Policy Opinion: Housing and Economic priorities meet head-on in Toronto's Port Lands

The need for more comprehensive and thoughtful, integrated planning has never been more apparent than the case with Toronto's Port Lands. Tucked away on the waterfront’s western edges, a host of conflicting and competing priorities have emerged that will have an impact on regional economic competitiveness, livability and prosperity.

While planning is inherently complex in a diverse economic region such as Toronto, the complexity is more intense and visible in the Port Lands. It is a microcosm of land use conflicts pitting housing against the economy. These conflicts are playing out on, or near, “employment lands” across Scarborough, South Etobicoke, the economic zone around Toronto Pearson International Airport, the Port of Hamilton and other parts of our economic region. It matters because these lands hold 1.5 million jobs and play a critical role in contributing to the Toronto region’s economy, which accounts for 25 per cent of Canada’s GDP.

In the case of the Toronto Port Lands, the quest to build urgently needed housing and recreational space has come face-to-face with competing priorities such as energy, economic activity, and the role of regionally significant economic assets such as the Port of Toronto and Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport.

The most recent flashpoint is news that the City’s approved plans for towers, up to 49 storeys high, for 9,000 residential units on Villiers Island could be limited to 35 storeys because of emissions from the Portlands Energy Centre, a nearby provincially regulated and approved gas plant.

There are several ways this could be addressed, but in each instance, trade-offs to consider. One option would be to lower building heights. This would reduce the number of residents and project profitability for developers. The other option would appear to be to lower the amount of energy produced and thereby emissions. This too could be problematic because Toronto needs the energy from the 500 MW plant.

The province recently extended the plant’s operating license to the mid-2030s. For now, the plant cannot simply be shut off, or reduce production. Alternative plans to build a new transmission line into the city that would curb the need for this local generation have been slow to materialize because of the prohibitive costs involved.

Other concerns have also been raised by the Toronto Industry Network and Ports Toronto about the need to modify the impact of the City of Toronto’s current plans for Villiers Island because they considerably exceed the parameters set out in the 2017 Port Lands Planning Framework adopted by City Council in 2017. Their concern is the impact of current plans on the future of the working port, and on businesses that use the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes to bring in and process goods and raw materials, instead of transporting them on already congested highways. The potential impact of proposed towers on the flight paths of planes flying in and out of Toronto Billy Bishop City Centre Airport is an added consideration.

Credit: City of Toronto

Yet the City has powered ahead with the approvals of a precinct plan on Villiers Island, and is moving ahead with a precinct plan for the neighbouring McCleary District, which is proposed to have even more towers and people.

It is such complex considerations that have driven the Toronto Region Board of Trade (Board) to characterize the challenge of balancing the need for housing and economic activity as a Race for Space. It is within this framework that the Board continues to call on both the Province and the City of Toronto, along with other municipalities in the region, to work together to co-create an industrial lands strategy which ensures that housing does not completely trump jobs and economic interests, and lead to conflicts like the ones in the Port Lands. 

Ontario, which oversees municipal land use planning, recently released a new Provincial Planning Statement (PPS) that replaces the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe – a policy that has guided land use planning across the province for more than two decades.

Proposed language in the draft PPS led the Board and other business groups to raise concerns that they weakened protections for employment lands, tilting the balance too heavily in favour of housing. In response, the province introduced a 300-metre buffer to avoid conflict between housing and conflicting industrial and commercial uses.

While the change is welcome, more needs to be done by both the province and the City of Toronto to ensure economic interests are part of the equation when it comes to land use decisions. Not dealing with these considerations ahead of time will only lead to more delays and our ability to deliver much needed housing.

In addition to providing certainty for business investment decisions, a robust industrial lands strategy could help prevent conflicts such as the ones on the Port Lands and elsewhere. Clear policy guardrails and regulations could further strengthen protections for existing businesses. How employment lands are currently classified and protected, and where new lands could be added or removed can be supported by a regional inventory of employment lands. This would make it easier to make informed decisions on where protections are required and where flexibility – including housing – can occur.

Until there is a more a sophisticated discussion that anchors a regional industrial lands strategy with a regional economic development strategy, something that was envisaged in 2019 by Ontario but never acted on, the future of the regional economy and certainty for business investment in our region, remains on unsure footing.