This petition is to call for Toronto City Councillor Gord Perks to be removed from office. Perks has been a city councillor since 2006, and while he was a pretty by-the-numbers man when he first started, over the years, things with him have been going downhill exponentially.

This all started in 2018 when he won the city council seat for the newly-formed Ward 4: Parkdale – High Park, which is a much bigger ward than his previous one was, as it is comprised of the exact same boundaries of the provincial and federal ridings of the same name. Due to his ward boundaries being expanded, he became the new councillor for the area of the city in which High Park is located. Since Perks' territory now consists of High Park, he has made some truly horrendous changes to it, including closing it to cars on weekends and holidays, eliminating 60% of its parking spaces, and creating a one-way system of driving through the park that is extremely inconvenient and convoluted. On top of that, he put forward a motion to close the park to cars completely by 2027, and persuaded city councillors to vote for all of these abysmal modifications. All these changes have made the park inaccessible to so many people, and Perks has aligned himself strongly with cycling advocacy groups that prioritize bike access over drivers and families who need cars to access the park.

The worst thing about all this is that Perks does not care about how many people he has negatively affected with these changes or how many people want to see them reversed. Over 16,000 people have signed another petition called High Park Access for All, demanding these changes be reversed, and the people part of that organization have been rallying at the park's entrance on Bloor Street West on the first Saturday of every month, all because they have been falling on deaf ears with Perks. People have written him so many letters and emails voicing their thoughts about these changes, and he has made it very clear that he does not care what any of these people say or think, as their views do not align with his agenda. If Perks is not removed from office immediately, these changes to High Park may never be reversed and the full former glory of the park may be washed away forever.