Letter to Minister Stan Cho

Associate Minister Stan Cho is blocking the construction of 59 modular units to house the homeless in his Willowdale riding because the City did not consult the local community prior to selecting the location. We asked the MPP to apply the same logic to the planned 700,000 square foot train yard that his government selected without any prior consultation with the Thorncliffe Park Community. Minister Cho, be consistent!

See below

March 10, 2022 

Hon. Stan Cho

Associate Minister

Ministry of Transportation

777 Bay Street, 5th Floor

Toronto, ON  M7A 1Z8

Dear Minister

I represent a grass-roots community group that was formed in response to a decision announced by your predecessor to locate the massive Ontario Line Train Depot (MSF) in our Thorncliffe Park community. This was done without any prior consultation or effort by your government, or its proxy Metrolinx, to assess the social and economic impacts associated with this decision. This train depot will displace many small businesses and a functioning and important community hub and replace it with a massive, walled-in train depot without any due diligence regarding the impacts that it would have on the people that live, work, play and pray in Thorncliffe Park.

Besides the 3 MSFs that Metrolinx has dumped in Toronto’s most vulnerable communities, we were convinced that there was no other example in Ontario where a new development could be approved without prior public consultation, hidden details about costs and benefits (if they were evaluated) and no access to an appeals process until we recently learned about your efforts to interrupt the City from pursuing a very similar process to site 59 modular homes in your Willowdale Riding. The parallels are strikingly similar as the City and Metrolinx employed the same tactics to site these facilities – although one example is dealing with a human crisis on a very small scale while the other is advancing a parking lot for trains on a mega scale. Nevertheless, the concerns you expressed on behalf of the citizens of Willowdale convinced the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to deny the City’s request for an MZO to fast track that project. We urge you to employ the same, consistent approach to condemn the flawed site selection process undertaken by Metrolinx to locate a massive train yard in Thorncliffe Park that mirrored the approach taken by the City of Toronto. As you stated in your March 2021 letter to Minister Clark, “Local consultation is critically important in Willowdale and across Toronto.”

In addition to righting the injustice happening with the Thorncliffe Park MSF, as the Minister responsible for advancing your Government’s Transit-Oriented Communities agenda, you should be particularly dismayed by the location of the MSF in Thorncliffe Park because it directly contravenes all the sound city-building policies you have been promoting for lands within 800m of new subway stations. A walled-in 700,000 square foot train depot is completely contrary to the agenda you have been publicly promoting in Liberty Village, Corktown, East Harbour, in York Region and elsewhere. From a TOC perspective your

mandate is to pursue opportunities to create new residential and affordable housing, jobs and new community amenities – especially in a vulnerable community like Thorncliffe Park. In taking a consistent approach that aligns with your concerns about ignoring and assessing community impacts, a flawed site selection process and the need to build Transit Oriented Communities at new subway stations, you will no doubt come to the conclusion that Metrolinx, in its own haste implemented transit expansion, set up your predecessor to agree to a decision that you clearly cannot support or justify.

We urge you to review the site selection process undertaken by Metrolinx to site the MSF in Thorncliffe Park and open up all the studies, analyses, costs and benefits associated with each of the short listed sites. We ask that you share them with the local community and stakeholders for the purpose of introducing transparency to this truncated abuse of the planning process and re-do the site selection process with community interest and your TOC policy added to a new and just evaluation framework.

We look forward to your response and working with you in protecting the democratic principles and policy initiatives you so clearly respect.

Sincerely,

Aamir Sukhera

SaveTPARK