with the Gardiner (which will happen… ?). Not exactly a glorious victory, but pretty damned effective. TEA then moved on to other issues, which I know has upset you, but there’s no shortage of battles to fight.

    If/when FSE is reborn from the ashes, we’ll no doubt have to kill it again. Till then, peace brother.