Even though Jason Thorne doesn’t own a car, he isn’t afraid to go fast.
Thorne became Toronto’s new chief planner in December after a long tenure as one of Hamilton’s top civil servants. He was quickly thrust into the fire of the city’s budget process, having to answer detailed questions from councillors on intricate city policies he’s still trying to fully wrap his head around.
Aside from finding a new place to live close to city hall, Thorne told TorontoToday one of his most pressing priorities is speeding up some of the city’s most ambitious housing policies.
Time is of the essence.
The city must meet dozens of specific commitments and deadlines related to the half-billion-dollar Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) deal Mayor Olivia Chow inked with Ottawa just over a year ago.
In order to keep that money flowing — $118 million per year — Toronto’s laundry list includes everything from revitalizing community housing, spurring new rental construction, developing city-owned land and encouraging new “missing middle” housing options.
If those goals aren’t met, the feds said they would pull the money.
There is also a time crunch related to the next federal election, which could thrust Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre into the prime minister’s seat. Poilievre has promised to scrap the HAF program.
“There is still more to be done,” Thorne said of the city’s progress on the deal. “I’m actually working with my staff around how we can accelerate some of that.”
The art of the plan
Unlike past chief planners, Thorne can zero in on the difficult task of reworking Toronto’s zoning rules because he is the first person to head a reformed and streamlined department.
In 2024, the city’s planning department split in two.
Development review, responsible for dealing with day-to-day building permit applications, is now its own creature with separate leadership.
“I like the setup of the department. It’s actually one of the things that was appealing to me about taking on the role,” Thorne said.
“It can be hard when you're responsible for [building permits] to also be thinking a little longer term and bigger picture about where the city's going … in my previous experience, that always got put on the back burner.”
Not only is Thorne’s job description different from chief planner’s past but the public profile of the position has shifted.
“Planning as a profession and as a municipal service is more centre stage now than it was even five years ago, but certainly than it was 10 or 15 years ago,” he said.
That’s because planning is, fundamentally, about where people live and how they interact with the world around them. That puts planners at the “front lines” of dealing with not only the housing shortage, but also grappling with climate change, Thorne said.
Planning is “positioned to be a part of the solution that we really need in cities around the country,” he said. “So I think it’s good … that a lot more attention is being paid to planning.”
Mid-rising to the challenge
For Thorne, Toronto’s future is in mid-rise buildings, usually defined as five to 11-storey apartments.
“I see that form of development doing a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of new construction in the city,” he said.
Thorne’s goal is to “make that not the most difficult type of development to build, but actually the easiest.”
City planning is already working to permit more mid-rise buildings along some of Toronto’s busiest streets, known as “avenues” in the official plan.
In November, council agreed to allow 5- to 11-storey buildings as-of-right on about half of the existing avenues, which includes stretches of streets such as Dundas Street, College Street, Roncesvalles Avenue and more.
At next week’s council meeting, councillors will vote to add new avenues — with the same permissive zoning — to the city map. Later in the year, the other half of the existing avenues could be in for another round of upzoning.
“Those are really big moves,” Thorne said.
Thorne’s bullish on mid-rise because those buildings aren’t as financially risky high-rise condos, which have been struggling to sell pre-construction units as prices and interest rates deter mom-and-pop investors, who were long the financial backbone of the sector.
“A lot of the condo developments, these are projects that cost a lot of money, require a lot of financing, require a lot of presales in order to make the project viable,” Throne said.
In 2024, the Greater Toronto Area saw the fewest number of new condo sales in 30 years, according to Urbanation, a market research firm.
“It's a risk to put all of your eggs in that basket as the only type of housing you're building,” Thorne said.
Thorne’s not a high-rise hater, however.
“There's certainly a role for high rises and there will be more of that,” he said. “That's a good thing.”
And while much of the high and mid-rise will likely be built on busy streets, Thorne’s also an advocate for “ways that we can bring new housing into the neighbourhoods.”
The city is exploring whether to allow four-storey, six-unit buildings in neighbourhoods “as of right” — meaning they could be built on side streets among single-family homes without an arduous and expensive rezoning process.
However, the latest city staff report on the matter was recently punted until the end of the year.
Building a city for the four million Torontonians of the future
Change is afoot as the city tries to not get crushed under the weight of its housing challenges. But change is something Thorne’s managed before.
In his hometown of Hamilton, Thorne helped spur a still-ongoing downtown revitalization.
“Having grown up there and seeing the downtown going in one direction and then … all of a sudden seeing cranes in the air was super gratifying,” he said. “Buildings that were vacant my whole life suddenly are being repurposed. Lots that had been vacant my whole life, all of a sudden have housing going up on them. That’s very satisfying.”
Toronto’s challenge is different.
“Toronto is also an evolving city in a different way,” he said. “Toronto is going to be a city of four million before too long. A city of four million is very different than a city of three million.”
The city’s population isn’t expected to reach four million for a few more decades. By that time, Thorne will probably be enjoying his retirement — maybe even in one of those mid-rise apartments he wants to build.
Crafting policies to allow those four million people to live, work, move and play is how he wants to be remembered.
“Twenty years from now, I’d love to look back on all the LRT lines that have been built and the Ontario Line … that creates a huge opportunity for us to be a very vibrant, big city,” he said. “In that timeline, the waterfront will be close to built out. Downsview is going to have 100,000 people living there.”
“Those were the kinds of things that I was like, ‘Yeah, Toronto’s where I want to be right now.’”
