Toronto bike lanes

2022 Cycling Infrastructure Installation

The Federation of North Toronto Residents Association (FoNTRA) is supportive of the Active TO Midtown Yonge complete street Pilot installed last year.  ActiveTO bike lanes are an important part of the City’s transportation system, helping to reduce automobile use, to enliven the streets, and support the businesses along Yonge Street in Midtown.

We appreciate that the current pattern of streets to the west and the Yellow Creek ravine to the east result in land-locked communities that create challenges to the implementation of the pilot. We are aware that Councillors Layton and Matlow are currently working with Transportation staff and residents to resolve the localized concerns about the current installation of bike lanes and CaféTO installations along with related initiatives to reduce traffic congestion on Yonge Street, such as left-turn lanes. Two of our member organizations are opposed to bike lanes on Yonge Street and their impact on traffic, and another has raised issues re: access to residential streets and impacts of upcoming construction related to development projects, we urge the Committee and City Council to ensure that the traffic concerns underlying their opposition are addressed in the proposed extension of the ActiveTO Yonge Street Pilot.

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ONCA Webinar

Boards & Bylaws

Special Webinar on ONCA Changes – Feb. 16, 2022

Ontario’s Not-for-profit Corporations Act (ONCA) was proclaimed on October 19th, 2021. Nonprofits have 3 years to update their bylaws and letters patent to comply with ONCA. This webinar will walk through what is new in the ONCA, steps nonprofits need to take to transition to the ONCA, and how CLEO’s free resources can help you create ONCA compliant bylaws from scratch or adapt your current bylaws.

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Palmerston multiplex

Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods – Update Report

FoNTRA supports the Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods (EHON) program in principle. However, neighbourhoods across the City have different characteristics that must be taken into consideration in expanding building types across the City. This cannot be a “one size fits all” initiative.

We believe that an extensive public consultation at a Neighbourhood level is critical.  City wide engagement is essential. There should be a review of the processes used for laneway and garden suites, and lessons learned applied. Specific local area participation must also be included and has not been so far except by some local residents associations. Ward based consultations are too broad.

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Stop Out-of-Control Housing Prices

This is to express our strong support for the Motion and Recommendation from Executive Committee to request that the Government of Ontario help to stop out-of-control housing prices by imposing a home speculation and home flipping tax. 

The latter view has been eloquently expressed by Professor Patrick Conlon[1] noting that cities such as Vancouver have “already tried harder than anywhere else in North America to add housing supply in the hopes of lowering home prices and sadly it has not worked…..what’s happening in B.C. is happening elsewhere — whether they are adding housing slowly or quickly. It makes no difference if these cities are constraining supply like San Francisco, California, or letting it rip like Austin, Texas. Everywhere, housing prices are separating from the ability of average wage earners to afford homes.

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Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods

FoNTRA supports the careful intensification of neighbourhoods and has been involved in the development of the new policies and regulations for Garden Suites to help ensure that the character of neighbourhoods is protected, and that the impacts on neighbours are acceptable.

We have continued to raise concerns most recently at Planning and Housing Committee including the following1:

  • The proposed Garden Suites Amendments should not apply at this time to lots where multiplex building types are permitted. And appropriate regulations should be developed for garden suites on lots with multiplexes in the multiplex study now underway;
  • Separation distance of the primary building from the ancillary dwelling and where measurements are taken;
  • The need for additional regulations for the conversion of existing ancillary buildings to protect light, view, and privacy of buildings on the lot and neighbours;
  • Communications, monitoring of implementation, and needed supporting processes and information systems.

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2022 Capital and Operating Budgets

  1. The importance of Good Planning in the Race to be Better

    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. 

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Site redesign

Welcome to our NEW website!

FoNTRA is excited to launch our brand-new website! After months in the works, we’re happy to share it with all of you. Our main goal in launching this new website is to provide our Residents’ Association members with more and better information to aid them in their endeavours to represent their constituents. We’ve also clarified …

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Implementing the One-Stream Preliminary Review Program for Building Permit Applicants

FoNTRA supports the recommendations of this report to improve the Preliminary Review Program, and specifically Recommendation 4 that:

  • City Council request the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning, in consultation with the Chief Building Official and Executive Director, Toronto Building, to review application requirements for the Committee of Adjustment to consider requiring a preliminary zoning review to verify the minor variances and remove the option of a zoning waiver.

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Mandatory Pre-Application Consultation Amendments

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.

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Garden Suites

Garden Suites – Final Report

FoNTRA supports the careful intensification of neighbourhoods and has been involved in the development of the new policies and regulations for Garden Suites to help ensure that the character of neighbourhoods is protected, and that the impacts on neighbours are acceptable. We have been pleased to see the wide consultations undertaken. Our Garden Suites Working Group has been actively involved in consultations with staff regarding a wide range of considerations required to carefully insert garden suites in the backyards of homes across the City.

Garden suites are proposed to be permitted in all areas zoned for low density housing. This means that they will be legally “permitted” on lots that cannot accommodate them due to lot width and or depth, and result in buildings that are too small to comply with the Ontario Building Code (OBC), or cannot meet the safe access requirement of the OBC. The alternative approach would be to do detailed neighbourhood studies across the City to make the permissions for each property clear, which would be a lengthy process.

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Updating legislation for Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries

We are writing to express our strong support for the proposed legislation (Bill 74, Mount Pleasant Public Cemeteries Act, 2021), introduced by Jessica Bell, MPP, that will update and modernize the Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries Charter, which dates from 1871.The legislation is in desperate need of modernization to bring it up to today’s standards of accountability and transparency. This new bill will repatriate the Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries back to the people of Ontario, safeguarding what the public originally created.

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Home Speculation and Home Flipping Tax Proposal

This is to express our strong support in principle for Councillor Colle’s motion. House prices in Toronto are escalating rapidly month after month, year after year, making housing unaffordable for most Torontonians. These out of control housing prices are fueled by real estate speculators and house flippers (“investors”) who are buying multiple properties other than their primary residence. The Ontario Government is uniquely able to stop out-of-control housing prices by re-imposing a Land Speculation Tax to stop speculators from unfairly driving up the cost of housing in Toronto to unprecedented levels.

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Actions to Reaffirm Toronto’s Tree Canopy Target

This is to express our strong support for IEC’s recommendation that City Council reaffirm Toronto’s target of 40 percent tree canopy cover by 2050 to align with the City of Toronto’s TransformTO Net Zero Strategy. However we strongly feel that mere reaffirmation of the 40 percent tree canopy target is inadequate and ineffective. We have to:

(1) actually protect the private trees that are of protected size;
(2) strengthen the Tree Protection By-laws,
(3) increase enforcement of the existing (and hopefully enhanced) Tree Protection Bylaws
(4) Increase replacement planting when trees are to be removed.
and
(5) maintain and enhance the existing protection for soft landscaping in the Zoning Bylaws

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Critical Steps for Net Zero by 2040

This is to express our strong support for this report and its recommendations. We do however question whether the City has a mechanism in place to ensure that its policies are in sync with respect to the City’s approved Climate goals.  We believe this continues to be an issue. For example elsewhere on City Council’s agenda:

PH29.2 Changing Lanes: The City of Toronto’s Review of Laneway Suites – Monitoring Program and Zoning By-law Amendments – Final Report
The proposed reduction of the soft landscaping requirement in the Laneway Suites by-law is contrary to the Climate imperative to maintain or enhance protection for soft landscaping in the Zoning Bylaws.

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TLAB Virtual Business Meeting, December 10, 2021

We offer the following comments and suggestions regarding the above noted items:

34.2 Public Guide Revisions 

We view the Public Guide as an important contribution to public education especially as it relates to self-represented parties and/or parties appearing for the first time at TLAB.

The Public Guide Revisions include both revised material and several new sections including Adjournment Requests, Motions, Affidavits and Recovering Hearing Costs.

We would like to provide feedback on several of the new areas covered in the Public Guide Revisions.

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Garden Suites Community Consultation

FoNTRA wishes to submit extensive comments regarding the November 2021 Online Community Consultation for Garden Suites. We request that the draft Permissions, Official Plan Amendment (OPA) and Zoning By-law Amendment (ZBA) be revised accordingly. We thank you for agreeing to an extension until Dec 7, 2021 for our comments.

Garden Suites is a housing initiative affecting the Neighbourhoods designated lands within the FoNTRA boundaries as well as all neighbourhoods city-wide. FoNTRA established a Garden Suites Working Group (GSWG) which has been deeply involved in the review.

FoNTRA recognizes that Garden Suites represent a feasible option for additional housing in neighbourhoods, but we believe that they need to be designed responsibly, in a manner which preserves the green space system that exists in the neighbourhoods, and such that they do not negatively impact on the adjacent neighbours, and the neighbourhood character.

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Review of Mediation and Settlement on Planning Process 

This is to express our strong support for Councillor Gord Perks’ request for a review and report back on the negotiation process for development applications which have been appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT). Residents Associations are frequently involved in these OLT appeals and have found the process to be inconsistent and not transparent.

We request that the review involve consultation with residents and resident associations, especially those who are “frequent travellers” at the OLT and are familiar with these issues.

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Recommended Parking Requirements for New Development 

This is to provide our comments on the above noted report. While we are in general support of the report’s direction, supporting flexibility in the application of parking standards, we do not support the complete elimination of minimum parking standards.

This review of the parking standards in the city-wide Zoning By-law 569-2013 was guided by the principle that parking standards should allow only the maximum amount of automobile parking reasonably required for a given use, and minimums should be avoided except where necessary to ensure equitable access. The review proposes that new developments would still have to provide adequate parking onsite, and not assume residents will be able to park on street.

As the report shows, car ownership rates of apartment dwellers vary greatly depending on household income. More important, they vary greatly depending on location. No minimums may work downtown, but when you travel away from the downtown core, where distances to destinations are longer, we would expect a real shortage of buildings/units with parking spaces, which will have a social impact as well.

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Ready, Set, Midtown: Zoning Review Status Report

FoNTRA is in general support of the recommendations for the Midtown Zoning Review and specifically, that:

  • the Chief Planner consider feedback obtained to-date from the public and key stakeholders in a preparation of the draft Zoning By-law and to undertake further consultation.
  • the City Planning Division to report back in the second quarter of 2022 with a recommended Zoning By-law.

We support the statement that “the Secondary Plan provides a framework for establishing a complete community in Midtown that supports overall quality of life for people of all ages, abilities, and incomes. This will be achieved through improved access to a range of mobility options, community service facilities, local stores, services and employment, housing including affordable housing, an attractive and vibrant public realm and publicly accessible parks, open spaces and recreational facilities.”

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