Uniting Toronto: A Platform for Abundance

The complete agenda — grand thesis, eight meta-statements, and 300 recommendations.

This page runs top-down through a depth hierarchy, so you can zoom any idea in or out: a banner (a few words), a plank (one detailed sentence — the 300 recommendations below live at this depth), and the case (a full paragraph of reasoning). Longer briefings and chapters for the deepest layers are future work and not yet written. Recommendations tagged P need Queen’s Park’s sign-off and F need Ottawa’s; everything else sits within the City’s own authority. Every recommendation number (like #76) links to itself below, so it can be shared directly.

Executive summary

Toronto in 2026 is a city of cruel paradoxes. Rents are softening, violent crime sits at a generational low, and two new transit lines finally opened — yet a record 4.1 million food-bank visits, homelessness roughly doubled in three years, 2.5 million Ontarians without a family doctor, and an overdose crisis re-accelerating after the province closed safe-injection sites tell the real story. The encouraging trends are mostly cyclical or fragile; the deepest measures of hardship are still moving the wrong way.

This platform argues that these are not separate emergencies but symptoms of three shared failures: the city builds too little housing of the wrong kind, it relies on a property tax that cannot fund its responsibilities, and it polices hardship instead of housing and healing it. The agenda attacks all three at once. It is organized as a grand thesis — govern for abundance, not scarcity — resting on eight meta-statements, each carrying a slate of concrete, costed-where-possible recommendations, 300 in total. About two-thirds sit within the City’s own authority; the rest need a provincial or federal partner, which is why the keystone commitment (#76) is a new fiscal-and-governance deal with Queen’s Park that makes everything else affordable and accountable.

The 20 signature commitments

The headline promises a candidate could lead with, spanning all eight meta-statements:

1. A public homebuilder — a $2B-seeded municipal developer delivering 10,000 below-market homes a year on public land (#1).
2. Legalize the missing middle — fourplexes and mid-rise apartments as-of-right citywide and on every transit corridor (#4, #5).
3. 90-day approvals — a statutory shot-clock with deemed approval if the City misses it (#7).
4. Housing First for all — a permanent supportive home for every one of the ~10,500 people the City's shelter-system flow data counts as actively homeless (#33).
5. Free eviction defence — duty-counsel so no tenant faces the board alone (#52).
6. Office-to-homes — convert 5,000 units from the vacant downtown office stock (#18).
7. The keystone fiscal deal — a 1% municipal share of income or sales tax and a permanent provincial transit/Gardiner settlement (#63, #76).
8. Open, honest budgeting — multi-year budgets, an independent budget office, and a public promise-tracker (#65, #74, #82).
9. Participatory budgeting — $5M per ward allocated directly by residents (#84).
10. Congestion pricing — a downtown charge on the London/Stockholm model, every dollar locked to transit (#117).
11. A TTC you don’t schedule around — 5-minute headways on core routes and multi-year funding before the 2027 cliff (#96, #97).
12. 100km of priority lanes — surface transit that moves, built in two terms (#110).
13. A living-wage city — the City and its contractors paying the $27.20 GTA living wage (#135).
14. Universal school meals — no child learns hungry, across all TDSB schools (#153).
15. $10/day childcare at scale — clearing the 10,000-space waitlist (#163).
16. A medical home for everyone — 30 team-based community health hubs (#179).
17. Reverse the overdose reversal — re-fund supervised consumption after the 82% rise in overdose calls, and build the full treatment continuum (#193, #197).
18. Crisis teams, not police — civilian responders for every mental-health 911 call (#198).
19. Prevention-matched safety — every police budget increase matched by upstream investment, keeping the gains that cut homicides and auto theft (#211).
20. Retrofit 100,000 homes — bill-financed upgrades that cut emissions, lower costs, and create jobs (#225).

First 100 days

Quick moves that sit largely within the City’s own authority and signal direction immediately: table the missing-middle as-of-right expansion (#4, #5); launch the 90-day approvals shot-clock (#7); declare Housing First the official policy and stand up the by-name list (#33, #41); open the budget, contracts, and promise-tracker data portal (#81, #82); pilot free eviction duty-counsel (#52); make CaféTO permanent and cut business licensing to 10 days (#265, #256); publish the open housing-pipeline dashboard (#32); and — above all — formally open the fiscal-and-governance negotiation with Queen’s Park that unlocks the rest (#76).

Contents

1. Homes for Everyone — housing, homelessness, renters (recs 1–62)
2. A City That Can Pay Its Way and Earn Trust — finance and governance (63–95)
3. A City That Moves — transit and streets (96–134)
4. A City Where You Can Afford to Live — cost of living, food, children (135–178)
5. A City That Keeps People Healthy and Alive — health, mental health, addiction (179–208)
6. A City That’s Safe Through Prevention and Honesty — public safety (209–224)
7. A Livable, Resilient, Green City — climate, parks, public space (225–254)
8. A Thriving, Inclusive City — economy, culture, equity, infrastructure (255–300)

The grand thesis

In one line: Govern for abundance, not scarcity.

The idea: Toronto’s crises in housing, poverty, transit, health, and safety are not separate emergencies but symptoms of three root failures — too little housing of the wrong kind, a tax base that can’t fund the City’s responsibilities, and a habit of policing hardship instead of housing and healing it — so the unifying mission is to build, to fund, and to care at a scale that treats sufficiency as achievable rather than rationed.

The case: The current model manages decline. It rations housing because it assumes land and money are scarce, it lurches from one provincial bailout to the next because it lacks its own revenue, and it answers homelessness, addiction, and poverty with enforcement because that costs less than solving them. The evidence says this is a choice rather than a fate. Vienna has shown housing abundance is buildable, Finland has shown homelessness is solvable, London and Stockholm have shown congestion is priceable, the overdose data shows harm reduction saves lives, and Toronto’s own record-low violent crime shows prevention works. So a platform worth running on does not promise to manage the symptoms better. It commits to attacking the three roots together, and the hardest and most enabling move is political: a new fiscal-and-governance relationship with the province that gives the City both the tools and the accountability to fix its own problems. Everything else here follows from that.

Meta-statement 1 — Homes for Everyone

Covers Platform sections I–III (recommendations 1–62): housing supply, homelessness, renter protection.

In one line: Treat housing like infrastructure.

The idea: Make a baseline supply of non-luxury housing a public good the City builds and protects — the way it builds water mains and transit — so that abundance, not scarcity, sets the price, and no resident is homeless for lack of a roof.

The case: Housing is the master problem: it drives food-bank lines, encampments, and the working poor, and it eases when homes become abundant and de-commodified. The market alone will not deliver this, so the City should stand up a public developer building tens of thousands of permanent below-market homes a year on the vast public land bank, legalize the “missing middle” as-of-right to let private builders add gentle density without multi-year fights, and capture the land-value windfall that public investment creates to fund the affordable share. For the ~10,500 people the City's shelter-system flow data counts as actively homeless (a narrower measure than the wider Street Needs Assessment population — see the homelessness population estimate methodology page), the answer is Housing First — a permanent home first, with support wrapped around it — proven in Finland and undermined by Toronto’s current practice of clearing encampments faster than it builds homes. And because roughly half of households rent, the third leg is real protection against renoviction, neglect, and turnover rent-spikes. Vienna, Finland, and Montreal show every piece of this works at scale; the constraint is will and revenue, not knowledge.

I. Housing supply and affordability (recommendations 1–32)

1. Create a municipal housing developer (a “Build Toronto Homes” corporation) capitalized at $2B in seed equity and a mandate to deliver 10,000 below-market homes a year, modelled on Vienna’s Gemeindebau and Montreal’s non-profit pipeline.
2. Compile a public-land registry of every City, TTC, TDSB, hospital, and Hydro parcel and commit 100% of surplus suitable sites to housing rather than market sale. P
3. Build housing on air rights over the 69 subway/RT stations and major library/community-centre sites, starting with 10 station sites in term one.
4. Legalize fourplexes as-of-right on every residential lot citywide (extending the 2023 multiplex bylaw to remove remaining caps and parking triggers).
5. Permit 6–11 storey apartments as-of-right along all Avenues and within 800m of rapid transit, ending site-by-site rezoning on those corridors.
6. Abolish minimum parking requirements for all residential construction citywide (parking adds ~$50–100k per underground stall to rents).
7. Impose a statutory 90-day shot-clock on planning decisions, with deemed approval and refunded fees if the City misses it.
8. Replace the multi-platform application maze with one online portal showing live status, modelled on Estonia’s e-government services.
9. Publish a catalogue of 15–20 pre-approved, pre-engineered building designs (Vancouver/BC-style) so missing-middle builders skip 12+ months of design review.
10. Waive 100% of development charges and parkland fees on purpose-built rental and non-profit housing, replacing that revenue with land-value capture.
11. Set a binding target of 65,000 new homes a year (the city’s own HousingTO goal) and post monthly starts/completions on a public dashboard.
12. Capture 20–30% of the land-value uplift around new transit stations via a special levy, ring-fenced for affordable units on those corridors.
13. Lease public land on 99-year terms at nominal rent to non-profits instead of selling it, keeping the land permanently off the speculative market.
14. Sign 10-year offtake agreements with pension funds and the Canada Infrastructure Bank for patient 4–5% capital to finance rental at scale. F
15. Triple the Toronto community land trust portfolio to permanently de-commodify 5,000 units over two terms.
16. Require 20% affordable units in developments within Protected Major Transit Station Areas (strengthening inclusionary zoning). P
17. Stand up a modular-housing procurement program with a standing factory contract, targeting 1,500 factory-built supportive units a year (Toronto’s own 2020–21 modular pilot proved the model).
18. Launch a downtown office-to-residential conversion program with a per-unit grant and code relief, targeting 5,000 conversions from the ~17% vacant office stock.
19. Capitalize a $300M Acquisition Fund so non-profits can buy aging rental buildings before private equity does (Montreal and Vancouver run versions).
20. Legislate non-profit/tenant right-of-first-refusal on the sale of any building with 6+ rental units. P
21. Pre-approve laneway and garden suites in under 30 days with a fixed fee schedule and standardized plans.
22. Re-legalize rooming houses citywide with a licensing-and-inspection regime, ending the post-amalgamation patchwork ban.
23. Attach “use-it-or-lose-it” conditions to approvals so permits lapse if construction doesn’t start within 3 years, discouraging land-banking.
24. Fund 2,000 unionized construction apprenticeships through the public developer to break the trades bottleneck.
25. Bulk-buy materials (steel, glazing, heat pumps) through the public developer to cut 10–15% off per-unit costs.
26. Reserve at least 30% of every public build as deep-affordable (rent-geared-to-income at ≤30% of household income).
27. Mandate that 25% of units in major developments have 3+ bedrooms to fix the family-sized housing shortage.
28. Co-locate licensed childcare and a health clinic in every public housing project over 200 units.
29. Run a single non-profit/co-op concierge desk that shepherds community builders through every approval in one stream.
30. Raise the Vacant Home Tax from 3% to 5% and dedicate 100% of proceeds to construction.
31. Cap short-term rentals at principal-residence-only with active enforcement to return an estimated 5,000+ units to long-term supply.
32. Publish an open housing-pipeline dashboard tracking every project from application to occupancy, with addresses and timelines.

II. Homelessness and supportive housing (recommendations 33–50)

33. Adopt Housing First as official policy: a permanent supportive unit for every one of the ~10,500 people counted "actively homeless" in the City's shelter-system flow data (people who used the shelter system at least once in a trailing three-month window — not the wider, separately measured Street Needs Assessment population; see the homelessness population estimate methodology page for the two measures and their current reconciliation status), following Finland’s national model (the only EU country where homelessness fell).
34. Set a functional-zero target for chronic homelessness within two terms, tracked by the by-name list.
35. Redirect the ~$200M+ annual motel/shelter contract spend into capital for permanent supportive housing, which costs less per person over time than emergency shelter.
36. Guarantee in bylaw that no one is refused shelter on any night below 0°C (the system currently turns away 150–220 people a night).
37. Fund 24/7 respite sites with privacy pods, secure storage, and pet/partner/possessions allowed, ending the barriers that keep people in encampments.
38. Attach a dedicated health and case-management team to every supportive building (the “supportive” half that Housing First requires).
39. Build 1,500 purpose-built supportive units a year via modular procurement instead of leasing motels at $100+/night.
40. Stand up a Rapid Rehousing Fund providing deposit + first-months rent + supports to move 3,000 people a year from shelter to housing in under 30 days.
41. Implement a single coordinated-access by-name list so no one is bounced between agencies for the same need.
42. Scale eviction prevention and rent banks to reach 10,000 households a year — far cheaper than shelter at the back end.
43. Create a youth housing stream with 500 units for those aging out of care, who are vastly over-represented among the homeless. P
44. Build a seniors’ supportive-housing stream as over-65 homelessness rises with the affordability squeeze.
45. Provide low-barrier, harm-reduction-friendly housing so active drug use isn’t a barrier to a roof (the evidence-based standard).
46. Replace encampment sweeps with a “verified housing offer first” protocol and year-round outreach teams.
47. Fund 200 peer-support roles for people with lived experience across the homelessness system.
48. Demand a fair-share funding formula from Ottawa and Queen’s Park for shelters and refugee claimants, who drove much of the shelter surge. PF
49. Build dedicated refugee reception capacity (500 spaces) so claimants stop overflowing the general shelter system. F
50. Publish real-time shelter occupancy and nightly turn-away numbers for public accountability.

III. Renter protections and tenant rights (recommendations 51–62)

51. Create a Renters’ Commissioner office with a budget to advocate for the city’s ~50% of households that rent.
52. Fund universal duty-counsel so any tenant facing eviction at the Landlord and Tenant Board gets a free lawyer.
53. Pass a renoviction bylaw (like Hamilton’s and New Westminster’s) requiring permits, tenant right-of-return at the same rent, and per-day fines.
54. Maintain a public landlord registry linking ownership to building-by-building compliance and arrears records.
55. Triple RentSafeTO proactive inspections and raise maximum fines to $100k for chronic-offender landlords.
56. Set enforceable repair timelines — heat within 24h, elevators within 48h, pests within 7 days — with automatic penalties.
57. Lobby to close the vacancy-decontrol loophole that lets rent jump ~23% on turnover. P
58. Capitalize a municipal Rent Bank at $20M to cover one-time arrears for tenants in temporary crisis.
59. Legislate relocation rights plus compensation (e.g., 3 months’ rent) when buildings are redeveloped.
60. Press the province to re-impose rent control on post-2018 buildings. P
61. Enact a maximum-temperature bylaw (26°C) for rental units, mirroring the existing minimum-heat bylaw, as summers intensify.
62. Fund tenant unions and “know your rights” education in the 10 neighbourhoods with the most LTB filings.

Meta-statement 2 — A City That Can Pay Its Way and Earn Trust

Covers Platform sections IV–V (recommendations 63–95): finance, revenue tools, governance, transparency.

In one line: Fix the money and the machinery.

The idea: Win the revenue tools and stable provincial deal that match Toronto’s responsibilities, run the budget transparently and multi-year, and rebuild public trust through open data, honest costings, and real democratic voice — because no other promise survives a city that can’t fund itself.

The case: A city of three million funding province-like duties — shelters, refugee resettlement, public health, transit operations — out of a property tax that doesn’t grow with the economy is structurally set up to fail, which is why the 2027 expiry of the provincial transit deal is the next cliff and why every ambitious plank in this platform ultimately depends on this one. The keystone is a new fiscal-and-governance deal: growth-based revenue (a municipal share of income or sales tax), a permanent Gardiner/DVP upload, and stable transit funding, in exchange for the accountability that comes with autonomy. In the nearer term the City can lean on tools it already controls — land-value capture, congestion and parking levies, a deeper luxury land-transfer tax, a sharper vacant-home tax — to diversify away from property tax without cutting services. Trust is the other half of the bargain: multi-year budgeting, an independent budget office, open data by default, participatory budgeting, and a public promise-tracker so residents can see that new revenue buys real results.

IV. City finance and revenue tools (recommendations 63–80)

63. Negotiate a 1% municipal share of provincial income or sales tax, worth ~$1.5–2B/year — roughly the City’s structural operating gap. P
64. Replace ad-hoc bailouts with a legislated, formula-based provincial transfer indexed to population and inflation. P
65. Move to multi-year (3-year) operating and capital budgets to end the annual cliff-edge.
66. Create a dedicated State-of-Good-Repair fund to retire the ~$18B maintenance backlog on a 15-year schedule.
67. Diversify revenue beyond property tax (currently ~32% of revenue) with congestion, parking, and luxury levies.
68. Add new high-value bands to the Municipal Land Transfer Tax on homes over $3M (already begun in 2025; deepen it).
69. Introduce a commercial parking levy on non-residential lots, projected at $400–575M/year, dedicated to transit (a 2016 KPMG-studied option).
70. Pursue a GTA-wide regional revenue-sharing framework so the 905 contributes to shared regional costs. P
71. Establish a City infrastructure investment fund seeded by asset monetization for long-horizon projects.
72. Issue green and social bonds (Toronto’s rating is AA+) to finance retrofits, housing, and transit at low cost.
73. Run a zero-based value-for-money review of every program over $10M each budget cycle.
74. Create an independent Parliamentary-Budget-Officer-style city budget office to give council honest costings.
75. End the practice of balancing the operating budget with one-time reserve draws, which masks the structural gap.
76. Make a new fiscal-and-governance deal with Queen’s Park the keystone ask: revenue tools + the Gardiner/DVP upload made permanent + stable transit funding past the 2027 cliff. P
77. Legally ring-fence every new revenue tool to a named purpose (transit, housing) so residents see the return.
78. Push for current-value property reassessment (frozen since 2016) on an equity-tested basis. P
79. Pool procurement across the TTC, Police, Parks, and agencies to capture bulk-buy savings estimated in the tens of millions.
80. Publish a plain-language “where your tax dollar goes” budget so residents can see every line.

V. Governance, democracy, and transparency (recommendations 81–95)

81. Put the full budget, every contract over $50k, and live service-performance data online by default.
82. Launch a public promise tracker scoring delivery against each platform commitment quarterly.
83. Empower the Auditor General with a larger mandate and a council rule to formally respond to every recommendation.
84. Expand participatory budgeting to $5M per ward so residents directly allocate local capital.
85. Convene standing citizens’ assemblies (sortition-based) on long-horizon questions like density and revenue tools, as Paris and Brussels do.
86. Move the lobbyist registry to real-time, searchable, machine-readable disclosure.
87. Introduce public campaign financing (small-donor matching) to lower the barrier to running for council.
88. Replace open-house theatre with structured deliberation and plain-language, multilingual materials.
89. Devolve defined local decisions (traffic calming, park design) to the four community councils with their own budgets.
90. Create an Office of Service Design to cut the steps in the City’s 20 most-used resident interactions.
91. Publish service-level standards and live wait times for 311, permits, and inspections.
92. Give the Integrity Commissioner sharper enforcement powers and mandatory recusal rules.
93. Require an equity impact assessment on every budget and major policy item before council votes.
94. Adopt open-data-by-default with public APIs for all non-personal City datasets.
95. Hold quarterly ward town halls where the relevant GM must answer residents on the record.

Meta-statement 3 — A City That Moves

Covers Platform sections VI–VII (recommendations 96–134): transit and streets.

In one line: Price the road, fund the ride.

The idea: Make transit so frequent and reliable it wins riders on the merits, and price the scarce road space that costs the region $44.7 billion a year in gridlock — dedicating every dollar of that charge to the transit that makes driving a choice rather than a necessity.

The case: Congestion is, in economic terms, a problem of underpriced road space, and the boldest effective lever is a downtown congestion charge on the London/Stockholm model, introduced honestly with every dollar legally locked to transit and phased in alongside genuinely better alternatives. But pricing only works if the alternative is good, so the parallel commitment is a TTC that is frequent, reliable, accessible, and safe — restoring the “ride without checking a schedule” standard, publishing route-by-route performance (streetcars sat at 61% on-time), locking in multi-year operating funding before the 2027 cliff, and building 100km of surface priority lanes that can be painted in weeks rather than tunnels that take a decade. Frequency is the product. Around it sits a complete-streets agenda — a connected protected bike grid, reinstated speed enforcement, and a hard Vision Zero target — that keeps the city moving safely for everyone, not just drivers.

VI. Public transit / TTC (recommendations 96–116)

96. Lock in multi-year provincial operating funding before the 2027 deal expires (which threatens a ~$379M hole). P
97. Restore the “ride without checking a schedule” standard: max 5-minute headways on all core routes, all day.
98. Publish route-by-route on-time performance monthly (streetcars sat at just 61% in late 2025).
99. Reverse pandemic-era service cuts and add back the hours lost as ridership recovered to ~81% of 2019.
100. Fund a true all-day/all-week network with strong off-peak and weekend frequency, not just rush-hour service.
101. Expand the Fair Pass discount toward free transit for everyone on Ontario Works/ODSP.
102. Introduce fare-capping so pay-as-you-go riders never pay more than a weekly/monthly pass.
103. Integrate TTC–GO–regional fares into one tap with free transfers (a true regional fare). P
104. Accelerate procurement of new streetcars and the 55 New-Deal-funded subway trains to retire the aging fleet. P
105. Electrify the bus fleet (~2,000 buses) by 2035 with depot charging, on a published schedule.
106. Guarantee a working elevator at every station with a public outage tracker and SLA — non-negotiable for accessibility.
107. Deliver accurate real-time arrivals on every platform and stop, not just app estimates.
108. Add lit, sheltered, heated waiting areas and reopen station washrooms at major hubs.
109. Staff stations and night vehicles (the durable safety fix that empty late-night platforms lack).
110. Build 100km of bus/streetcar priority lanes (RapidTO) over two terms.
111. Give every surface route transit signal priority at intersections to claw back travel time.
112. Finish the Eglinton (Line 5) ramp-up and Finch West (Line 6) integration after their 2025–26 openings. P
113. Independently cost and oversee the next lines (Waterfront East LRT, Line 2 extension) to avoid the Eglinton overrun. P
114. Cut weekend subway shutdowns by shifting to overnight and single-track maintenance windows.
115. Give a rider advisory council a formal seat in service-planning decisions.
116. Launch a transit safety strategy pairing 80+ staff/ambassadors with crisis teams, not just police, after the 127% rise in violent transit crime (2018–24).

VII. Traffic, roads, and active transportation (recommendations 117–134)

117. Introduce a downtown congestion charge (London/Stockholm model) with every dollar locked to transit, targeting the $44.7B/year regional gridlock cost. P
118. Raise the lane-closure fee from ~$37k/month toward the real ~$1.7M/month socioeconomic cost to speed up work (TRBOT’s own proposal).
119. Mandate utility-coordination so one street is dug once, not repeatedly by different crews.
120. Build a connected 200km protected cycling grid — continuous routes, not disconnected painted segments.
121. Expand Bike Share Toronto into Scarborough, North York, and Etobicoke with e-bikes and low-income passes.
122. Reinstate the ~150 automated speed cameras removed under provincial law in 2025, in school/pedestrian zones. P
123. Double the red-light camera network and restore crossing guards at high-risk intersections.
124. Hold a hard Vision Zero target of zero road deaths by 2030 (2025’s 39 was a record low; halve it again).
125. Lower default residential limits to 30km/h and redesign the corridors where most of the 39 deaths occur.
126. Rebuild arterials as complete streets (transit + protected bike + wide sidewalk) on every major reconstruction.
127. Fund a sidewalk-repair and priority snow-clearing program so winter accessibility is guaranteed.
128. Modernize the traffic management centre with adaptive signal timing on the 100 worst corridors.
129. Adopt a curbside-management bylaw governing deliveries, ride-hail, and loading to cut double-parking.
130. Pilot car-free weekends on select downtown streets (Kensington, parts of King) and a permanent King Street transit priority extension.
131. Install secure bike parking (cages/lockers) at all 69 stations and major civic buildings.
132. Deploy adaptive traffic AI and incident-response teams to clear blockages on the DVP/Gardiner faster.
133. Fund Safe Routes to School at the 100 schools with the worst pedestrian conflicts.
134. Cap and meter ride-hail volume with a per-trip fee dedicated to transit, as NYC does, to cut congestion.

Meta-statement 4 — A City Where You Can Afford to Live

Covers Platform sections VIII–X (recommendations 135–178): cost of living, food security, children and childcare.

In one line: Make work pay and catch people before they fall.

The idea: Close the gap between what people earn and what survival costs — through a living wage, an adequate income floor, affordable childcare, and food security — so that a record 4.1 million food-bank visits and a 25% child-poverty rate stop being the price of living in Toronto.

The case: Food-bank use at 4.1 million visits a year, with nearly half of users employed, is evidence that the floor under low-income Torontonians has given way — and the arithmetic is plain when the GTA living wage is $27.20 against a $17.60 minimum. The structural fixes combine making work pay (the City setting the living-wage standard through its payroll and purchasing power), a stronger income floor (restored social-assistance rates and a basic-income pilot), and the affordability of the essentials that eat poor households’ budgets — childcare, transit, and food. Children carry the sharpest edge, with a quarter living in poverty, so universal school meals, $10-a-day childcare at scale, and free recreation are not frills but the most cost-effective anti-poverty tools available, several of which pay for themselves by letting parents work. The throughline with Meta-Statement 1 is direct: housing is what eats low-income budgets, so affordability and the housing build are the same fight from two directions.

VIII. Cost of living and poverty (recommendations 135–152)

135. Make the City a certified living-wage employer at the GTA rate of $27.20/hr and require it of all contractors (vs the $17.60 minimum wage).
136. Score procurement bids on living-wage certification, giving certified firms a bid advantage.
137. Auto-enroll residents in the Fair Pass, recreation subsidy, and property-tax/water rebates using data they already give the City.
138. Deepen the Fair Pass and welcome-policy recreation subsidies to fully free for households under the poverty line.
139. Campaign to raise OW/ODSP rates to at least the Market Basket Measure (ODSP single rate sits far below it). P
140. Co-fund a Toronto basic-income pilot with the province/Ottawa, building on the cancelled 2018 Ontario pilot’s design. PF
141. Build a single benefits-navigation service (one intake, all programs) instead of 30 separate applications.
142. Capitalize municipal rent and utility banks to prevent crisis-driven eviction and disconnection.
143. Fund free CRA tax clinics targeting the ~$1.7B in unclaimed benefits low-income Canadians leave on the table. F
144. Partner with credit unions on no-fee municipal banking for the unbanked.
145. Use licensing power to cap payday-lender concentration and fees within municipal authority. P
146. Subsidize $10/month internet for low-income households (à la federal Connecting Families), via City partnerships. F
147. Provide free public WiFi in all 100 library branches, major parks, and transit hubs.
148. Sliding-scale all City fees (permits, rec, transit) by income.
149. Index every poverty program to the actual Toronto cost of living, not a frozen dollar figure.
150. Set a target to cut the food-insecurity rate (now >1 in 10 using food banks) in half within two terms, reported annually.
151. Attach community-benefit and local-hire agreements to all City-funded construction over $50M.
152. Seed worker co-ops and community-wealth-building anchors in the 31 Neighbourhood Improvement Areas (the Cleveland/Preston model).

IX. Food security (recommendations 153–162)

153. Fund a universal school nutrition program covering all 583 TDSB schools, co-funded with the province. P
154. Build 10 community food hubs combining affordable groceries, teaching kitchens, and benefits navigation.
155. Expand urban agriculture: 50 new community gardens and rooftop-growing permits on City buildings.
156. Mandate organics diversion and food-rescue partnerships (à la France’s supermarket donation law) to cut the ~1/3 of food wasted.
157. Protect every existing farmers’ market and add one in each of the 25 wards lacking fresh-food access.
158. Give the Toronto Food Policy Council a real budget line and a vote on relevant files.
159. Use zoning and grants to attract grocers into the city’s identified food deserts.
160. Fund community kitchens and bulk-buying clubs in the 31 Neighbourhood Improvement Areas.
161. Treat every food-bank visit as a policy failure (Daily Bread’s framing) and tie food programs to the housing fix that drives the 4.1M visits.
162. Require City facilities to procure local food, anchoring demand for the regional farm economy.

X. Children, youth, and childcare (recommendations 163–178)

163. Accelerate the $10/day childcare rollout to eliminate Toronto’s 10,000+ space waitlist, with new City-built spaces. PF
164. Require a licensed childcare facility in every residential development over 200 units.
165. Fund a wage grid and recruitment bonus for early childhood educators to fix the staffing shortage choking expansion. P
166. Guarantee a free after-school space for every child who wants one in the 31 priority neighbourhoods.
167. Make all City recreation free for households under the low-income measure.
168. Fund 5,000 paid youth summer jobs a year, prioritizing priority neighbourhoods.
169. Keep 50 youth drop-in spaces open evenings/weekends in the areas with the most youth violence.
170. Scale evidence-based violence-interruption and mentorship (Cure Violence model) in the highest-need areas.
171. Provide free learn-to-swim and learn-to-skate for every Grade 3 student.
172. Fund school- and community-based youth mental health to cut the months-long wait (28,000 Ontario youth waiting, up to 2.5 years). P
173. Put free arts, music, and coding programs in every priority-neighbourhood community centre.
174. Guarantee housing, tuition, and a caseworker for every youth aging out of care. P
175. Give a Youth Council a budget and a formal advisory vote on relevant council items.
176. Build or renew a playground/splash pad to a maintained standard in every ward.
177. Fund newcomer-youth settlement and ESL programs at schools with the most recent arrivals. F
178. Provide childcare subsidies to parents in job training, school, or active job search.

Meta-statement 5 — A City That Keeps People Healthy and Alive

Covers Platform sections XI–XII (recommendations 179–208): primary care, mental health, addiction.

In one line: Meet people where they are.

The idea: Build a medical home for every resident through team-based community health hubs, and treat addiction and mental illness as the health conditions they are — keeping people alive with harm reduction while massively expanding the treatment and recovery capacity that lets them get better.

The case: With 2.5 million Ontarians lacking a family doctor and over half of family physicians near retirement, the access crisis will either ease or double depending on whether the City and province build team-based community health hubs — doctors, nurse practitioners, social workers under one roof — so no resident is without a medical home. On addiction, the recent reversal is the clearest case where evidence must override ideology: closing supervised consumption sites was followed by an 82% rise in overdose calls, a predictable result, because you cannot treat the dead and survival is the precondition for recovery. The humane and effective response is the full continuum — keep harm reduction (supervised consumption, drug checking, naloxone) that demonstrably keeps people alive, and at the same time build the detox, treatment, and recovery-housing capacity the province’s treatment-only model gestures at but cannot deliver. Civilian-led crisis teams, not police, should answer mental-health 911 calls, and the months-long waits for youth mental health should be funded down to nothing.

XI. Health and primary care (recommendations 179–192)

179. Champion 30 team-based community health hubs (Ontario Health Team model) so every resident has a medical home — directly attacking the 2.5M Ontarians without a family doctor. P
180. Co-locate clinics in libraries, rec centres, and public housing to reach people where they are.
181. Lobby to widen nurse-practitioner and pharmacist scope so they can be primary-care providers. P
182. Offer relocation grants and below-market housing to recruit family doctors into underserved wards. P
183. Run mobile health clinics for shelter and encampment populations.
184. Expand the dental program for low-income seniors and kids (building on the Ontario/Canada dental benefit). PF
185. Rebuild Toronto Public Health capacity for prevention and outbreak response after pandemic-era cuts.
186. Fund after-hours urgent-care and same-day primary care to divert non-emergencies from ERs (where 1 in 10 admitted patients waits 48+ hours). P
187. Target health spending at the neighbourhoods with the widest life-expectancy gaps (up to ~10 years across Toronto).
188. Run citywide screening and chronic-disease prevention drives (diabetes, hypertension, cancer).
189. Fund maternal/newborn home-visiting in high-need areas.
190. Scale community paramedicine so paramedics treat frequent 911 callers at home.
191. Build climate-health resilience: a heat-response plan and cooling network for the medically vulnerable.
192. Publish neighbourhood-level health-outcome data to direct investment.

XII. Mental health and addiction (recommendations 193–208)

193. Reverse course and re-fund supervised consumption — overdose calls rose 82% (160→350/month) after the 2025 closures. P
194. Fund citywide drug-checking with same-day public alerts (after Dec 2025 saw 81% of fentanyl samples cut with medetomidine).
195. Distribute naloxone through every library, rec centre, and shelter and train 50,000 residents.
196. Fund treatment and detox beds to a no-waitlist standard at the moment of readiness (current waits run months). P
197. Build the full continuum — harm reduction + treatment + recovery housing — rather than the province’s treatment-only HART Hubs. P
198. Deploy civilian-led crisis teams (Toronto Community Crisis Service) citywide so a mental health 911 call brings a clinician, not police.
199. Make mobile crisis response 24/7 in all four community-council districts.
200. Open crisis stabilization/sobering centres as alternatives to ER and jail.
201. Fund 300 peer-support roles with lived experience across mental health and addiction services.
202. Fund youth mental health to clear the 28,000-deep Ontario waitlist for Toronto’s share. P
203. Embed mental health and addiction workers in every shelter and supportive-housing site.
204. Stand up a rapid-response protocol for novel adulterants (medetomidine, xylazine) with hospitals and PHO. P
205. Fund supported-employment programs for people in recovery.
206. Resource culturally specific mental health services (Black, Indigenous, newcomer, 2SLGBTQ+) by community organizations.
207. Set a target to cut opioid deaths (523 in 2023) with annual public reporting, treating it as a health emergency.
208. Codify “treat addiction as health, not crime” across all City policy and bylaw enforcement.

Meta-statement 6 — A City That’s Safe Through Prevention and Honesty

Covers Platform section XIII (recommendations 209–224): public safety and policing.

In one line: Solve the real problem and the perception problem.

The idea: Keep doing what drove violent crime to a generational low and auto theft down by 40%, shift the marginal dollar upstream into prevention and civilian crisis response, and tell residents the truth — that the city is getting safer — so policy follows data rather than fear.

The case: Toronto is, by the data, safer than it has been in a generation — homicides at roughly 39 in 2025, auto theft down from 12,501 to 7,305 — yet 72% of residents wrongly believe homicides rose, and that perception gap is itself a problem because fear pushes policy toward expensive enforcement and away from what works. The visionary stance keeps the targeted strategies and inter-agency coordination behind the recent gains while moving the marginal investment upstream into youth programs, violence-interruption, and trained civilian crisis teams that handle mental-health and traffic calls so officers focus on violent crime. Two genuine concerns — a record hate-crime spike and rising raw counts of transit violence — deserve real resourcing, and the durable transit-safety fix is the same as the ridership fix: frequent, staffed, well-designed service rather than empty late-night platforms. Honest communication that crime is falling is not spin; it is the precondition for making rational, prevention-weighted choices.

XIII. Public safety and policing (recommendations 209–224)

209. Keep the automated licence-plate readers and GTA coordination that cut auto theft from 12,501 (2023) to 7,305 (2025).
210. Sustain the focused-deterrence work behind the multi-decade-low ~39 homicides in 2025.
211. Shift marginal safety dollars upstream: for every police budget increase, match it with prevention investment.
212. Fund neighbourhood violence-interruption (Cure Violence/SafeTO) in the highest-shooting areas.
213. Civilianize mental health calls, traffic enforcement, and report-taking to free officers for violent crime.
214. Strengthen independent oversight (SIU/OIPRD) and publish all complaint outcomes. P
215. Publish use-of-force, stop, and clearance-rate data by division, openly.
216. Fully resource the Hate Crime Unit after the record 443 reports in 2024 (40% targeting the Jewish community).
217. Hit a published 911 answer-time standard and fix the non-emergency backlog.
218. Apply CPTED (lighting, sightlines, activation) to the 20 locations generating the most calls.
219. Expand victim services and trauma supports, especially for gender-based and gun violence.
220. Make transit safe through staffing and design, not just enforcement, given the perception gap.
221. Partner with Ottawa on tracing crime guns, ~85% of which are smuggled from the US. F
222. Press CBSA for port/rail container scanning to stop stolen-car export (only ~51% of stolen vehicles are recovered). F
223. Communicate honestly that violent crime is at a generational low — 72% of residents wrongly think homicides rose — so policy follows data, not fear.
224. Expand restorative-justice and diversion programs to cut reoffending and court backlogs. P

Meta-statement 7 — A Livable, Resilient, Green City

Covers Platform sections XIV–XV (recommendations 225–254): climate, energy, environment, parks, public space.

In one line: Build resilience and public abundance.

The idea: Cut emissions where they actually come from — buildings — through a city-backed retrofit program that lowers bills and creates jobs, flood- and heat-proof the city against a changing climate, and guarantee every resident quality green space and recreation regardless of income.

The case: Buildings are Toronto’s largest emissions source, so the highest-leverage climate move is a city-backed retrofit program — financed on the utility or tax bill so households pay nothing upfront — that simultaneously lowers energy costs, cuts carbon, and creates local green jobs, paired with green standards on new construction and fleet electrification. Resilience is the other face of climate policy: after repeated basement-flooding events and intensifying heat, the City must invest in green stormwater infrastructure, ravine restoration, an expanded tree canopy, and a cooling network for the medically vulnerable. And livability is a public good in itself — every resident should live within a short walk of quality green space, recreation should be free for those who can’t pay, and surplus land (rail and hydro corridors, the waterfront) should become parks and greenways. A just transition ensures the workers in carbon-intensive sectors are carried, not stranded, by the shift.

XIV. Climate, energy, and environment (recommendations 225–242)

225. Launch a City-backed retrofit program (à la “Better Homes” / PACE financing) for 100,000 homes, repaid on the utility/tax bill — buildings are Toronto’s largest emissions source.
226. Apply the highest Toronto Green Standard tier to all new construction, with near-zero-carbon by 2028.
227. Electrify the City fleet and ~2,000 TTC buses on a published 2035 schedule.
228. Expand district energy (the existing deep-lake-water-cooling system) to more downtown buildings.
229. Hold the legislated 2040 net-zero target with annual third-party-audited progress reports.
230. Plant toward 40% tree canopy (from ~28–31%) with a funded maintenance budget, not just planting.
231. Flood-proof with green infrastructure and ravine restoration after repeated basement-flooding events.
232. Build a heat-resilience network — cooling centres, shade, white/green roofs — for the medically vulnerable as a maximum-temperature bylaw lands.
233. Tie the retrofit and clean-energy build-out to a local green-jobs and apprenticeship guarantee.
234. Install EV charging in every City lot and require it in new buildings, prioritizing apartment dwellers.
235. Set mandatory building-performance standards with declining emissions caps on large buildings.
236. Divest City and pension funds from fossil fuels and reinvest in climate solutions.
237. Defend the Greenbelt and oppose sprawl that locks in car dependence. P
238. Fund the stormwater/basement-flooding capital program to protect the most-flooded neighbourhoods.
239. Naturalize parks and build biodiversity corridors along the ravine system.
240. Create a Climate Emergency office with cross-departmental budget authority and a hard mandate.
241. Run a just-transition program (retraining + income support) for workers in carbon-intensive sectors.
242. Fund neighbourhood-level climate-resilience hubs (community centres that double as emergency refuges).

XV. Parks, public space, and recreation (recommendations 243–254)

243. Guarantee every resident lives within a 10-minute walk of quality green space, filling the gaps in tower neighbourhoods.
244. Fund the parks maintenance and ravine-trail backlog to a published standard.
245. Make recreation free for all children and for adults below the low-income measure.
246. Build/renew community centres, pools, and rinks in the inner-suburb wards with the least per-capita facility space.
247. Set cleaning, lighting, and safety standards for parks with public reporting.
248. Activate public spaces with free programming, night markets, and outdoor movies year-round.
249. Open and maintain year-round park washrooms (a basic dignity gap today).
250. Add public seating, water fountains, and shade structures on a per-ward quota.
251. Continue waterfront revitalization (Port Lands/Villiers Island) and guarantee continuous public shoreline access.
252. Convert surplus road and hydro corridor land into pocket parks and linear greenways (the Green Line/West Toronto Railpath model).
253. Resource volunteer “friends of parks” groups with tools, materials, and staff liaisons.
254. Make every recreation facility fully AODA-accessible on a funded timeline. P

Meta-statement 8 — A Thriving, Inclusive City

Covers Platform sections XVI–XIX (recommendations 255–300): economy and small business, arts and nightlife, equity and inclusion, digital and infrastructure.

In one line: A city that works for everyone.

The idea: Grow good jobs and back the small businesses, artists, and main streets that give the city its life, while guaranteeing that prosperity, services, and public space reach every neighbourhood and community — and that the digital and physical plumbing beneath it all is modern, secure, and equitable.

The case: A vital city needs an economy that produces good jobs in the sectors Toronto can lead — green building, life sciences, film, tech — and it needs the small businesses, artists, venues, and main streets that make the place worth living in, which means cutting red tape, protecting affordable commercial and cultural space, and supporting a safe night economy. Inclusion is not a separate agenda but the test applied across all of it: equity impact assessments on major decisions, reconciliation with Indigenous communities, action on anti-Black racism, full accessibility, newcomer settlement that lets skilled immigrants work in their fields, and a deliberate direction of services and investment toward the neighbourhoods that have been under-served. Underneath sits the unglamorous but essential plumbing — modern and secure digital services, closed digital divides, renewed water and waste infrastructure — without which none of the visible promises function. This meta-statement is where the platform’s central claim is finally tested: abundance that doesn’t reach everyone isn’t abundance.

XVI. Economy, jobs, and small business (recommendations 255–272)

255. Publish a citywide economic strategy targeting good jobs in green building, life sciences, film, and tech.
256. Cut business-licensing turnaround to 10 days with a single online application.
257. Fund BIA streetscape grants and a main-street revitalization program in 10 struggling commercial strips.
258. Narrow the commercial-to-residential tax ratio on a fixed schedule to relieve small-business tax burden.
259. Build affordable commercial/maker space into public developments for startups and trades.
260. Create commercial-rent anti-displacement protections for legacy and cultural businesses.
261. Back the film/screen sector (studio space, permitting) and the green-construction supply chain.
262. Align workforce training with in-demand trades and care jobs via City-college partnerships. P
263. Seed worker co-ops and social enterprises with a dedicated City fund.
264. Set targets for local, diverse, and small-supplier procurement (social procurement framework).
265. Make patio, signage, and outdoor-commerce permits same-day and low-cost (keep the CaféTO program permanent).
266. Fund and mentor women-, Black-, Indigenous-, and newcomer-owned businesses through dedicated programs.
267. Run a head-office attraction-and-retention strategy with the regional economic agency.
268. Target commercial revitalization at inner-suburb plazas, not just the downtown core.
269. Improve transit to suburban employment zones so workers can reach jobs without a car.
270. Open a one-window business concierge for permits, growth, and incentives.
271. Support tourism and conventions (a major employer) with coordinated marketing and event hosting.
272. Build innovation districts linking U of T, TMU, hospitals, and industry (the MaRS/Discovery District model).

XVII. Arts, culture, and nightlife (recommendations 273–282)

273. Protect and build affordable artist live/work space, requiring it in major cultural-district developments.
274. Raise per-capita arts funding toward peer-city levels and distribute it across all 25 wards, not just downtown.
275. Appoint a Night Economy office/“night mayor” (Amsterdam/London model) to support safe, vibrant nightlife.
276. Create a one-stop event and festival permitting desk to cut red tape for organizers.
277. Adopt “agent of change” noise rules so new development can’t shut down existing live-music venues.
278. Fund libraries as core cultural infrastructure with extended hours and renewed branches.
279. Restore and expand the Percent for Public Art program citywide.
280. Resource the diverse cultural festivals (Caribana, diaspora celebrations) that drive tourism and identity.
281. Use heritage tools to protect cultural venues and spaces from demolition.
282. Expand free cultural programming and museum/attraction access days for residents.

XVIII. Equity, inclusion, and communities (recommendations 283–294)

283. Embed mandatory equity impact assessments in every major budget and policy decision.
284. Implement reconciliation commitments in partnership with the Toronto Indigenous community and Indigenous-led organizations.
285. Fund Indigenous-led housing, health, and cultural infrastructure (e.g., expand Indigenous Hub models).
286. Strengthen newcomer settlement, ESL, and credential-recognition so skilled immigrants work in their fields. PF
287. Resource and act on the Toronto Action Plan to Confront Anti-Black Racism.
288. Meet AODA accessibility standards across all services ahead of the legislated deadline. P
289. Fund 2SLGBTQ+ safe spaces, services, and protection against rising hate.
290. Build age-friendly infrastructure and expand seniors’ services as the over-65 population grows.
291. Fund gender-based-violence shelters and prevention to meet documented unmet demand. P
292. Direct community-program funding to the 31 Neighbourhood Improvement Areas on a needs formula.
293. Guarantee interpretation and translated materials across all City services (the city speaks 180+ languages).
294. Design inclusive, welcoming public spaces with community co-design in diverse neighbourhoods.

XIX. Digital, data, and infrastructure (recommendations 295–300)

295. Rebuild the City’s digital services to a “one account, all services” standard (Estonia/UK GDS model).
296. Close the digital divide with subsidized broadband and a device-lending program through libraries.
297. Adopt a responsible-AI and data-governance policy with strong privacy and a public algorithm register.
298. Fund the water/sewer renewal program to cut the watermain-break and basement-flooding rate on a published schedule.
299. Raise waste diversion toward 70% with citywide organics, building on the Green Bin program.
300. Harden critical City systems against cyberattack with mandatory security standards across all agencies.

How the layers fit together

Next logical step: expand one meta-statement down the stack — its L3 one-page briefing, then an L4 chapter — or write an L3 briefing for each of the 20 signature commitments.