Doug Ford says Toronto Islands residents are “squatters”
He didn’t mean to be rude, though
“I’ve got to tell you one thing,” Premier Doug Ford said roughly two weeks ago. “We’ve got to extend that runway. We have to bring jets in, smaller jets, whatever, until people can hop on there.”
It turns out he wasn’t kidding about his plans to expand Billy Bishop airport: the premier, the Toronto Port Authority and the Ministry of Transportation all seem to agree that the downtown airport should have an extended runway to accommodate larger planes.
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As for residents of the Toronto Islands who will likely dispute Ford’s expanded vision for Billy Bishop, Ford basically said, Too bad. “I don’t want to be rude, folks. There’s 260 squatters on the island,” he said yesterday.
Ford was referring to an agreement that allows island residents to own homes at below-market rates through a trust. They pay to lease the land. (Per the Toronto Islands Residential Community Trust Corporation, island homes sell for an average of $150,000 to $400,000.)
“Folks, game’s over,” he continued. “You’re getting a [house] dollar a year, but guess what? We aren’t going to worry about the one-percenters that affect the 99 per cent of the rest of the population.”
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
