The housing crisis is severe. Skyrocketing rents are driving working class families, low-income communities, seniors, and students out of the GTA, into debt, into unsafe or deplorable living situations, into the shelter system or onto the streets. Those who can’t pay inflated rents are exploited. The housing market is dominated by real estate and development speculators. The establishment is completely unwilling to fight for the solutions we need. It’s time to build rent-geared-to-income, publicly-owned and cooperatively-run accessible housing. In the meantime, expropriate vacant units in large multi-unit buildings and assign them to people in dire need of housing. Landlord licensing is needed so that landlords who fail to keep units in good repair and meet basic standards would have their rental properties turned into cooperatives. Orders and judgments against landlords must be enforced.

1. Repeal Code 608 (the no camping bylaw).
2. Eliminate blind bidding on property sales.
3. Introduce real rent control/freeze.
4. Vacancy tax to kick in after 3 months, at 30% of property value annually, with expropriation after two years of vacancy. Primary residences excluded.
5. Freeze on property tax for personal property.
6. 30% tax annually on investment properties. This does not include individuals renting out portions of their primary/personal residence.
7. Aggressive inclusionary zoning — 50% of newly-constructed condo units to be rented at median-market rent.
8. Public registry of property ownership, which includes the designation of primary/personal residence and secondary/investment properties. Individuals would be limited to two primary/personal residences. (*address loopholes in future)
9. Colour-coded rating system for apartments.
10. Hire more housing inspectors — empowered to speak with tenants and inspect units. Create a public and accessible system for reporting landlord abuses. Build on the 311 system.
11. Introduce mechanisms to transfer property from landlord to city. a.) city has right of first refusal if landlord sells property b.) city takes over for bad landlords (i.e. code red).
12. All housing units expropriated by the city will be rented to tenants as non-profit housing. Rent would cover only utilities and maintenance.
13. Index the shelter allowance to median-market rent.

Public transit is an essential service for many residents and front-line workers. Toronto should deploy more buses to allow for physical distancing and use back-door boarding to protect transit operators, and abolish fare enforcement. Resume building of the LRT in Peel.

Globally, millions of people demand de-funding and disbanding the cops whose purpose is to intimidate and control workers and marginalized people, enforcing poverty by protecting the property and operation of the profit driven system.

In Toronto, the response by City Council, even of the ‘progressive’ members of Council, was underwhelming, despite glaring examples of organized police violence against Indigenous land defenders and Toronto’s own unhoused community. The MSA commits to vote against any and all funding of the Police and against any budget of the capitalist government.

Those resources should support community programs, mental health supports, rent-geared-to-income social housing, youth programs. We need to replace our current system of law enforcement with democratic, community-led initiatives and organizations. Shift away from jails and prisons - towards restorative justice programs.

While we are unlikely to have full support of city hall to disband the police, we should support reducing policing powers and resources where we can.

The MSA previously adopted a program of cutting the police by 50% with a detailed plan on how to achieve that target. That program can be viewed here.

High quality child care is critical to building a stronger, healthier and more vibrant community. The 24-hour child care service enables single parents to positively contribute to our economy. All families who are earning less than the living wage of $25/ hour on a full-time employment basis shall be provided immediate access to childcare services in partnership with the province. To address child poverty, the city and the province should top up all families with children to have a minimum $4,000 income threshold per household to raise children in the city.

Make streets safer for cyclists. Bike lanes and rush-hour bus lanes should be expanded across the GTA. Expand bus service along major transit routes during peak hours. Fines and fees should be geared to income. Implement pedestrian-only zones along Yonge Dundas Square and further projects to include Bloor, Eglinton and other streets where there is high pedestrian traffic. City and traffic planners should learn from Copenhagen, which began converting its main street Stroget into a pedestrian street in 1962 and is now largely traffic free.

The province must make real investments in schools. Stop the phony re-announcements of money already committed. We need immediate repairs to reverse years of neglect. Schools need improvements to their air-filtration systems and an immediate reduction in class sizes to 15 students per class. Cities should strive to bridge gaps in the public-school system left by the province, strive for a unified, secular school system, and put a hefty tax on private schools. We need comprehensive, science-driven sexual education that also validates the existence and struggles of LGBTQIA2S+ people.

A municipal Green New Deal, based on a rapid transition to sustainable energy systems, is urgently needed. Regulations should require new construction projects to incorporate some type of life sustaining green roof. We must consult communities and severely restrict any environmental damage before the development begins. Parts of the GTA are fortunate to have beautiful parks and green spaces that are home to many animals and plants. Increase city services including garbage collection and snow removal. Empowered, democratically elected community boards should review proposed developments. Cancel Highway 413, stop urban sprawl, and build high-density housing. Our notion of a Municipal Green New Deal puts the interests of the working class first. Enact public control over resources, fully respecting Indigenous peoples. Before Reconciliation there must be Restitution, in harmony with nature.

The global pandemic comes from capitalism, from its need to exploit nature for profit. It has nothing to do with ethnic origins. Challenge attempts to blame, harass, or cause violence against our Asian community. Confront hatred and all forms of discrimination. Anti-pandemic measures, including mandatory vaccination, are urgently needed. Follow the advice of medical professionals about wearing masks, social distancing, and hand hygiene. We need to insist that all workers, especially those in front-line health care, are provided with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Ensure that private profit is never put ahead of health and safety concerns. Nationalize private for-profit Long Term Care companies.

This point still needs to be expanded upon.

Increase the number of public washrooms and their accessibility. Make transit accessible as soon as possible. Urgent construction of elevators to ensure the service in every subway station.

Price control of basic foods to be achieved through the education and empowerment of communities to grow and prepare their own food via community gardens and kitchens, establish regulations governing food waste including a spoiled food tax and the seizure and distribution of otherwise discarded and excess food (build a pipeline from the private grocery store to the community kitchen), and the possible expropriation of private corporate-owned grocery stores to be run in the public interest within a no profit framework. Transition the city to a food system based primarily in local and sustainable agricultural practices.

Instead of a “strong mayor” system, the MSA strives for the empowerment of the working class, racialized communities, marginalized and impoverished residents through a Participatory Budget process like the one pioneered in Porto Allegre, Brazil starting in 1989. There, on an annual cycle, scores of regional meetings involving thousands of local people are convened to formulate the municipal budget through their extensive input. Even though elites and other orders of government act to constrain them, self-organization of the grass roots advances.

With intensifying, harmful climate change, basic health, even higher mortality is increasingly at risk, especially for seniors, disabled folks and other vulnerable people who are sweltering in crowded apartment buildings. Just as the heat by-law forbids inside temperatures falling below 21 degrees Celsius in the cold months, it should be illegal for landlords to allow the interior temperature to rise above 26 degrees Celsius. Air Conditioning, in tandem with more green space and ecological urban design, is a health priority and a human right.

A recent spate of cops ticketing (even colliding with) cyclists in High Park underscores the need for safer, more visible, self-contained bicycle paths, rather than a punitive policing approach. The MSA insists that increasing the safety of pedestrians and cyclists will aid the transition to a greener, cleaner, healthier, more sustainable urban mode of transportation.

The Municipal Socialist Alliance (MSA) supports the Palestinian struggle and opposes the colonial-settler Israel state. The struggle against apartheid, settler-colonialism, and anti-Palestinian racism must be forwarded in the various city councellor and school board trustee elections. Just like the mass international movement it took to topple South African apartheid, it will take a mass international movement to overthrow Israeli apartheid. We support a one-state solution, Palestine, with democratic rights for all. No one is free until Palestine is free!

We continue to witness that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) entrenches anti-Palestinian racism by equating anti-zionism with anti-semitism. We saw the TDSB attack Desmond Cole for proclaiming “Free Palestine” at a learning session for senior TDSB educators. We saw Javier Davila, a student equity program adviser for the TDSB, placed on home assignment for sharing resources critical of Israeli settler-colonialism. This pro-Palestinian material drew the ire of TDSB trustee Alexandra Lulka Rotman (Ward 5), who declared she would work “to ensure that none of these hateful materials ever see the inside of a TDSB classroom.” While the integrity commissioner found that Rotman’s statement “fell within the TDSB definition of being discriminatory,” TDSB trustees voted 10-7 to reject these findings. And more recently in July 2022, a joint delegation from the TDSB and the Toronto Police visited occupied Palestine as part of their partnership with Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre (FSWC). These attacks on supporters of Palestine stem from the TDSB’s quiet adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-semitism, which equates criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. It’s clear that there is a “Palestinian exception” to the TDSB’s position on anti-racism.

The blatant anti-Palestinian racism on display by the TDSB mirrors broader attacks on Palestinians and their allies in our communities. A wealthy donor blocked the University of Toronto from hiring Dr. Valentina Azarova because her research included a focus on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The owner of the Foodbenders restaurant, Kimberly Hawkins, was defamed as anti-semitic for displaying pro-Palestinian signs, including by Toronto Mayor John Tory. And the University of Toronto froze funds earmarked for the U of T Graduate Student Union’s Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions (BDS) caucus.

But we see people fighting back!

Students at Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute (Ward 11) walked out in November to protest anti-Palestine racism following the attack on Desmond Cole. Hundreds more walked out of a Catholic school in Ottawa for similar reasons. 300 students, staff, and parents wrote an open letter calling on the TDSB to “discard the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism and adopt one that does not dehumanize Palestinians, one that is more balanced and nuanced” among other demands. Kimberly Hawkins won her court case where she was accused of discrimination and antisemitism. The University of Toronto Student Union (UTSU), second largest in Canada, passed a BDS resolution early in 2022. The Palestinian Canadian Congress and Legal Centre for Palestine recently brought a human rights application against the Ford government and York Region District School Board (YRDSB) for suppressing a student’s video about the reality of Palestine under Israeli occupation. The Nakba and Land Day marches in Toronto continue to draw thousands of people in the streets in support of Palestine.

The tide is shifting against the unjust Israeli occupation of Palestine. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both released reports in the last two years detailing Israel as an apartheid state. The BDS movement continues to win victories. More and more, advocates for liberation speak out for Palestine.

With the role that school boards play in legitimizing Israeli occupation and apartheid, we see the necessity for the Palestinian cause to be brought to the fore of upcoming school board trustee elections.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: The purpose of this resolution is that Mississauga adopt an allotment and community gardens policy. The resolution calls on the city of Mississauga to develop such a policy that recognizes and supports allotment and community gardens as a valuable resources in Mississauga, and commits to collaborate with individual communities, neighbouring cities, non-profit organizations, and other stakeholders to build, encourage & preserve allotment and community gardens on public and private land.

A RESOLUTION will be made in April 2023, declaring Mississauga's support for the creation, protection and long-term sustainability of allotment and community gardens in each ward on public property, and commit to develop a pathway to create such gardens on private land.

WHEREAS, allotment and community gardens are any piece of private or public land where plants are grown and maintained by a group of individuals in the community. Such gardens often produce food for individual consumption, but may produce food for sale, be designed for beautification of the community, or be used for educational purposes, and

WHEREAS, such gardens make a significant contribution to the civic and cultural life of communities and create gathering places that bring people together across boundaries of age , economic status and ethnicity; and

WHEREAS, such gardens provide seasonal access to inexpensive, healthy, culturally specific food for people of all economic backgrounds, allowing residents to improve nutrition and lower food costs; and

WHEREAS, such gardens serve as a tool to contribute to the physical activity of participants, increasing access to nutritional foods, and serving as an important environmental and health educational tool; and

WHEREAS, gardeners and their children include more fruit and vegetables in their diets than do nongardening families; and

WHEREAS, such gardens provide positive attributes as urban green spaces: they beautify areas, build a sense of community among neighbours, abate criminal activity, and prevent trash accumulation, dumping, and littering; and

WHEREAS, such gardens contribute to the preservation, access to, and use of open space, vacant lots, and public parks; and

WHEREAS, such gardens empower residents to become more active in their communities, cultivating connections between people across cultures, economic classes and generations. Such an environment develops community leaders as those involved come together to preserve open spaces and create gardens for the benefit of present and future generations. NOW,

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the City of Mississauga supports the creation of sustainable allotment and community gardens on both public and private property and will establish policies and procedures to ensure the success of such gardens on both public and private property.