Elio Di Iorio
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Elio Di Iorio (born August 10, 1971) was a municipal councillor in Richmond Hill, Ontario from 2003 to 2006. He served as one of a relatively small number of elected politicians in Canada who are openly affiliated with the Green Party of Canada.
Di Iorio is on the board of Element Village, a nonprofit devoted to sustainable cities that he founded with Kathryn Holloway. He has worked on his town's groundbreaking work in gathering statistics on all its greenhouse gas output to track federal Kyoto Protocol commitments. Among others, he has initiated a move to integrate renewable energy from various sources and on various scales to address energy sustainability in Richmond Hill, with a long term goal of achieving energy self-reliance for the municipality. He has initiated high-level discussions regarding a possible ban of pesticides which ultimately resulted in an aggressive pesticide reduction strategy being adopted by Council, but not including a ban. In 2004, he convinced Council to explore the potential for wind power. The Town of Richmond Hill has since received $150 thousand from the Green Municipal Funds to cover costs of the feasibility study, following earlier studies that showed favourable wind and siting conditions for a wind project on town-owned lands in the north part of the town.
As a strong food advocate, he has been assisting local businesses in establishing a fall farmers market, and a spring compost give-away in conjunction with the town's Healthy Yards program.
He is currently working with the Civic Efficiency Group and Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) to bring CitiStat to the region to help integrate these statistics into other regional and municipal reporting. Regionally, he has supported various initiatives widely seen as promoting "green" causes. He has spearheaded a grassroots movement to stop the "Big Pipe" in York Region which has contributed to severe degradation of the Rouge Watershed, has drained billions of litres of water from the Oak Ridges Moraine, caused ground water levels to drop, and wells to dry up. He sees this project as opening the door for decades of continued sprawling development in the Greater Toronto Area and has recently co-founded CAP (Coalition Against the Pipe) in an effort to curtail this project. In October 2005, the City of Toronto and the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario Gord Miller officially supported his position calling on Federal and Provincial governments to take action on this issue.
He currently sits as a member of FCM's Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, International Relations, as well as on the Standing Committee for Advancing the Role of Women in Municipal Government. In 2004, he spearheaded a group of 27 local and regional councillors from Toronto and his own adjoining York Region in support of the provincial greenbelt legislation.
In December 2005, Di Iorio attended the Global Municipal Leaders' Summit in Montreal as part of the COP 11 MOP 1 Climate Change Conference. He co-authored the Global Municipal Leaders' Declaration on Climate Change in which very clear demands and commitments were made by municipal leaders worldwide. He is credited specifically with successfully lobbying for inclusion of items 3.4 and 4.3 which speak directly to improved open exchange of experiences and information, and to reform of global trade and finance regimes such that they reward practices which address and mitigate climate change and debt relief.
Di Iorio ran in a 1999 byelection in York West for the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, finishing in second place behind Judy Sgro. He left the party shortly thereafter, after finding himself at odds with personalities and motives that were dominating the party, choosing to focus on municipal issues instead. He ran for Richmond Hill Council in 2000, losing by 120 votes (2%). He was then successful in 2003 in winning the Ward 5 seat. At the same time, Di Iorio had been introduced to the Green Party of Ontario and the Green Party of Canada, both of which he soon joined. He has stood very strongly for its participatory democracy principle and stood behind the Green Party of Canada Living Platform.
At the party's annual general meeting in 2004, Di Iorio was elected the party's international secretary. He speaks several languages including English, French, and Italian. He has also acted as the party's critic for urban and municipal issues.
In June 2005, he resigned from the GPC's national executive. His resignation letter accused then party leader Jim Harris of poor leadership, and of mismanaging the party's finances. Di Iorio described Harris as "socially awkward, control-centric, and in my opinion, somewhat sociopathic".[1]
On November 13, 2006, Di Iorio was defeated by former incumbent Nick Papa by a slim margin of 29 votes.
