Mark Twain: “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.”
Ontario Premier, Doug Ford: “Hold my beer.”
Premier Ford confirmed on Friday that his government is considering making the land needed to accommodate a sprawling new two-million square foot convention centre by filling in parts of Lake Ontario.
“I wouldn’t call it an island, but we may look at putting fill in until we can put (up) a convention centre,” Ford said on Friday at an unrelated event. “We’re losing out on so many large conventions in the world because we just don’t have the size and it’s a dated convention (centre) but we’re exploring that.
“It’s no different than anything else,” he added. “The environmental process would move forward, but we have a tremendous amount of fill right now and we need to expand the land.”
Ford said he’s already discussed the plan with Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, who was receptive.
“I did talk to the Mayor about it and she was endorsing it because we need more land. We need a world class convention centre to attract more tourists, more jobs and that’s what this is all about.”
The new land would require millions of tones of fill, potentially somewhere between Humber Bay Park and Ontario Place.
The idea isn’t totally out of left field — the bulk of Ontario Place is on fill, and the City of Toronto also created Ookwemin Minising, a new island near the Port Lands.
On Monday, Ford complained that the current Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC) located beside the CN Tower is too small and antiquated for a world-class city and he teased the construction of a massive new centre that would “awe” the public.
A 2023 Auditor General of Ontario report found that over the past two decades the “MTCC lost 20 international conventions because the conventions had outgrown the centre.”
“The last time these 20 events were held at MTCC, they had an average attendance of about 11,700 delegates and an estimated total economic impact of about $490 million,” the report added.
It didn’t take long for Ford’s political opponents to try and sink his artificial island idea.
Leader of the Ontario NDP, Marit Stiles, chided Ford for focusing on far-fetched projects that don’t help the average Ontarian.
“It’s just another idiotic idea, I think, from the premier, of a very expensive project that does absolutely nothing to address what people are dealing with in Ontario right now. Nothing about this makes life easier for people in Ontario,” Stiles said on Friday.
“Nothing about this project addresses what I’m hearing from Ontarians are their priorities. And so whether it’s some fantasy island that he decides to build or some other scheme that’ll come up probably next week, to me, these are ideas that show that the Premier is just really out of touch with where Ontarians are at right now.”
Toronto city councillor Josh Matlow also vocally opposed the idea.
“Doug Ford is handing tax dollars out to his friends while blowing billions on an unnecessary convention centre on a magical island and his 401 tunnel vision,” he wrote in an post on X.
“We need to focus on actual priorities, including healthcare, education, jobs, housing affordability and transit.”