For Immediate Release
July 8, 2010

‘Spend the Summer Studying,’ 
Enviro Report Card tells Mayoral Candidates

Toronto: Toronto's top five mayoral candidates still have lots of work to do before the October 25th municipal election if they want to get a good grade on the environment, says a mid campaign report card released today by the Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA).

"Torontonians expect their new Mayor to be an environmental leader," said Franz Hartmann, Executive Director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance. "The results today show the candidates still have much work to do before they can claim this title."

The report card evaluates candidates on what they have publicly said about 6 priority environmental actions identified by TEA in February. The priorities were developed in conjunction with 11 other local, provincial and national environmental groups, and have been endorsed by over 40 local environmental and community organizations from across the city. These priority actions include: building and funding Transit City, achieving 70% waste diversion, buying locally produced green products, building complete streets, implementing the city's sustainable energy plan, and providing tools to prevent pollution (for details on priority actions visit www.torontoenvironment.org/voteto).

"If the candidates were students, we would be telling them to spend the summer studying if they want to get good grades," said Hartmann. "Too many of them haven't done their environmental homework. For example, they want to throw out well-developed transit and bike plans and bring in new plans that aren’t as effective at reducing smog and climate change gases. Others are simply not paying attention to the environment."

The mid campaign report card was released about halfway through the mayoral campaign and is available atwww.torontoenvironment.org along with details about what each candidate has said on the 6 environmental priorities. Hartmann noted that it was specifically designed to help candidates develop sound environmental platforms.

"By knowing what they are doing well and where they need to improve, we hope this evaluation will motivate candidates to work hard through the summer to come up with excellent environmental platforms,” said Hartmann. “Our goal is to get every one of the top 5 mayoral candidates to become an environmental leader."

TEA will be issuing a final report card prior to the October 25th election that will grade each candidate on their responses to a comprehensive environmental survey.

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For more information, contact: Franz Hartmann, Executive Director