Toronto learned a hard lesson 71 years ago, when Hurricane Hazel tore a path of death and destruction across the region. The lesson was that we absolutely must protect our ravines and natural lands so they can absorb rainfall and buffer the city against the worst impacts of severe flooding. Toronto’s land-use planning system followed through with rules protecting ravine lands from commercial or residential builds. Our city has since benefited from both remarkable rates of urban growth and an unparalleled network of green valley lands. Other cities envy us for managing to combine among the fastest growth rates in North America with verdant ribbons of greenspace.
Alarmingly, on Oct. 10, 2025, a Queen’s Park tribunal tossed aside the rules and hard-won wisdom about protecting ravines. Relying on testimony from developer-funded consultants, the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) has approved a huge project that would place over 2,000 housing units (four towers) part-way down a ravine slope at Flemingdon Park in the Don Valley. The OLT disregarded expert advice from the City and the Toronto Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), who had refused the project. At Toronto’s November 2025 Council meeting, Council authorized its legal team to attempt an unusual and last-ditch challenge to appeal the OLT approval in Divisional Court.
Recognizing the needs for housing, both the City and the TRCA have been at pains to work proactively with the development industry, and to approve projects wherever reasonable. So, what might have prompted them to sound alarm bells about this proposal? We cannot speak for the City, but we can offer the concerns of citizen groups with decades of experience advocating for Toronto’s ravines.
Ravines are great at absorbing and slowing down stormwater, but only if their slopes are undisturbed and vegetated, and only if soils are not paved over. The four towers of the Flemingdon Park project would disrupt and seal over 7,600 square metres of ravine slopes, increasing risks of erosion and slope failures. A deal sweetener proposed at Flemingdon Park (to convert some of the golf course into public space) would in no way undo the damage of building on ravine slopes.
Our city is much more paved over than at the time of Hurricane Hazel, and climate change has brought accelerating changes in weather patterns, with more intense storms predicted for our future. Toronto’s summer storm of July 16 2024 led to flash flooding, prolonged power outages and insured damage costs of nearly $1 billion, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. The storm of July 8 2013 stranded a crowded train of commuters on a flooded GO Train in the Don Valley, some of them electing to swim their way out. Let’s not forget the massive fall-out of the Finch Avenue wash-out of 2005, requiring six months of repairs to public utilities, including power, sewers and roads. We need more protection against flooding, not less.
A single project may not set a legal precedent, but, if approved, the project would entice others to try cashing in on ravine properties. About 60% of Toronto ravine lands are in public hands, with about 30,000 private addresses owning the rest. Owners range from public institutions to golf courses to private residences. Our ravines would die the death of a thousand cuts if even a fraction of those landowners were to push development onto vulnerable slopes.
A key concern is about escalating costs for the public purse. Buildings on ravine slopes enormously complicate erosion control work that TRCA must routinely carry out to protect public safety, roads, sewers and other critical infrastructure, not to mention private property. “More complicated” means more expensive for municipal taxpayers. Stabilizing even a short stretch of stream bank typically costs over a million dollars. Toronto’s recent major storms have flooded thousands of home basements, each with repair costs averaging $40,000. Escalating costs create the urgency behind TRCA’s statement to City News that they “do not support significantly intensified new development below the top of ravine banks.”
Let’s be clear: land is not the only value being eroded here. This OLT decision shows how Queen’s Park is eroding rights and responsibilities of locally elected decision-makers and citizens, on an extraordinary scale. By all standards of reason and democracy, cities and watershed agencies need planning authority to protect their citizens from flooding, and citizens should have the right to be engaged. The rules of the Ontario Land Tribunal upend all of that, putting decisions into the hands of appointees with no accountability for on-the-ground implications. On the contrary, OLT appointees are explicitly protected from liability for their decisions. Nor is there anything in the OLT’s rules requiring their adjudicators to have skills or technical knowledge of the matters before them. Media investigation has shown that OLT decisions are overwhelmingly (97%) skewed towards developers, as revealed by the Hamilton Spectator in 2022.
Toronto citizens must demand that the heavy hands of Queen’s Park be lifted from our ravines and natural lands.
Please email your provincial MPP to insist that the Ontario Land Tribunal must not approve any building projects on ravine slopes, and that Premier Doug Ford must reverse the OLT’s October 2025 decision on the Flemingdon Park project in the Don Valley.
Lynn Miller, President, Toronto Field Naturalists
Andrew Simpson, Co-Founder, Toronto Nature Stewards