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Waterfront for All - Waterfront Update June 2026 - Click here to Sign Up as a Member today
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Here are some highlights: 

“Reality Check” by Prominent Torontonians

Ken Greenberg, Margaret Atwood, former Ontario Premier Bob Rae, David Mirvish, former Mayors David Crombie and Art Eggleton, and other notable Torontonians are delivering a Reality Check to federal Liberal MPs. [https://torealitycheck.ca/]

This web site also includes a substantial report on the proposed BBTCA runway expansion [https://torealitycheck.ca/full-report.pdf] as well as a report summary: [https://torealitycheck.ca/executive-summary.pdf].

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Scarborough Bluffs West Project

The Scarborough Bluffs West Project is major initiative from the Toronto Region Conservation Authority and the City of Toronto on a key section of our waterfront. It follows the Scarborough Waterfront Project on the eastern section of the Bluffs (from Bluffers Beach to East Point Park), that is currently in its implementation phase. 

The Scarborough Bluffs West Project Environmental Assent will explore enhancing and protecting the sensitive shoreline and the Bluffs from erosion, as well as opportunities for improved waterfront experience and trail access between the Eastern Beaches (Silver Birch Avenue) and Bluffer’s Park along Lake Ontario.

Visit the link for detailed consultation materials and to complete a survey on the project (deadline: June 30 2026).

HERE IS THE LINK TO HAVE YOUR SAY: https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/get-involved/public-consultations/infrastructure-projects/scarborough-bluffs-west-revitalization/

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Ed Hore comments on the jet proposal to Planning and Housing Committee, City Hall, June 11, 2026

City Staff submitted a report dated May 28, 2026 to the Planning and Housing Committee saying the latest jet proposal has huge implications for planning and housing in the fastest-growing areas of Toronto, yet the City has been given almost no information.

Ed Hore, Chair of WFA, commented at the June 11 Committee meeting that the Toronto Port Authorities' jet proposal is amateurish and vague, yet we know from TPA's long-secret Environmental Assessment of the 2013 - 2015 jets proposal that the effects on the waterfront will be huge. Toronto Port Authority never submitted detailed plans of that proposal to the regulator.  Everyone had to guess at the effects for two and a half years. The federal government eventually realized the proposal was nonsense, and quashed it in 2015.

This time, the City should be the adult in the room; it must keep trying to determine the impacts of jets on the waterfront and the city. No other level of government seems to think the details matter. 

 

Save the Date for "The Cost of Uncertainty - Jets at Billy Bishop" Speaker Series 24

Save the Date for Speaker Series 24 "The Costs of Uncertainty: BBCA Expansion Proposal" (you know that vague 'plan' for jets at YTZ!)

We are pleased to announce that Ken Greenberg will be joining us as a special guest speaker. Ken is an urban designer, teacher, writer, former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto, Principal of Greenberg Consultants, and a Member of the Order of Canada.

Click here to RSVP

Crombie: We Need to Light a Fire!

 

Former "tiny perfect mayor", Conservative Federal Cabinet Minister and principal author of Regeneration, the foundational 1992 report of the Crombie Commission on the future of the Toronto Waterfront, had strong words about the Provincial Government's unilateral move to expand the Island Airport for jets yesterday. "That upends the shared vision that we all gathered around... We need  to light a fire! This is a major issue, no fooling around! ... First of all and by far the most important, the federal government has a clear and legal and political responsibility to deal with the proposal coming forward, they can't fool around with simply: 'we need to talk about it'..."

David spoke at a Zoom meeting of the York Quay Neighbourhood Association (YQNA), a member organization of Waterfront for All" on May 12, 2026. Ed Hore emceed the meeting, and happened to record David's eloquent speech on his cell phone. The clip has now gone viral; it's been viewed thousands of times on social media.   

Speaker Series Event, May 6, 2026

Passionate discussion of jets at May 6 WFA Speaker Series Event

 

 

 

 

Thanks to all who came to our Zoom event; a recording is here.

Our speakers included Toronto City Ward 12 Councillor Josh Matlow, who has emerged as a key voice in the jets debate, and former Chair of Waterfront Toronto Mark Wilson with a fascinating presentation on how the Alto high speed rail project will cut into BBTCA's already declining short-hop flight business to Ottawa and Montreal, undercutting the already weak economic case for jets at BBTCA.

We also had a spontaneous guest appearance by former Toronto top planner Paul Bedford.

The very same evening, this great article in Spacing magazine appeared, featuring the image shown above of what a jet expansion at the Island Airport would actually look like.

 

 

Crombie letter to PM: Study jets before you leap!

Former Toronto Mayor David Crombie, who headed the Crombie Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront, released an open letter to PM Mark Carney yesterday urging the Federal Government not to support the massive expansion of Billy Bishop Toronto City Centre Airport recently proposed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford, without carefully study.

Ford unilaterally announced recently that the Ontario and Federal governments would expand the airport to accommodate jets, and would proceed without environmental review; Ford said he would expropriate airport lands owned by the City of Toronto to cut it out of the decision-making process.

A unilateral move by the Province like that would undermine generations of work by all three governments on the revitalization of the waterfront, says Crombie. Everything about the expansion proposal should be carefully studied to make sure it doesn’t upset the balance of different uses on the waterfront.

We couldn’t agree more!

Happy 90th birthday, David Crombie! 

Big turn-out at "Jets at the Island Airport, Again? WTF?"

2026-3-31 Jets at the Island Airport, Again? WTF?

Thanks to the many people who attended our Speaker Series Zoom Event on March 31, 2026, our best-attended event ever.

Background reading on the Island Airport

 

Curious about the island airport, jets and all that? Here's some light reading!

An easy-to-read booklet raising safety questions about the 2013 - 2015 jets proposal, with diagrams and pictures.

A 2023 paper asking if Toronto needs two airports. It looks at some economic and political questions.

A paper asking economic questions about the 2013 - 2015 jets bid. They apply to the 2026 jets proposal as well.  

Business at the island airport seems to be in a steep decline. Some numbers, put together by Brian Iler.

"Jet Operations at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Infrastructure Requirements," a 2015 presentation deck by Air Canada's consultants Oliver Wyman; expanding the Island Airport for jets would:

  1. cost $1billion,
  2. require massive and impractical build-out, and
  3. not be economically feasible.  

 

 

 

Port Authority's long-hidden EA confirms big problems with jet expansion at BBTCA

On March 11, 2026, in response to a Freedom of Information request, Toronto Port Authority released AECOM's 2017 Environmental Assessment of Porter Airlines 2013 - 2015 jet proposal, which it secretly completed after the proposal was rejected by the Federal Government in 2015. Here are links to main body of the EA (without the appendices), posted on-line for the first time so far as we know:

2017 Jets EA, Part 1

2017 Jets EA, Part 2

2017 Jets EA, Part 3

2017 Jets EA, Part 4

Here's the complete EA.

See the Table of differences between the non-jet "baseline" scenario (with RESA) and the possible future scenario where the airport is expanded for jets, Executive Summary, pp.ii to iii. 

The EA sets out that expanding the island airport for jets would have adverse impacts on Public Health, Marine Navigation, Obstacle Limitation Surfaces (defined safety zones in the sky where obstacles are forbidden) and on the socio-economic environment.

There will be 20 foot high jet blast “deflectors” (fibreglass walls supported by steel girders) around the ends of the runway, and extending along the side, see page 52, diagrams at pages 41, 50, 51. Also “Sound barriers” and potential for increased odours, page 55.

Both with and without jets, noise levels at the airport cause “environmental insomnia or sleep disturbance” and “hypertension and ischemic health disease”. Engine emmissions cause increased risks of respiratory illness, cardiopulmonary and lung cancer, lesions in upper airways, nasal lesions, increased risk of developing respiratory tract tumours. See page 62.

Jet blast will cause wind problems for small boats putting them at risk of overturning (even with jet blast deflectors), pages 63, 64.

Problems with Obstacle Limitation Surfaces (empty safety areas in the sky which lessen the risk of a plane hitting buildings). There was non-compliance even in 2017 with Airport Zoning Regulations, that is, actual or proposed buildings at Villiers island, East Bayfront, Lower Yonge, Bathurst Quay, Fort York Neighbourhood exceeded allowable maximum building height, page 73.

Many socio-economic effects for the waterfront of expanding BBTCA to accommodate jets are listed at pages 80 to 81, including: increased congestion, increased air traffic will affect residents use and enjoyment of property, extended runway will cause visual disturbance and encroach on the area available for water-based recreation, increasing congestion for boaters, loss in local business activity due to congestion and parking problems.

 

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