James Pasternak

Councillor City of Toronto, Canada

Toronto City Councillor James Pasternak was elected to City Council in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014 and in 2018. Councillor Pasternak sits on the Mayor’s Executive Committee as the current Chair of the Infrastructure and Environment Committee and he is also Chair of the North York Community Council.


During his time in office, Councillor Pasternak has been committed to fiscal responsibility while investing in communities. Councillor Pasternak has championed investing in city parks, recreation programs, services for seniors, basement flooding protection program, public realm projects and road infrastructure.


He has hosted numerous community meetings on topics such as transit, community safety, the arts, affordable housing, traffic issues, basement flooding and budgeting priorities. Councillor Pasternak is credited with driving a number of transformative policy issues at City Hall. His work lead to the updating of the 15 year old City of Toronto Anti-Discrimination Policy; investigating the role of the City in prohibiting hate rallies from taking place on City property, the creation of Toronto’s Tennis Excellence Framework; the move to expand Toronto’s student nutrition program; study the safety and privacy issues of drone aircraft; and bring the issue of e-cigarettes onto the Toronto Board of Health agenda.


Before coming to City Hall, James Pasternak was elected as a Toronto District School Board Trustee where he lead community initiatives such as special education and seeing the establishment of Toronto’s only Afrocentric Alternative School. Councillor Pasternak has earned degrees from the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Western Ontario and York University.

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