Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for your support so far on demanding a better budget for Toronto. Many of you are sending in letters to the Mayor and your councillor - please keep doing so! Our previous action alert has all the details.

Send your letter to the Mayor (mayor_tory@toronto.ca) and copy your councillor (councillor_lastname@toronto.ca). Find your councillor here. Please bcc lyn@climatefast.ca

Provincial and Federal budget consultations are also taking place - deadline TOMORROW, Friday Feb 10th. Scroll down for more info and links.

BIG CHANGE: Toronto's budget day will now be February 15, to allow councillors to attend Hazel McCallion's funeral on February 14.

The 'Have a Heart Toronto' demonstration, hosted by an alliance of Toronto advocacy groups, has been rescheduled to 9-10am on Wednesday, February 15 outside the City Hall main doors in Nathan Phillips Square. Rally organizers are asking participants to bring heart-shaped signs with messages for city council. Please note - you cannot take signs inside of the council chambers, so have a plan for stashing or disposing of them if you'd like to go inside and watch the budget meeting.

It's good to have many people watching council deliberate as it shows public interest and concern. If you can't go to City Hall in person, you can watch the council session on the City of Toronto's livestream (the session will be recorded, so you can watch later as well). You can also follow tweets from @graphicmatt during the council meeting.

We know that advocacy makes a difference! Yonge St. bike lanes became PERMANENT at the council meeting on February 8th. The Mayor is now open to considering a commercial parking levy - we need to keep pushing for this and other new revenue-raising tools. You may want to also ask for 24/7 warming centres, which our council has rejected on financial grounds despite having found millions of dollars in the budget to add more police and security officers on the TTC.

Please see ClimateFast's municipal page and 2023 city budget deputations for more information.

Public comment periods are currently open for both the federal government and the Ontario provincial government's 2023 budgets. The deadline to respond to both is Friday, February 10th (responses can still be submitted on Friday evening).

• Federal budget consultations
• Provincial budget consultations

Definitely ask for MORE MONEY for municipal climate action, including retrofitting public buildings, incentives for private home retrofits, active transportation infrastructure, and public transit. These are all essential to achieving our climate goals.

For context, Toronto's Net Zero by 2040 plan requires spending of $8.5 billion per year, for a total of $150 billion over the 17 years to 2040. The city is contributing $2 billion, so we are $6.5 billion short for just this year. Toronto and cities across the country need all levels of
government to contribute, substantially, to meet emissions targets this year and in the future.