Chow calls for review of heat relief strategy as advocates demand city restore cooling centres
CBC
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow will ask council this week to approve a review of the city's heat relief strategy, including whether the city should restore 24/7 cooling centres for unhoused people.
Her motion comes as Toronto experiences its first stretch of extreme heat this year, with recording-breaking temperatures soaring past 30 C and feeling more like the 40s with the humidity.
The city's heat relief strategy directs people to a network of more than 500 publicly accessible facilities that may have air conditioning. These include public libraries, community centres and swimming pools. But advocates say unhoused people cannot rely on such facilities and are demanding that round-the-clock cooling centres, which were closed in 2019, be brought back immediately.
Lorraine Lam, a member of the advocacy group Shelter Housing and Justice Network, said the extreme heat is a public health emergency and that unhoused people cannot wait for a review.
"We don't need another review. We know the heat is dangerous. Just open up the cooling centres now," Lam said.
"Frankly, I am very concerned that somebody might die in this heat."
The motion, entitled "Addressing Gaps in the City's Heat Relief Strategy," will go to council at its meeting that starts Wednesday. It says the review by the city manager would be done by the fourth quarter of this year.
"Whether you are housed or unhoused, we want to make sure everyone is safe," Chow told reporters on Monday.
Chow, who acknowledged that "there are gaps" in the city's response to hot weather, said the fourth-quarter deadline would be the latest that the city would receive the review.
Lam, however, said the heat relief network is "shamefully inadequate."
Lam said the city cannot rely on shopping malls, libraries and swimming pools to provide relief from the heat because they close at night and they are not welcoming and friendly to unhoused people due to security. There is no option for people to lie down and there is not necessarily access to food and water, Lam said.
"There are a lot of people outside with nowhere to go. People are having a hard time," Lam added.
Many people live in the city without air conditioning and they need the cooling centres as well, Lam said.
The city, for its part, said it has added 100 more shelter beds to bring people inside, deployed water trailers to parts of the city and provided outreach workers with water bottles to give to unhoused people.
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