Additional Policies

Climate change

The solution to reducing the City's carbon emissions is fairly simple, it's one word: electricity. We already have the technology to replace most of our combustion energy sources with electrical sources. So why haven't we? Reason; higher costs and inconvenience.

I estimate that the average household will pay $4,000-$8,000 more per year when all direct and indirect green costs are factored-in, net of savings on natural gas and gasoline. You can forget about the cost of electric cars coming down significantly; the projected increase in demand will keep the cost of scarce battery materials high, if the projected demand can be met at all, and the auto companies have their capital costs to recover.

Then there's the inconvenience factor. I can drive our sedan 800km on one tank of diesel. Such a trip in an EV would take three recharging stops and significantly more time. Heat pumps are great, but they are slow to warm your home and may well require a supplementary heat source in cold weather. Retrofitting most homes to prevent all heat loss is simply cost prohibitive. Green subsidies are a zero sum game, since everyone will need subsidies, and the beneficiaries would be the same people who will have to pay the taxes to fund the subsidies, so there's no point in the City providing them.

I think we can realistically reduce our carbon footprint by 50% by 2050 and maybe even 66-80% in a stretch, but the laws of declining marginal returns will make the last 20% extremely difficult to achieve. I do not plan to take away people's gas stoves or bbqs.

Needless to say, every additional household in the City adds to our carbon footprint, so if reducing our GHG emissions is so critical, why do we insist on building more residential buildings? It's completely counter productive. Not only that, but City Council still allows new buildings to be heated by natural gas and to have parking spaces. That should have been stopped 20 years ago. I would immediately require that all new and replacement home and building heating systems be non-combustion based in order to get a building permit.

Lastly, because of the high cost barrier for people to go green, 80% of people will delay switching over until they absolutely have to. There's no way people are going to easily sacrifice that kind of spending power for more inconvenient products. Governments have to give them something in return as an inducement. Given that households' highest expense categories are housing and taxes, governments have to lower the cost of these two expenses in order to make people no worse off than they otherwise would be. This is another compelling reason to stop the decrease inflow of residents into the city in order to allow housing costs to stabilize and hopefully decrease.

Addiction & mental health

These are the most complex and frustrating issues facing Toronto today. The reality is that I don't think we can significantly improve either of these conditions without proactive mandatory intervention. If we are not willing to do that, it is wishful thinking to expect that many of the people with these conditions will voluntarily enroll in the necessary support programs.

Nevertheless, I believe that the City should do more. I will channel City funding into existing City programs and partner organizations' programs. I am not going to reinvent the wheel and create a lot of new agencies.

Let's not be under any illusions as to the cost of providing these services. These clients have serious conditions that require a lot of intervention and support services. I wouldn't be surprised if it costs $10,000-$20,000/client per year. That's $200 million per year for the 10,000 people who I estimate might need these services. My other concern is that there are probably not enough medical and support professionals available to provide the services. This will seriously limit our ability to help all clients.

We also have to be realistic as to the outcomes. These are not curable conditions, only manageable ones. Unless you can completely separate the drugs from the people or the people from the drugs, up to 80% of drug users will not be successful in stopping their drug use. I agree that addiction needs to be handled primarily as a medical condition, but I will not advocate to decriminalize drugs obtained on the street, in order to maintain a negative consequence environment for people who might seek to start using. I support safe injection and safe supply programs within a comprehensive addiction mitigation strategy. I also agree that housing is an important part of that strategy.

I think the City has made good progress on responding to people in mental health crisis, though its Streets to Homes and Mobile Crisis Intervention programs. I would like to build on this success and provide more services on a proactive basis. However, this initiative will also face the three challenges of funding, resources and legal restrictions. I will be the strongest advocate to push for the necessary changes.

Crime

One of the things that has always perplexed me about the criminal justice system is that we can make any number of laws that allow us to throw someone in jail, where they basically do nothing and often get worse; but we are not allowed to throw someone into a job, or school or into treatment where they might actually manage to improve their situation. Now these options won't be appropriate for violent or repeat offenders, but I believe there are situations where more innovative solutions should be given serious consideration.

With respect to gun violence; we don't want shootings, we don't want to send people to jail and we don't want police in our face all the time. I can empathize with all of these concerns however, the reality is that we can only have two out of three. The community is going to have to decide which two they want the most. I am prepared to support whatever decision they make. The difficult part is going to get the community to make and accept making such a decision.

To that end I would consider community 'give and take' offers such as: anyone caught with their first gun or knife possession does not have to serve jail time (for that possession only), but in exchange the City is allowed to a conduct stop, search and seize weapon operations and collect community intelligence. There would be a lot of details to be worked out, but this is an example of how we can be more innovative, cooperative and effective in reducing crime.

I am also in favour of making more use of community intelligence and greater CCTV infrastructure in the City in order to help prevent crime.

The small stuff

Some people say "don't sweat the small stuff", but in a City like Toronto the small stuff is still important, and there's a lot of it.

Here's a list of issues I would work on/support: improve parks and recreation facilities, more and cleaner public washrooms, removing graffiti, no Airbnbs in multiple-unit buildings, reduce motor noise pollution, de-clutter City sidewalks (Marie Kondo will be proud), reduce pigeon and racoon populations, improve bylaw enforcement (or get rid of the by-law), simplify & improve City financial reporting, rationalize taxi/ride-hailing services, eliminate e-bikes/meal delivery, coordinate food brought by charities to the homeless, bring recycling to all residential buildings, collect unpaid City fines, cleanup the ravines, remove mulberry trees (my pet peeve), make Kensington Market and Yorkville pedestrian only areas, build an eastern pedestrian/cycling bridge to the Toronto islands, keep the Gardiner Expressway, keep the name Dundas Street, keep Toronto Island Airport at its current size. I'm sure there will be more.