Save Toronto Island

How many waterfront parks does Premier Doug Ford get to raze?

The proposed Toronto Island jetway extension is cartoonish
Doug Ford is currently also destroying a historic waterfront nature park next-door at Ontario Place for a private spa
The Toronto Port Authority is the lobbying group behind this corporate enclosure movement

“Doug already flattened an amazing park at Ontario Place for a Romanian knockoff luxury spa, now he expects us to trust him with bulldozers on the island?”

Lucy S.

“The cheese slipped off the cracker.”

Doug F.

Let’s dig a little deeper…

What flies in Red Deer

Meet Toronto Port Authority CEO RJ Steenstra — his last job was running the Fort McMurray Airport; prior to that he ran the Red Deer Airport

The Port Authority was founded in 1999 by an MP who wanted to put a casino on Toronto Island — from inception the Port Authority has been hostile to Toronto’s decades-long waterfront rehabilitation

Uh-oh

The Port Authority sued Toronto for $1 billion in 2001 & settled with Mayor Mel Lastman for $60 million; still flush with slush, they’re furtively pushing the recklessly-outsized Billy Bishop expansion plan while serving NDAs to City Hall

Push Their Buttons

This is ten minutes from downtown Toronto?

Nearly 20 million people visit Toronto Island and the waterfront every year — Toronto Island Park is an inspiring respite for all of us, we shouldn’t let these beautiful parks and beaches slip through our fingers

Enough is Enough

Why is Island airport expansion such a bad idea?

Well, it would:

Raze and degrade large sections of Toronto Island Park and waterfront
Infill a two kilometre-long runway into Toronto’s Harbourfront (roughly the distance from Yonge to Bathurst St.)
Choke off lake circulation, resulting in pervasive stench and water pollution downtown
Fill the Harbourfront air with jet exhaust and airborne carcinogens
Gridlock Toronto’s lakeshore with even more crippling traffic congestion

Currently Pearson Airport is spending $3 billion to add 23 million passengers; the Port Authority & Doug Ford’s Billy Bishop plan would cost $5 billion to add just 8 million passengers to a competitor commuter airport on the decline.

Incidentally, Billy Bishop’s 1939 construction created the marginal conditions for the marginalized at neighbouring Hanlan’s Point Beach, Canada’s Birthplace of Pride. Crucially, Billy Bishop airport doesn’t have an industrial buffer zone like most other airports – the proposed expansion and requisite highways and parking lots would decimate downtown Toronto’s waterfront and Toronto Island.

Upgrading transport infrastructure shouldn’t diminish the destination. Pearson Airport and UP Express are well-positioned to fulfill Toronto’s airport needs. This exploitative Billy Bishop expansion plan would waste billions of taxpayer dollars in waterfront rehabilitation and undermine actual nation-building projects already underway. Let’s not paralyze Toronto’s downtown waterfront for decades; let’s nation-build the right way by supporting ALTO Ontario/Quebec High-Speed Rail, LIFT Pearson Airport expansion, and the balance of uses that Billy Bishop’s current size helps maintain.

We ask that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon do the obvious and decent thing: stop the Toronto Island jetway extension.