The Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA) has published a list of key policy priorities it hopes Toronto’s mayoral candidates will endorse. Noting that Rocco Rossi’s denouncement of Transit City and bike lanes on arterials has been the only discussion on environmental issues to date, TEA executive director, Dr Franz Hartmann called on candidates to put a focus on the environment.
The group listed six priorities as essential to continuing the push towards a cleaner and healthier city. Those priorities are:
– Build Transit City and fund it
– Achieve 70% waste diversion by 2012
– Buy and support locally produced green products
– Build transportation infrastructure everyone can use
– Implement the city’s sustainable energy strategy
– Provide tool to prevent pollution
The emphasis of the priorities is to build on past initiatives and to ensure continuity of what the group calls “ten years of environmental success”. Beyond the importance of these priorities to personal and communal well-being, TEA contends that the issues are also essential to continuing Toronto’s leadership role on the environment. The city’s pesticide bylaw, which helped lead to the province wide ban, and its pollution disclosure bylaws regarding the presence of toxic substances, were cited as examples of progressive action now being studied elsewhere. “Because Toronto is the biggest city in Canada, what happens here has a big impact on the rest of the county” said Theresa McClenaghan, Executive Director of the Candian Environmental Law Association. “That’s why so many prominent environmental groups endorsed these priorities. We want to send a clear signal to all Mayoralty candidates that these priorities matter and that the next Mayor must adopt them.”
In terms of more concrete actions, the group urged mayoral candidates to continuing working with upper levels of government on transit spending and implement the Green Bin program in apartment buildings. They also encouraged giving purchasing priority to locally produced green products and creating tools for small businesses to create pollution prevention plans.
Leaders of the coalition of environmental groups behind the declaration
The release of these priorities represented a first for Toronto’s municipal politics. Taken together, the coalition of groups that helped shape these six priorities is a formative and diverse group of experts and leaders from a wide range of environmental concerns. In total, 11 prominent groups stood behind the priorities including: Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Canadian Environmental Law Association, Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy, Environmental Defence, Evergreen, Greenpeace Canada, The Pembina Institute, Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation, The Toronto Cyclists Union and the Toronto Renewable Energy Cooperative.
Environmental Defence Executive Director, Rick Smith stated “I’m sure mayoral candidates will have lots of issues to disagree about…but we hope every one of them will agree it’ nes important to build on Toronto’s environmental successes by implementing these priorities.”
Toronto’s environmental leaders have spoken, will mayoral candidates listen?
Photo by Miles Storey
7 comments
On a similar note, the pedestrian Broadway in New York City is to become permanent. See http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/02/11/bloomberg-sadik-khan-commit-to-a-world-class-21st-century-broadway/ for more information and the video.
The Bike Plan has been inferior from 2001. We need to have direct routes, in some thoughtful contributions to a network – one example being Bloor/Danforth, but also on Lawrence, and Queen St. in the west end of the old core. Bike lanes aren’t the only response either, but we need a cohesive linked network that reflects existing travel patterns and known harms.
I’m back. The real Sam Cass, not the cracker imposter who posted on Spacing a few weeks back. I finally figured out this computer thingy.
I’m back & I’m still bitter the Allen Expressway, yes that’s right Expressway, wasn’t driven all the way down Spadina to join up with the Gardiner.
I’m bitter bikes and streetcar lanes are encroaching our streets for no good reason.
I’m bitter everyone doesn’t drive. What are you, losers?
I’m bitter nucular power is being badmouthed. Yea it’s nasty & dirty, but it sure heats up my small pathetic apartment nice.
I’m bitter organizations like TEA don’t reflect my demographic, old bitter white guys like me, that live in the 1950s & still smoke 2 packs a day.
I’m bitter cuz I go to Allen Expressway & Eglinton every day, & watch the traffic back up, while subway trains go right through without delay. To watch where my beloved Spadina Expressway was stopped.
I’m bitter Toronto’s not like Detroit, which has awesome freeways, right through downtown. Now THAT’S a city!
I’m bitter that people don’t listen to me. Or even call me. Is it cuz I’m bitter?
I’m bitter Hamish Wilson’s funnier than me. Yea, my car is a mobile furnace! It’s a 73 Chev V8.
I’m bitter Rocco Rossi’s not extreme enough, God damn it.
I’m bitter Steve Harper’s not extreme enough either. This country needs a strong hand like mine when I was Metro Transportation Czar. Those were the days, God damn it.
Sam
Damn the porn’s fine online.
What about pushing for the electrification of the GO network? Everyone is talking TTC nowadays, lets talk about GO/Metrolinx too. It may not be Toronto’s decision, but most GO lines run in and out of Toronto.
Sam Cass needs a twitter account for that kind of satire – though maybe it’s too niche?
For people who usually worry about biodiversity, there isn’t much of it in that photo.
Jason – I can’t blame them for lobbying mayoral candidates to work on issues they have direct responsibility for first and foremost. The question for me has always been not where the system should be progressively electrified as and when ridership thresholds are reached, but which line gets electrified first – the one which has grabbed the media bullhorn (Georgetown) or the one with the most services right now and which will most benefit from the capacity increase electrified train performance brings (Lakeshore)
Electrification of the Georgetown corridor would be terrific for the environment. They need to make that a priority.