Update: Dec. 5, 2025: Councillor James Pasternak, with the support of three other councillors on the Infrastructure and Environment Committee, referred Councillor Dianne Saxe’s motion to city staff for further study.
Ontario Clean Air Alliance, an advocacy group that strongly supports shutting down the Portlands gas plant, said: “‘Further study’ is the black hole of city decision making, especially since the Councillors attached no deadline for a response. The last thing we need right now is further study of the idea of closing the city’s No. 1 air and climate polluter.”
Toronto city councillor Dianne Saxe is calling on the city to reject a provincial plan to indefinitely extend the operation of the Portlands Energy Centre, a gas-fired electricity generating station south of Leslieville near the lakeshore.
Portlands is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and smog-causing nitrous oxide in Toronto.
Saxe will bring a motion to Toronto’s Infrastructure and Energy Committee this Thursday, Dec. 4. The motion echoes the demands put forward by 26 community groups earlier this fall.
If passed by the committee, the motion will then be presented to council for a vote, likely between Dec. 16 and 18.
“Toronto City Council has recognized that we are in a climate emergency and has committed the city to reach net zero by 2040,” Saxe’s motion states. “These goals cannot be achieved if the electricity supplied to the city … continues to get dirtier and more based on fossil fuels.”
“The purpose of my motion is to reaffirm city opposition to the wasteful, polluting burning of fossil gas in our downtown, and to help show how it unnecessarily increases Torontonians’ electricity bills and vulnerability to extreme weather,” Saxe tells The Grind in an email.
Council has already voted at least twice to shut down Portlands by 2035. But the city doesn’t ultimately have control over the plant, which is owned by the provincial government through the subsidiary of a crown corporation. The Ontario government plans to extend the plant’s life and even add capacity.
“The province has the legal authority to shut down the Portlands gas plant,” Jack Gibbons, chair of Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA), tells The Grind by email. “But we need strong leadership from Mayor Chow to persuade the Government of Ontario to shut it down. And there is a precedent for this. In March 2000, Mayor Hazel McCallion called for the shut down of the Lakeview coal plant in Mississauga. As a result, one year later the Mike Harris Government issued a legally-binding directive requiring coal burning to cease at Lakeview in April 2005.”
Both Saxe and Gibbons said that the motion would not only result in cleaner energy but could also lower energy bills by allowing extra power to be stored and redistributed.
“And then we would also have cleaner air, better health, less climate pollution, more resilience, green jobs and we would keep our energy dollars here at home.”
Ontario’s Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO), which manages the province’s power system, published plans this fall to continue gas-fired electricity generation at the Portlands facility beyond 2035. The IESO has also indicated it will ramp up nuclear production rather than using renewable energy alternatives like wind and solar.
“The IESO is supposed to be independent,” Angela Bischoff, director of the OCAA, previously told The Grind. “But it’s actually a body of the provincial government, and they take their direction from [Ontario Premier] Doug Ford. So they are representing the nuclear and gas interests.”
Saxe’s motion recommends that City Hall tell the IESO that its plan is “fundamentally incompatible with Toronto’s climate commitments and therefore is unacceptable.”
Saxe’s motion also reiterates that the city has already asked the IESO to phase out the Portlands facility “except in extreme, exceptional and emergency circumstances,” rapidly increase renewable energy sources, and support a transformed electricity system which will meet the needs of a growing population and allow for the electrification of buildings and transportation.
The motion calls on Toronto Hydro to come up with a new plan that is in line with the city’s climate goals.
