Federation of North Toronto Residents' Associations
Neighbourhoods Working Together on Community Issues
FoNTRA strongly supports the Toronto City Council Member Motion that directs staff to undertake a comprehensive review of the City’s ability to manage “moribund sites”. The City is experiencing a growing number of development sites where planning approvals have been granted, but construction has not proceeded due to broader economic conditions, financing challenges, and market uncertainty.
Toronto, along with municipalities across Ontario, has suffered an avalanche of provincial laws, regulations, and policies affecting planning and development, all without prior consultation or engagement with the City of Toronto and its residents. As a result, residents are largely unaware both of the changes, and their impacts, and of how the City has responded to them.
This application proposes a 35-storey (124.75 metres to top of mechanical penthouse) residential building with 26,074 square metres of residential gross floor area for a total of 442 units, and 621 square metres of ground floor retail fronting onto Eglinton Avenue East just west of Bayview Avenue. The development would have a total gross floor area of 26,695 square metres with an FSI of 13.47.
The Leaside Residents Association (LRA) has reviewed the City’s Appeal Report and strongly supports staff’s recommendation that “City Council instruct the City Solicitor with appropriate City staff to attend the OLT hearing and oppose the application in its current form and to continue discussions with the Applicant to resolve outstanding issues”.
On behalf of our member resident associations, we applaud the steps being taken to deal with the fiscal crisis facing the City of Toronto.
We have attached comments on the measures proposed by staff and the additional recommendations added by the Executive Committee that are before you. We support ;many of the recommendations, but not all.
We strongly support asking the provincial government to provide a greater share of funding of social service programs which it mandates. We especially underline the need for both federal and provincial governments to provide greater financial support for social housing and public transit.
The KPMG report states that “concerns have been raised by a number of stakeholders that the process is too complex and inaccessible for many users. Some users have expressed lack of confidence and satisfaction in the process and do not believe the current practice consistently delivers quality decisions. Further, there have also been concerns raised about the public’s ability to effectively participate in the public hearings, both in the traditional in-person model and in the virtual hearing model introduced in 2020.”
FoNTRA’s examination of the Study Work Program updates reveals some concerning trends. The waiting list for studies and plans is long, and getting longer. This trend appears to be especially true for heritage-related studies, including HCD studies/plans, CHRAs, and City-Wide and Area Guidelines. We have compiled the Study Work Program data for these categories by status (Completed, Forecast, Active and Hold) using the updated reports – see attached.
FoNTRA found the Development Pipeline report to be a useful and important document. The data it presents provide ample evidence on the astounding imbalance between planning approvals and construction of new housing. But the data are also incomplete, because it says nothing about the provision of affordable housing for households with below-median income.
FoNTRA praises the efforts of the City Planning Division and other City staff to respond to the challenges posed by Bill 109 and its adverse effects on citizen participation in planning issues in Toronto. The proposed process changes have the potential to effect both an increase in review efficiency and an improvement in information availability. The challenge will be to implement these improvements within the very limited application review time permitted by the Provincial Bill.
FoNTRA says that the 2023 Housing Action Plan proposal lacks a staff report justifying the recommendations, and the Multi-Tenant Housing report raised many concerns when previously considered, which require to be further addressed, such as how will the new regulatory framework be enforced?
Opposition to Ontario Bill 39, Better Municipal Governance Act, 2022, giving the Toronto’s John Tory “strong mayor” powers continues to grow. FoNTRA wrote a letter to Mayor John Tory on November 23, 2022 expressing strong objections to what is widely seen as an anti-democratic move by the provincial government. It was followed by another letter on November 28, urging the mayor to call an emergency session of council to discuss the matter; he refused, despite calls from many of his own councillors to do so. On December 6, fifteen of the 25 city councillors sent a joint letter to Premier Doug Ford and Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark, urging a halt to the legislation.
FoNTRA like many across the City are extremely concerned about the legislated changes made by the Province to the City’s development approval system, which are being introduced without meaningful consultation with municipalities or the public. FoNTRA notes, with great concern, the significant reduction of public consultation in the revised application review process, which will deprive the public of important information for consideration and will be extremely detrimental to the outcome.
FoNTRA states that Bill 23 does many regressive things, but one of the items of most concern is to prohibit any third party (i.e., citizen/resident or community association) appeals of development applications to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT). The Bill also proposes increased powers of the OLT to order costs against the party who loses at a hearing, which is intended to inflict substantial costs on parties to chill their participation. These measures are fundamentally undemocratic, vindictive, and represent an unacceptable diminution of citizens’ rights.
By Geoff Kettel, Contributor
Toronto Star, September, 3, 2022
The Ford government has introduced legislation that would give “strong mayor” powers to — initially — the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa. This out-of-the-blue announcement, (there was no mention of this during the provincial election) was warmly received by Mayor John Tory of Toronto, and perhaps less warmly by Mayor Jim Watson of Ottawa.
Following a “leak”, Premier Doug Ford recently confirmed that the Mayors of the City of Toronto and the City of Ottawa would be given “strong mayor” powers by his newly re-elected government. This announcement, coming “out of the blue” (there was no mention of this as a promise during the Premier’s recent election campaign) is little more than an idea until the necessary legislation is introduced into the Legislature. Until then we don’t know the details of the “strong mayor” proposal.
FoNTRA commends the work that the TLAB has done to improve public education, including the Chair’s Annual Report, the Open Business Meetings, and the enhanced Public Guide. FoNTRA always looks forward to the TLAB Chair’s Annual Report, and we are pleased to provide feedback and recommendations on the 2021 Report.
We are writing on behalf of the Federation of North Toronto Residents Associations to support the staff recommendation for further study of multiplexes. The neighbourhoods of our members include both those with multiplexes, and those where multiplexes are not permitted. While we support the principle of permitting multiplexes in all R-zoned neighbourhoods, eliminating the multiplicity of R zones limiting building types, we believe it makes no sense to pass an OPA without the necessary changes to the zoning by-law, allowing detail as to how multiplex permissions will be implemented.
The City proposed a new Regulatory Framework for Multi-Tenant Houses across Toronto in 2021. The current status report indicates that the regulatory framework will not be completed prior to 2023, given the number and complexity of the directions required by City Council in October, 2021; however some initial planning work has been completed.
We have reviewed the June 16, 2022 Status Report in the context of the earlier reports (June 2021, and October, 2021) and FoNTRA submissions. FoNTRA expressed qualified support both times. Referring back to FoNTRA’s concerns detailed in our June 25, 2021 letter and supported by our document “Questions regarding implementation of Multi-Tenant Housing Report”, our updated comments on some areas previously identified.
We recognize that this year the City continues to face fiscal challenges on a scale that is unprecedented. We believe that the City should be bold, not shy away from making investments and raising revenue. It is apparent that the way the City, the province, the country, and the world, work have been changed indelibly and permanently as a consequence of the pandemic. If people can work from anywhere, they will still work from somewhere. Will that somewhere be Toronto? Or Whitby, or Scottsdale, or Barbados?? The call has been “to build back better”. This is right. The legacy of the pandemic will be the “race to be better”. What has Toronto going for it? Its brand? “Diversity Our Strength”, “You Belong Here”? Toronto not only has to remain a good place to live for all its (diverse) people, but become a better place.
FoNTRA supports the recommendations of this report to improve the Preliminary Review Program, and specifically Recommendation 4 that:
Pre-application consultation is encouraged and supported as a component of the Province’s land use planning system, and its use is clearly necessary given the reduced statutory review timelines introduced by Bill 108, the More Homes, More Choices Act, 2019.
FoNTRA strongly supports mandatory pre-application consultation as this will help make the application approval process more efficient for all involved. At present, the “complete application” requirements mean that applicants must compile enormous amounts of detailed information, and then the process must be repeated when the application is better focused on City objectives. This wastes time for all involved except the consultants who get more work as a result.