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FORUM: Tear up that parking lot and put in housing (Jan. 2026)

March 9th, 2026 · No Comments

Climate change advocacy and transit improvements are a focus

By Dianne Saxe

All best wishes for a good new year. So glad to see the days starting to lengthen again. Here are the top three things you should know this month:

Speeding up Transit: The mayor and council have finally joined my campaign to speed up surface transit after the brand new $3.5 billion Finch West Light Rapid Transit line turned out to be slower than the bus. As a TTC board member, I was appalled to learn about this only after the opening and to get confusing and contradictory answers about why. You may have seen me on TV telling our provincial overlords not to open Line 5, Eglinton Crosstown, until it is faster than the Eglinton bus. Toronto has the slowest streetcars in the world, and to fix it, we need to place a greater priority on transit. I have instituted data-driven solutions on Dundas Street that make transit faster, and I’m thrilled these are now being implemented in other wards.  

Parking Lots into Housing. As timber walls rise out of the old parking lot at 35 Bellevue, a College Street parking lot four blocks away will now be transformed into badly needed purpose-built student housing. Too many students face multi-hour commutes and/or are crowded into illegal rooming houses. Staff advised that this new building should be open by fall 2029.

Saving Climate Action: Together with citizen activists, I helped rescue the possibility of a mandatory Building Emission Performance Standard (BEPS), the backbone of TransformTO. Instead of the long-promised bylaw, staff were forced to present an old-style “climate plan” with unfunded capital projects and existing green standards that may not survive the year offering “blame Ford and Carney” excuses. Due to public outrage, the mayor eventually allowed a BEPS report for 2027, although there are no guarantees it will lead to action. I also faced a bitter fight trying to ask Toronto Hydro about cost-saving and pollution-reduction measures from the dirty Portland’s gas plant by using storage, renewables, and price incentives that shift expensive peak electrical demand. The provincial agency that should have answered that question, the Independent Electricity System Operator,  largely ignored the opportunity. We’ll now get a partial answer in the spring.

In other news:

Six years after Toronto quietly dropped the role of chief resilience officer and abandoned preparing for climate change, the city is ready to start talking about it again. The Climate Change Resilience Workplan is a plan to eventually develop a Climate Change Adaptation Actions Plan, as and when the mayor or other governments are willing to fund it.

As a first step, extreme heat is the top climate breakdown risk to the health and well-being of Torontonians, especially Indigenous peoples, the unhoused, and tenants of buildings without air conditioning (flooding is likely to cause the most infrastructure and financial damage). The city is therefore taking measures to protect tenants from extreme heat in their units, with a Maximum Temperature Bylaw for Rental Units due back to council by July.

The city’s primary sewer contractor was suspended for five years from working for the city after being caught falsifying invoices. This kind of cheating deserves severe consequences.

Council supported my motion condemning Ford’s attack on our conservation authorities, including wasting millions to force a confusing new name and huge new expenses onto the internationally renowned Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. 

The city will also support any public interest litigation against Bill 60 which made it easier to evict tenants.

Toronto police data show a large drop in serious crime across the city, including the lowest murder rate we have seen since 1974. However, I am working with the police to address the recent uptick in break-ins in certain parts of our community.

Happy New Year to one and all!

Dianne Saxe is city councillor for Ward 11, University-Rosedale.

READ MORE BY DIANNE SAXE:

Tags: Annex · Columns · Opinion

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