In a somewhat unexpected move, Toronto city council has voted against asking the province to add a referendum on the $5-billion Billy Bishop expansion to the Oct. 26 municipal ballot.
The vote Thursday night was 16 against to 9 in favour, with Mayor Olivia Chow voting in support of the motion and falling out of step with some of her council allies.
Coun. Shelley Carroll expressed her misgivings about a referendum on the issue.
“If you want to shut down all conversation, if you want to forget a seat at the table, referenda are the way to do it,” said Carroll. “It’d reduce everything to a binary decision and the conversation stops.”
“Notoriously bad results come out of them. Everyone remembers Brexit,” Carroll added, pointing to other examples around the world where a referendum resulted in a decision that set cities back. “It’s a roll of the dice. It depends on who’s got the money and wherewithal to organize (and influence the outcome) … If you don’t think, based on the authoritarian moves (the province) is making, that they wouldn’t start spending money to cement their decision, you’re dreaming in technicolour.”
The Municipal Elections Act places limitations on the type of questions cities can put on the ballot and when a bylaw needs to be passed to do so. Coun. Dianne Saxe’s motion, seconded by Coun. Josh Matlow, had asked council to request Premier Doug Ford’s government to amend the legislation to allow the city to ask Torontonians: “Do you want the City of Toronto to support and co-operate in Premier Ford’s plan to turn Billy Bishop airport into a jet airport?”
Saxe likened the issue as “this generation’s Spadina Expressway.” She said council has two choices: to sit by or give Torontonians the voice they have said they want.
Bradford, who voted in favour, said, “Things keep happening to Toronto … Backroom deals and negotiations that council and the public are kept out of … Decisions that are made for us but without us. I don’t think that sits well with the vast majority of Torontonians.” He added that if council does vote “in a showing of unity” for the referendum, it will “probably go right in the shredder” at Queen’s Park but it’s an opportunity to try and get Torontonians a seat at the table.
In April, Ford’s Progressive Conservatives tabled a bill formalizing his provincial government’s usurping of the city’s responsibilities in the tripartite agreement that governs the island airport, with plans to build a runway extension to allow jets to land there.
A poll by Liaison Strategies that same month found Torontonians’ opinions on jets at the island airport were fairly evenly split, but a strong majority think residents should still get a say on what happens.
“Doug Ford said he looked at a poll and thought he should do it,” said Matlow, referring to an internal government poll. “He never came to us, he never came to our waterfront neighbourhoods … So let’s go to the people.”
Coun. Mike Colle, among council’s staunchest critics of the Ford government, said he was initially going to vote for the referendum, but then changed his mind.
“I think it would preoccupy the election, the media will love it. But we won’t talk about the real problems Torontonians face,” Colle said, pointing to traffic and affordability as examples. “It’s a distraction from all of that.”
Coun. Paula Fletcher said this multidecade debate goes beyond “jets or no jets” on the waterfront and described Saxe’s referendum question as “narrow,” but voted in favour.
Coun. Rachel Chernos Lin said she appreciates the intent, but the question may also not be the right one. For her, she said, the bigger issue is a lack of transparency from the province.
Chow did not speak during the debate.
Others in favour of the referendum were councillors Lily Cheng, Parthi Kandavel, Ausma Malik and Amber Morley.
Others who voted against were Paul Ainslie, Alejandra Bravo, Jon Burnside, Vincent Crisanti, Stephen Holyday, Nick Mantas, Chris Moise, Jamaal Myers, Frances Nunziata, James Pasternak, Gord Perks, Anthony Perruzza and Neethan Shan.
