As part of the Brimley Rd S Project, the City of Toronto and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority intend to takeaway our driveways along Brimley Rd S. Many Scarborough affected community members have had these driveways for decades and rely on them.

We support building the Project and believe a compromise can be easily reached if the Toronto & Region Conservation Authority and City of Toronto were to adopt a collaborative approach rather than the adversarial one taken to-date. McIntosh Perry, the City’s own engineering firm, has publicly stated that it would be easy to incorporate keeping our driveway access within the Project’s design!

What’s most concerning is that the TRCA claims they can deprive Scarborough residents of driveways that do not have a valid Toronto permit. In reality, few houses in Scarborough hold such permits, as the applicable zoning by-laws were only consolidated across the GTA in the past decade. By the TRCA’s logic, the majority of Scarborough homeowners could lose their driveways! We recognize that on rare occasions the City may choose to exercise its powers of Expropriation; however, this is NOT what is happening here. Most driveways will simply be blocked!

As developers build more and more condos in Scarborough Southwest, future projects like the Brimley Project are anticipated, which in turn will affect other Scarborough SW residents and their driveways. That is why it’s crucial we do not let the City set a precedent of depriving Scarborough residents of our driveways! Future projects in our community should allow homeowners to keep the driveways they already have.

Thank you for your support! After obtaining almost 100 physical signatures we started this online petition to include the rest of our community. Please do NOT donate any money; rather, please DO sign the petition and email the key decision makers, as well as share with your neighbors & friends.

We apologize for any technical difficulties when emailing via this website. Please find link to where you can copy and paste the email addresses of the recipients and pre-written email to send to the key decision makers: https://www.change.org/SaveScarboroughDrivewaysEmail

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Petition by the Scarborough Southwest Community to Save Scarborough Driveways including Residents Affected by the Brimley Road South Project

We, the community of Scarborough Southwest, including the residents who are affected by the Brimley Road South Multi-Use Trail Project, request that the Toronto City Council and TRCA make reasonable accommodation not to deprive residents of their existing street access to Brimley Road South. We understand and respect the goal of the Project and believe our goals are not at odds. A compromise can be easily obtained if those leading the Project were to adopt a collaborative approach rather than the adversarial one taken to-date. We therefore ask that the City and TRCA work with us and live up to the TRCA’s stated core values of integrity, collaboration, accountability, respect, and excellence when dealing with our community.

We ask that the Project, which proposes to build a new sidewalk and bicycle lane along Brimley Road South, incorporates our modest and reasonable request.  Specifically, we are seeking intervention to ensure that the Project will:
1.       Not deprive residents of existing driveway access to Brimley Road South for properties that currently enjoy permitted or legal non-conforming driveways, carports, and/or garages
2.       Not deprive residents of existing walking access to Brimley Road South (and the proposed sidewalk and bicycle lane) for properties that currently enjoy walking access
3.       Adopt a collaborative and respectful approach towards our community, making reasonable accommodations to achieve a fair and equitable outcome

Our focus is finding a collaborative outcome that achieves our stated goals. However, we regrettably note that there is a litany of examples where the TRCA has failed to live up to its core values. If productive and helpful, we can provide a review of our prior experiences trying to work collaboratively with the TRCA only to be marginalized. 

Several residents were told that rather than incorporating a gate to the new sidewalk into the Project’s design, which would be easy to do, they should instead explore doing so on their own. Additionally, the Technical Lead on the Project stated at a virtual townhall that retaining vehicular access for residents with driveways would be ‘easy’ to accommodate under the existing proposal for the Project. Yet, despite the community’s best efforts to work in good faith to do everything the TRCA and City has asked of us, we have inexplicably been ignored and have yet to be assured that our access will not be taken away. We, as a community, are unanimous in requesting that our elected officials and civil servants work collaboratively with us, incorporating modest and reasonable accommodations to not deprive us of our existing walking and/or vehicular access to Brimley Road South. 

Lastly, we want to be clear that unlike other communities that have tried to halt projects altogether, our community would be conditionally supportive of the Project, provided we are not deprived of our existing access to Brimley Road South. We hope that you will choose to work with us on this urgent matter and save Scarborough driveways. 

Respectfully,

The Scarborough Southwest Community