Where Toronto's top mayoral candidates stand on the city's climate change plan

Toronto has an ambitious plan to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, dubbed TransformTO. But with the mayoral byelection looming, there's an open question about whether the city's next mayor will support it.

The climate action strategy includes medium and long-term goals for different sectors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, all new homes and buildings need to be designed and built to near-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and half of community-wide energy should be coming from renewable or low-carbon sources by the same year.

City council voted unanimously to approve the plan in 2017. In 2019, it again voted unanimously to declare a climate emergency and accelerate emissions reductions targets to 2040, 10 years earlier than initially proposed.

The $13.6 million net operating budget for the Environment & Climate Division was approved in each of the last two municipal budgets.

The city says it exceeded its greenhouse gas emissions reduction target in 2020, the latest year for which their is complete data. The goal was a level of emissions 30 per cent below 1990 levels, while the city saw a 43 per cent drop. Staff acknowledged, however, that the above-target decrease was at least partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic response.

Four of the candidates participating in CBC Toronto's mayoral debate said they would support fully funding TransformTO. Former police chief Mark Saunders was non-committal, saying the program has flaws. 

Here's watch each of the candidates who participated in the debate had to say about TransformTO and their climate plans during the contest, and when speaking to reporters afterward.

"I want Toronto not just to be a participant in fighting the climate crisis, I want us to be a global leader," Matlow said.

He described TransformTO as "an ambitious, fact-based plan" he fully supports, but said that it needs to be funded properly.

Matlow has committed to investing "$200-million annually in new money to accelerate Toronto's progress toward reaching net zero greenhouse gas."

That money would come from his proposed corporate and commercial parking levy, which he says would generate up to $500 million each year. The remaining revenue from the parking tax would go to other climate-related projects, like improving public transit, he said.

Hunter said she fully supports the plan and has integrated climate resiliency and response into multiple elements of her platform.

"We have a crisis right now," she said. 

She said she wants to protect seniors from extreme temperatures and mitigate flooding risks to homeowners.