Election Results: Some Good News for the Environment

On October 27th Torontonians elected a new Mayor and 7 new Councillors. 37 Councillors who served on the last City Council were re-elected. The good news is that a majority of the new Council has shown support for building a Greener City for All.

Compared to 2010, the great news is that Toronto elected a Mayor who cares about the environment. John Tory has a clear commitment to act on a majority of TEA’s environmental priorities. Torontonians also elected 19 Councillors who made a commitment to move forward on three quarters of our Green Action Agenda.

That’s 20 votes for the environment. Add 3 returning Councillors who have a good record on voting for the environment (but didn’t fill out our Green Action Agenda Survey), and we have a majority of votes over the next 4 years to help implement our environmental priorities.

Of course saying you are going to do something is not the same as actually doing it. That’s why TEA has already begun developing tools for Torontonians to help us encourage our newly elected Councillors and Mayor to fulfill the promises they made to build a Greener City for All.

As we’ve learned, a healthy democracy isn’t just about voting every four years. It’s also about connecting with your elected officials and letting them know what you expect of them. TEA will make sure you can do that effectively and easily. Stay tuned.

Election 2014 Resources

• Candidate Report Cards
  Grades from the Green Action Agenda Survey for Mayoral and Council candidates
• Neighbourhood Election Tools
  Flyers to use in your community to promote the Green Action Agenda.
• Green Action Agenda
  Get an overview of the key environmental issues facing Toronto and what actions the next City Council must take to invest in building a greener city for all. 
  Print version of the full Green Action Agenda (PDF) here.
• Questions for Candidates, based on TEA’s Green Action Agenda. Use these questions to find where candidates stand on key environmental issues.
• Enviro Report Card 2010-14
  Find out how current Councillors and the Mayor voted on key environmental issues between 2010 and 2014.
• Press Release: Toronto Council’s ‘End-of-Term’ Enviro Report Card: Scholars vs. Slackers. (June 25, 2014)
• Building a Toronto that Moves: part of the TEA Green Action Agenda developed with our community partners in TCAT, the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation. (PDF)

thumbnail photo "Toronto City Hall' by Flickr user Stephen Downes under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.