Most of the greenhouse gas emissions in Toronto come from the tailpipes of the million vehicles and from the chimneys and vents of the nearly 500,000 residential and commercial buildings in the city. We need to retrofit those buildings at a rate of 27,000 per year. We will not get the rate of building retrofits we need from the current bespoke approach, where each retrofit is a separate project, financed individually with or without some government assistance, and where the onus is on the homeowner or the building owner to manage the whole process and take all the risk, as well as suffer the disruption and inconvenience of the retrofit itself. The Mayor’s Neighbourhood Challenge (described below) is designed to encourage the aggregation of projects, the employment of professional managers, and the speed of the retrofits. Getting fossil fuels out of our buildings is in the public interest, and as mayor I will be relentless in marshalling public and private investment and innovative strategies for a complete transformation of Toronto’s built environment in this decade.

Great cities are green. I will increase the percentage of Toronto’s operating and capital budgets for expanding and enhancing our parkland and for accelerating progress toward the city’s goal of a 40% tree canopy (currently at 31%). Green spaces, urban forests and parkland are vital for the physical and mental health of city dwellers, especially as the city grows and housing densities increase. Parklands occupy 13% of Toronto’s area, well behind global leaders like London (33%), Los Angeles (35%), Stockholm and Helsinki (40%), Vienna (50%) and Oslo (68%). This is a foundational priority for a strong, sustainable economy; for example, New York estimates it receives over US$67 billion in economic, natural services and public health benefits from its parklands.

to stay on course for greening the city we need 333,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Access to charging is a necessary condition for EV adoption, and tens of thousands of publicly accessible EV charging stations will need to be rolled out before 2030.

The current rates of building retrofits and EV charging installations fall far, far short of what is required to effectively respond to the climate emergency and to get Toronto on a fast track to sustainable living. Fewer than 20,000 of the million vehicles in Toronto are fully electric. Current plans for public charging stations will see fewer than 1,000 in place by 2026 when we need 10 times that many.

Electric vehicles are not only changing the way we move, they are introducing something new to the electricity-distribution system: portable electric storage batteries. By ensuring that our EV charging infrastructure fully supports two-way flow of energy between the vehicles and the buildings and the grid, it will enhance the reliability and resilience of our electricity supply while easing the strains on the distribution system that will arise as electrification proceeds. As mayor, I will promote the use of the city’s permitting and regulatory authority to ensure that Toronto gets the 10,000 public EV chargers it needs by 2026.

Too many Torontonians are struggling to find secure and affordable housing.

Best estimates indicate we need to be building 25,000 new affordable units per year, but according to the City of Toronto Housing Data Hub, just 1,617 affordable rental units have been completed since 2017 – that works out to less than 300 per year, or about 1% of what we actually need to be building.

The central solution I am proposing is within the city’s grasp. The city has access to over 150,000 units’ worth of government-owned land within Toronto. All we need to do is prioritize and fast-track this land to be used for building new homes under a cooperative home-ownership model that strips the fat out of the for-profit developer model that currently prevails.

Under this cooperative home-ownership model, refined over 40 years by pioneers like Mike Labbé (Home Opportunities), Kris Stevens (Cohousing Options Canada) and Peter Cameron (Community Wealth Co-operative), we could rapidly scale up the completion of deeply affordable and affordable units (comprising 60% of new units) and attainable units (40% of new units) to 10,000 total new homes per year (40 times what we are currently doing) within three years and 25,000 per year within seven years. Within the deeply affordable band, which would make up 30% of the new homes built under this model, people earning as little as $35,000 per year with a deposit of $500 (and monthly payments of $1,400) could realize the dream of home ownership.

This solution does not require grants or subsidies, but it does require the city to do seven things:

1. Provide cooperative home-ownership models priority access to public land at fair market value paid upon the commencement of construction.
2. Defer municipal fees and off-site development costs until closing of homes sales.
3. Fast-track approvals for any cooperative home-ownership projects.
4. Make codes flexible to accommodate modular panelized/mass timber housing design.
5. Defer property taxes for the 30% of units earmarked as deeply affordable for low-income purchasers.
6. Provide support/guarantees to secure loans from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Co-Investment Fund and Infrastructure Ontario.
7. Provide access to potential homeowners on the Community Housing waiting list and low-income workers, especially in the healthcare sector, and other assistance to reach people who would like to buy a home.

In addition to our signature policy to combine the city’s public land with a cooperative home-ownership model, I would also use the full power and influence of the mayor’s office to advance a holistic housing strategy comprising these five points:

1. “Best in show” affordable missing middle housing program. It was great to see Toronto City Council recently approve the new multiplex policy, allowing up to four units, citywide in our residential neighbourhoods. Multiplex, laneway and garden suites have the potential to yield family-friendly housing supply in our communities. But how do we ensure that these neighbourhood homes are affordable and equitable?
2. As mayor, I will create a best-in-show affordable missing middle program to cost-effectively add units to existing houses and incentivize homeowners to unlock equity and create affordable units without taking on the whole renovation stress themselves. The CMHC’s Housing Accelerator Fund could help resource my program to roll out low-cost units across the city. Adding just one unit to 15% of Toronto’s single-family homes is the same supply as 100 condo towers. (See this video)
3. Guard our city-owned land for affordable not-for-profit housing. This year Scotiabank wrote a report urging Canada to at least double its number of social/subsidized housing units to address homelessness and the affordable-housing and homeless crisis. Toronto has a 12-year waiting list for families seeking subsidized rent-geared-to-income housing.
4. Public land is one of our greatest assets, and we cannot afford to squander it on ineffective programs that don’t deliver affordable homes. As mayor, I would work with other levels of government to bring key ingredients to the table: publicly owned land, low-cost federal financing, scalable low-cost construction (such as repeatable designs and floor plates, prefab materials), not-for-profit developers (to eliminate profit margins and get more affordable-housing bang for buck) and as-of-right approvals for rental.
5. Protect tenants and existing affordable housing. Current practice that allows affordable, rent-controlled and family-sized old apartment buildings to be demolished and replaced by new condos needs a rethink, especially now that the city’s efforts to replace demolished affordable units (pdf) is in jeopardy under new provincial policy. This is a tenants’ rights issue, and we should be preserving all that embodied carbon in existing buildings. We need housing supply, but we are barking up the wrong tree when the result is losing affordable housing. All the more reason to add more density to single-family homes.
6. Use it or lose it: Toronto has approved lots of new housing supply, including rental housing – tens of thousands of units that are going unbuilt due to land speculation or market forces, like high interest rates, that are stalling development. To avoid this, I would develop a time limit for developers to build their approved housing: “Use it or lose it.” If we build more of what’s already been approved, then we can stop with the nonsense of demolishing affordable apartment buildings.
7. Foster positive housing alternatives. As mayor, I would work to cultivate and support community land trusts and cooperative housing models and foster our rooming house policy in more neighbourhoods. As mayor, I will dig around for the best ideas and consult experts in Toronto and across the country to bring these community housing options to more areas of Toronto. For example, Kensington and Parkdale community land trusts.

Too many Torontonians are struggling to find secure and affordable housing.

Best estimates indicate we need to be building 25,000 new affordable units per year, but according to the City of Toronto Housing Data Hub, just 1,617 affordable rental units have been completed since 2017 – that works out to less than 300 per year, or about 1% of what we actually need to be building.

The central solution I am proposing is within the city’s grasp. The city has access to over 150,000 units’ worth of government-owned land within Toronto. All we need to do is prioritize and fast-track this land to be used for building new homes under a cooperative home-ownership model that strips the fat out of the for-profit developer model that currently prevails.

Under this cooperative home-ownership model, refined over 40 years by pioneers like Mike Labbé (Home Opportunities), Kris Stevens (Cohousing Options Canada) and Peter Cameron (Community Wealth Co-operative), we could rapidly scale up the completion of deeply affordable and affordable units (comprising 60% of new units) and attainable units (40% of new units) to 10,000 total new homes per year (40 times what we are currently doing) within three years and 25,000 per year within seven years. Within the deeply affordable band, which would make up 30% of the new homes built under this model, people earning as little as $35,000 per year with a deposit of $500 (and monthly payments of $1,400) could realize the dream of home ownership.

This solution does not require grants or subsidies, but it does require the city to do seven things:

1. Provide cooperative home-ownership models priority access to public land at fair market value paid upon the commencement of construction.
2. Defer municipal fees and off-site development costs until closing of homes sales.
3. Fast-track approvals for any cooperative home-ownership projects.
4. Make codes flexible to accommodate modular panelized/mass timber housing design.
5. Defer property taxes for the 30% of units earmarked as deeply affordable for low-income purchasers.
6. Provide support/guarantees to secure loans from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Co-Investment Fund and Infrastructure Ontario.
7. Provide access to potential homeowners on the Community Housing waiting list and low-income workers, especially in the healthcare sector, and other assistance to reach people who would like to buy a home.

In addition to our signature policy to combine the city’s public land with a cooperative home-ownership model, I would also use the full power and influence of the mayor’s office to advance a holistic housing strategy comprising these five points:

1. “Best in show” affordable missing middle housing program. It was great to see Toronto City Council recently approve the new multiplex policy, allowing up to four units, citywide in our residential neighbourhoods. Multiplex, laneway and garden suites have the potential to yield family-friendly housing supply in our communities. But how do we ensure that these neighbourhood homes are affordable and equitable?
2. As mayor, I will create a best-in-show affordable missing middle program to cost-effectively add units to existing houses and incentivize homeowners to unlock equity and create affordable units without taking on the whole renovation stress themselves. The CMHC’s Housing Accelerator Fund could help resource my program to roll out low-cost units across the city. Adding just one unit to 15% of Toronto’s single-family homes is the same supply as 100 condo towers. (See this video)
3. Guard our city-owned land for affordable not-for-profit housing. This year Scotiabank wrote a report urging Canada to at least double its number of social/subsidized housing units to address homelessness and the affordable-housing and homeless crisis. Toronto has a 12-year waiting list for families seeking subsidized rent-geared-to-income housing.
4. Public land is one of our greatest assets, and we cannot afford to squander it on ineffective programs that don’t deliver affordable homes. As mayor, I would work with other levels of government to bring key ingredients to the table: publicly owned land, low-cost federal financing, scalable low-cost construction (such as repeatable designs and floor plates, prefab materials), not-for-profit developers (to eliminate profit margins and get more affordable-housing bang for buck) and as-of-right approvals for rental.
5. Protect tenants and existing affordable housing. Current practice that allows affordable, rent-controlled and family-sized old apartment buildings to be demolished and replaced by new condos needs a rethink, especially now that the city’s efforts to replace demolished affordable units (pdf) is in jeopardy under new provincial policy. This is a tenants’ rights issue, and we should be preserving all that embodied carbon in existing buildings. We need housing supply, but we are barking up the wrong tree when the result is losing affordable housing. All the more reason to add more density to single-family homes.
6. Use it or lose it: Toronto has approved lots of new housing supply, including rental housing – tens of thousands of units that are going unbuilt due to land speculation or market forces, like high interest rates, that are stalling development. To avoid this, I would develop a time limit for developers to build their approved housing: “Use it or lose it.” If we build more of what’s already been approved, then we can stop with the nonsense of demolishing affordable apartment buildings.
7. Foster positive housing alternatives. As mayor, I would work to cultivate and support community land trusts and cooperative housing models and foster our rooming house policy in more neighbourhoods. As mayor, I will dig around for the best ideas and consult experts in Toronto and across the country to bring these community housing options to more areas of Toronto. For example, Kensington and Parkdale community land trusts.

Too many Torontonians are struggling to find secure and affordable housing.

Best estimates indicate we need to be building 25,000 new affordable units per year, but according to the City of Toronto Housing Data Hub, just 1,617 affordable rental units have been completed since 2017 – that works out to less than 300 per year, or about 1% of what we actually need to be building.

The central solution I am proposing is within the city’s grasp. The city has access to over 150,000 units’ worth of government-owned land within Toronto. All we need to do is prioritize and fast-track this land to be used for building new homes under a cooperative home-ownership model that strips the fat out of the for-profit developer model that currently prevails.

Under this cooperative home-ownership model, refined over 40 years by pioneers like Mike Labbé (Home Opportunities), Kris Stevens (Cohousing Options Canada) and Peter Cameron (Community Wealth Co-operative), we could rapidly scale up the completion of deeply affordable and affordable units (comprising 60% of new units) and attainable units (40% of new units) to 10,000 total new homes per year (40 times what we are currently doing) within three years and 25,000 per year within seven years. Within the deeply affordable band, which would make up 30% of the new homes built under this model, people earning as little as $35,000 per year with a deposit of $500 (and monthly payments of $1,400) could realize the dream of home ownership.

This solution does not require grants or subsidies, but it does require the city to do seven things:

1. Provide cooperative home-ownership models priority access to public land at fair market value paid upon the commencement of construction.
2. Defer municipal fees and off-site development costs until closing of homes sales.
3. Fast-track approvals for any cooperative home-ownership projects.
4. Make codes flexible to accommodate modular panelized/mass timber housing design.
5. Defer property taxes for the 30% of units earmarked as deeply affordable for low-income purchasers.
6. Provide support/guarantees to secure loans from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Co-Investment Fund and Infrastructure Ontario.
7. Provide access to potential homeowners on the Community Housing waiting list and low-income workers, especially in the healthcare sector, and other assistance to reach people who would like to buy a home.

In addition to our signature policy to combine the city’s public land with a cooperative home-ownership model, I would also use the full power and influence of the mayor’s office to advance a holistic housing strategy comprising these five points:

1. “Best in show” affordable missing middle housing program. It was great to see Toronto City Council recently approve the new multiplex policy, allowing up to four units, citywide in our residential neighbourhoods. Multiplex, laneway and garden suites have the potential to yield family-friendly housing supply in our communities. But how do we ensure that these neighbourhood homes are affordable and equitable?
2. As mayor, I will create a best-in-show affordable missing middle program to cost-effectively add units to existing houses and incentivize homeowners to unlock equity and create affordable units without taking on the whole renovation stress themselves. The CMHC’s Housing Accelerator Fund could help resource my program to roll out low-cost units across the city. Adding just one unit to 15% of Toronto’s single-family homes is the same supply as 100 condo towers. (See this video)
3. Guard our city-owned land for affordable not-for-profit housing. This year Scotiabank wrote a report urging Canada to at least double its number of social/subsidized housing units to address homelessness and the affordable-housing and homeless crisis. Toronto has a 12-year waiting list for families seeking subsidized rent-geared-to-income housing.
4. Public land is one of our greatest assets, and we cannot afford to squander it on ineffective programs that don’t deliver affordable homes. As mayor, I would work with other levels of government to bring key ingredients to the table: publicly owned land, low-cost federal financing, scalable low-cost construction (such as repeatable designs and floor plates, prefab materials), not-for-profit developers (to eliminate profit margins and get more affordable-housing bang for buck) and as-of-right approvals for rental.
5. Protect tenants and existing affordable housing. Current practice that allows affordable, rent-controlled and family-sized old apartment buildings to be demolished and replaced by new condos needs a rethink, especially now that the city’s efforts to replace demolished affordable units (pdf) is in jeopardy under new provincial policy. This is a tenants’ rights issue, and we should be preserving all that embodied carbon in existing buildings. We need housing supply, but we are barking up the wrong tree when the result is losing affordable housing. All the more reason to add more density to single-family homes.
6. Use it or lose it: Toronto has approved lots of new housing supply, including rental housing – tens of thousands of units that are going unbuilt due to land speculation or market forces, like high interest rates, that are stalling development. To avoid this, I would develop a time limit for developers to build their approved housing: “Use it or lose it.” If we build more of what’s already been approved, then we can stop with the nonsense of demolishing affordable apartment buildings.
7. Foster positive housing alternatives. As mayor, I would work to cultivate and support community land trusts and cooperative housing models and foster our rooming house policy in more neighbourhoods. As mayor, I will dig around for the best ideas and consult experts in Toronto and across the country to bring these community housing options to more areas of Toronto. For example, Kensington and Parkdale community land trusts.

The city of Toronto has a budget shortfall of $933 Million in the 2023 fiscal year and a remaining $454 Million in the 2022 fiscal year This shortfall is symptomatic of a larger problem: the city’s existing revenue tools cannot keep up with the city’s growth. 

Canadian municipalities (and Toronto is no exception) impose some of the highest property taxes in the world (as a share of GDP), which can be a backbreaker for many people and for mom and-pop shops struggling to get by. 

At the same time, Toronto is home to the most profitable businesses in Canada and many of the wealthiest multimillionaires – who are thriving and benefiting thanks to the city’s assets and people. 

It is time to ask those who benefit the most from Toronto to pay just a little bit more to invest in critical infrastructure and green space to get our city moving forward so we all can thrive. We have a three point-plan to make this happen.

1. Higher Property Tax Band for Billion-Dollar Businesses: Toronto is home to hundreds of Canada’s most profitable companies, including the big banks and grocery oligopolies, which all make billions in annual profits. The governance structure in which the City of Toronto operates has already established the principle of different tax bands for different types of commercial property, in part to displace some of the burden from small businesses. To date, these band differentials have been negligible. To ensure that the large companies prospering the most are paying their fair share, Toronto could adjust the commercial and office tax band ratios to be double what they are now for all companies that earned more than $1 billion in pre-tax profits in the most recent fiscal year. This would generate an estimated $500 million per year for the city. For a company like Royal Bank, it would add about $20 million to its annual property tax bill, representing 0.13% of its $15.62 billion in 2022 pre-tax profits. Over 99.9% of Toronto’s 187,724 businesses operating in Toronto would not be subject to this tax, as they generate pre-tax profits below $1 billion per year.

2. Luxury Homes and Condo Tax on the Top 3%: There are an estimated 40,000 luxury homes and condos (3% of the housing stock) in Toronto valued at greater than $2.7 million. A modest additional 0.5% annual property tax on the top 3% would generate $709 million per year for an average of $17,500 per luxury dwelling (with an assumed average worth of $3.5 million). Deferrals could be provided to people on fixed incomes, similar to the existing property-tax-increase deferral program for low-income seniors. Ninety-seven per cent of Toronto homes are worth less than $2.7 million and would not be subject to this tax. (See the luxury homes tax calculator here to create your own scenario.)

More money for parks, trees and greenspace. Great cities are green. I will double the percentage of Toronto’s operating and capital budgets for expanding and enhancing our parkland and for accelerating progress toward the city’s goal of a 40% tree canopy (currently at 31%). Green spaces, urban forests and parkland are vital for the physical and mental health of city dwellers, especially as the city grows and housing densities increase. Parklands occupy 13% of Toronto’s area, well behind global leaders like London (33%), Los Angeles (35%), Stockholm and Helsinki (40%), Vienna (50%) and Oslo (68%). This is a foundational priority for a strong, sustainable economy; for example, New York estimates it receives over US$67 billion in economic, natural services and public health benefits from its parklands.

Great cities are green. I will increase the percentage of Toronto’s operating and capital budgets for expanding and enhancing our parkland and for accelerating progress toward the city’s goal of a 40% tree canopy (currently at 31%). Green spaces, urban forests and parkland are vital for the physical and mental health of city dwellers, especially as the city grows and housing densities increase. Parklands occupy 13% of Toronto’s area, well behind global leaders like London (33%), Los Angeles (35%), Stockholm and Helsinki (40%), Vienna (50%) and Oslo (68%). This is a foundational priority for a strong, sustainable economy; for example, New York estimates it receives over US$67 billion in economic, natural services and public health benefits from its parklands.

to stay on course for greening the city we need 333,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Access to charging is a necessary condition for EV adoption, and tens of thousands of publicly accessible EV charging stations will need to be rolled out before 2030.

The current rates of building retrofits and EV charging installations fall far, far short of what is required to effectively respond to the climate emergency and to get Toronto on a fast track to sustainable living. Fewer than 20,000 of the million vehicles in Toronto are fully electric. Current plans for public charging stations will see fewer than 1,000 in place by 2026 when we need 10 times that many.

Electric vehicles are not only changing the way we move, they are introducing something new to the electricity-distribution system: portable electric storage batteries. By ensuring that our EV charging infrastructure fully supports two-way flow of energy between the vehicles and the buildings and the grid, it will enhance the reliability and resilience of our electricity supply while easing the strains on the distribution system that will arise as electrification proceeds. As mayor, I will promote the use of the city’s permitting and regulatory authority to ensure that Toronto gets the 10,000 public EV chargers it needs by 2026.