Policy Advocacy

In partnership with organizations across the City of Toronto, we push for stronger rules that keep development away from sensitive ravines - consistent with Toronto's Ravine Strategy. 

Latest: City Council has directed a Q2 2026 report on enhanced ravine-edge protections.

Toronto City Council has now adopted IE27.7, the Ravine Strategy 2026 Implementation Update, with amendments. Importantly, the adopted item includes direction to the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning, in consultation with the City Solicitor and Parks and Recreation, to report back in Q2 2026 on options to strengthen protection of ravines from ravine-edge real estate development, including analysis of increasing the buffer between development sites and sensitive ravines.

For Glen Stewart Ravine, this policy is important. For communities facing development pressure at the ravine edge, the issue has never been stewardship alone. Restoration, maintenance, and investment are important, but they do not solve the underlying risk created when real estate development pushes too close to sensitive ravine lands. Council’s direction is important because it acknowledges that ravine protection must also include stronger policy tools to address pressure for ravine-edge development citywide. These concerns reflect a broader policy gap: Toronto has needed stronger protection where development sites meet sensitive ravines. This new direction does not resolve every immediate site-specific concern, but it creates an official pathway for the City to examine stronger protections, including wider buffers, that could help better safeguard ravines like Glen Stewart in the future.

We will track the City’s report-back, share key milestones publicly, and advocate for clear, enforceable setbacks/buffers that actually protect ravine ecology and slope stability.

Read our submission to Council | IE 27.7 Agenda Item 

This could not have happened without you! We brought the request forward to the Infrastructure & Environment Committee in February 2026, but it was your community support that brought us there. Your advocacy helped connect the lived reality at Glen Stewart to a broader city-building issue: if Toronto is serious about protecting ravines, it must address the pressures at their edges, not just what happens inside them. We are grateful to everyone who wrote, spoke, organized, and supported this effort. Community advocacy helped move ravine-edge protection from a local concern to a policy issue before the Council.

Thank you to the many community groups and leaders who supported this motion, including:

•  TNS Roxborough Parkette North

•  Bayview Village Association

• A Park for All

• Toronto Field Naturalists

• High Park Natural Environment Committee

• ProtectNatureTO

• Todmorden Mills Wildflower Preserve

among many others. Thank you! 

Watch the council motion and speakers

This clip captures the Council discussion on the Ravine Strategy item that now directs City staff to report back on options to strengthen protection from ravine-edge development, including wider buffers between development sites and sensitive ravines. Councillor Brad Bradford speaks to the issue (~7:07:00) and gives a shout out to Friends of the Glen Stewart Ravine, underscoring that sustained community advocacy helped move ravine-edge protection onto Council’s agenda.