City Councillors must vote to increase funding for the MURA Program.

Toronto is losing private market, affordable rental housing faster than it is being built. Investing in preserving existing affordable housing is one of the most cost-effective ways Toronto can ensure secure affordable housing for people who need it. The Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition program (MURA) is City Council’s ongoing rental housing acquisition program with dedicated funding to help purchase and convert at-risk private market affordable housing to permanently affordable rental homes to be run by non-profit housing organizations, community land trusts, and Indigenous organizations. MURA also helps to improve the conditions of affordable housing.

City Council must vote to adequately fund and implement Toronto’s Reconciliation Action Plan. 

With input from First Nations, Inuit and Métis community members, organizations such as Toronto Aboriginal Support Services and its member agencies, Elders, Knowledge Carriers, youth, and Indigenous employees working at the City, Toronto’s Reconciliation Action Plan 2022 - 2032 was developed and adopted by Toronto City Council. Its vision includes a city where future Indigenous generations exercise their rights to self-determination, self-governance, and land stewardship in a context of right relations with all relatives, and a city where Indigenous Peoples in Toronto have multiple pathways to prosperity and wellness. The Reconciliation Action Plan includes strategic actions to restore truth, to achieve justice, to right relations and share power, to make financial reparations such as improving Indigenous economic development, and to enhance the City’s Indigenous Affairs office.

City Councillors must support the City’s acquisition of properties through both purchasing and head lease agreements, including locally in their ward.

The City provides housing allowances to those who are chronically unhoused to help them find permanent affordable housing. However, in Toronto’s private rental housing market, there are some big problems: there just aren’t enough affordable units available. In addition, the available units are so expensive that the housing allowance isn’t enough. There is an opportunity for the City to acquire apartment buildings either through purchasing them or through head lease agreements with large landlords. This would allow the City to improve the operations and maintenance of buildings and to make units permanently affordable.

City Councillors must help prevent renovictions, support renters, and advocate to the Province for real rent control.

The lack of real rent control in Toronto has worsened the problem of renovictions. In response, City Council voted to implement an anti-renovictions by-law. This by-law has effectively reduced bad-faith renovictions to zero. The success of this by-law is an opportunity to be creative about using the city’s existing powers to limit other bad-faith actions from landlords that increase evictions and make life more unaffordable for the ~50% of Torontonians who rent.

City Council must support a city-wide bylaw for multi-tenant houses.

After years of research and consultation, the City of Toronto has proposed a new regulatory framework for multi-tenant houses, to regulate a vital part of Toronto’s affordable housing stock. A city-wide bylaw for multi-tenant houses must continue enabling regulatory oversight and effective enforcement. This bylaw allows for people across the city to live in safer and more adequate multi-tenant housing.

City Councillors must support proven alternative non-police responses, like the Toronto Community Crisis, and vote to redirect funding to rapidly expand alternative response services and community programs.

Toronto’s Auditor General, who helps to hold City Council accountable to Toronto taxpayers—including reviewing city services and how public funds are used—released a report in June 2022 titled Review of Toronto Police Service - Opportunities to Support More Effective Responses to Calls for Service. The Auditor General found that 40% of the calls for police service they reviewed could possibly have been handled through an alternative response (85,000 hours of policing over five years). The Auditor General recommended alternative non-police responses where appropriate, with the shared goal to improve outcomes for all those in need.

Community safety is being reimagined in Toronto. Toronto expanded the Toronto Community Crisis Service—a community-based approach to mental health crisis—to cover the whole city. It is now the city’s fourth emergency service. Alternative non-police responses are being deployed to help better address a range of issues by providing supports for survivors experiencing gender-based violence, people experiencing homelessness, overpoliced youth, and people experiencing mental health crises.

City Councillors must support the continued expansion of supportive housing units across the city and support them locally in their own wards.

The 2025 Toronto Streets Needs Assessment discovered that 12,196 people in our city are experiencing homelessness. Of those, 1,446 people can't access shelter and therefore live outside. The City’s own data shows that each night, too many people are denied shelter. Advocates say many more are turned away.

Over the years, Progress Toronto has successfully campaigned for thousands of units of supportive housing in Toronto to help address chronic homelessness. Toronto City Council has committed to creating 2,000 units of supportive housing annually. Supportive housing is not only affordable, but it also provides necessary services like mental health and harm reduction supports that help people stay housed. Supportive housing is a cost-effective solution to the crisis.

City Council must protect Torontonian’s constitutional freedom to protest.

The rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These rights are what allow us to make our voices heard through protests, pickets, and rallies. As we have seen threats to Canada's sovereignty—and eroding free speech within the United States—it is critical that we protect the freedoms our own democracy is built on.

Municipal by-laws restricting protest face Charter challenges and are being refuted by civil liberties experts. Constitutional lawyers have shared that concerns of intimidation, harassment, and assault are already illegal in the criminal code, and this type of bylaw risks restricting constitutional freedoms.

City Council must increase Toronto’s Vacant Homes Tax to 5%.

Progress Toronto advocated for, and won, a Vacant Homes Tax in Toronto. For too long, speculators have been allowed to buy up Toronto’s housing and leave it vacant even as renters struggle more than ever to find affordable homes. The Vacant Homes Tax is one tool to pressure speculators to turn their vacant units into occupied homes. It applies to units that are not a principal residence and that have been left vacant for more than six months. It includes important exemptions for situations like major renovations. Toronto’s current Vacant Homes Tax rate was set at 3% in 2024. This higher rate should incentivize more speculators to get tenants into their units

City council must fund stormwater reduction and flood proofing projects. Ensuring commercial and industrial landlords pay their fair share for these investments.

Flooding events have washed out transit stations, roads, and basements year after year. They’re proof of why it is so important to reduce stormwater runoff and prevent flooding from storms that are now more frequent and damaging as a result of climate change. We need to invest in grey and green infrastructure improvements to better manage stormwater and prevent flooding. Neighbouring cities like Mississauga have successfully benefited from a dedicated stormwater fee.

City Council needs to support and fund the priorities as outlined in the city's culture plan.

Toronto is home to 40,000 artists and 350 non-profit arts organizations, and Toronto arts and culture audiences reach millions each year. The City of Toronto approved an ambitious 10-year culture plan (Culture Connects) to support artists and arts/cultural workers, and their organizations and industries.

When private contracts expire, City Council should require reports on those contracts and support publicly delivering public services.

Many city services are currently contracted out to private companies. As those contracts expire, we have an opportunity to study whether it is in the city’s interest to bring those services back in-house as publicly delivered public services.

For instance, garbage collection West of Yonge is privatized; but a new report is considering bringing it in-house once the contract expires to save money, improve oversight, and improve working conditions for garbage collectors.

City Council must ensure Community Benefits Agreements are included in major public construction, development, and infrastructure projects.

Community Benefit Agreements are an approach to secure investments and supports that address the needs of local residents, including training and good jobs, as part of the construction of housing and major infrastructure projects. Working with community-based organizations, labour, and other partners, Community Benefits Agreements provide equitable economic opportunities to promote economic inclusion for Toronto residents, contribute to sustainable communities, and expand opportunities for historically disadvantaged communities.

City Councillors must expand library hours and keep librarians and library workers delivering our world class library services, so that when our libraries are open our librarians are there to serve.

Toronto Public Libraries and Toronto library workers are world class. We have one of the highest rates of per capita visits and circulations in the world. Demand for more library hours and library service is high, but there are conservatives on City Council who think we can have libraries without librarians and library workers. This means the library would be open but with only security cameras and security guards. Librarians are a fundamental part of our high quality library services in Toronto. They are part of our communities, they connect people to the information they need, and they create intentional, welcoming public spaces.

City Council must protect access to park washrooms, water fountains, trails, paths, wading pools and splash pads.

From shelter to shade and from play to exercise, Torontonians turn to our public parks for many uses year round. The COVID-19 pandemic helped to shine light on some of the inadequacies and accessibility issues with our parks. Just a few years ago, park bathrooms and water fountains weren’t available to people, public and wading pools and splash pads were in need of upgrades and opened long after the first heat waves of the summer, and paths and trails weren’t maintained in the winter. Recently, pool season and its hours were expanded.

City council needs to support our public services through the needed increases in property taxes and to pursue and support opportunities to develop new revenue streams to fund city services.

In order to continue to deliver strong public services and meet the needs of Toronto’s growing population, the City needs to diversify and strengthen its mix of revenue tools. The City’s main revenue source is property tax, which does not grow with inflation, the economy, or even higher property values. Yet, City Council has to balance the budget in the face of rising costs every year. This means City Council either increases property taxes, tries to find more savings, or cuts services.

There are property tax deferral and cancellation programs in place to support many low-income people who might not be able to afford the increase. The City also became reliant on a precarious and fluctuating Land Transfer Tax to balance its budget. The City has access to a host of revenue tools that even an independent KPMG report recommended and the City can engage the Province to expand access to more tools.

City Councillors must continue their commitment to expand child-care subsidies to additional families, and the expansion of licensed spaces offered through non-profit and City-operated providers.

As we wait for the implementation of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) agreement to lower child care fees to $10 a day, Toronto remains one of the most expensive cities for child care (median cost being $22 a day). Even with the implementation of a flat fee for child care, thousands of families will still require access to a subsidy in order to afford the child care space. As we grow the system, we need to ensure we offer high-quality child care that guarantees high-quality jobs to attract and retain the best child care professionals for Toronto’s children

City Council must vote to expand and fund harm reduction, treatment services, and safer supply options.

Drug poisoning is a public health crisis in Toronto. Compared to 2025, overdose calls to emergency services rose by nearly 115% to 2,056, and 126 deaths in 2025. This significant loss of life each year is leaving thousands to grieve. Overdose deaths are preventable and are due in large part to criminalization and an unregulated drug supply. It’s been shown that addressing the possession of drugs for personal use through a public health approach, rather than the criminal justice system, is better for public health and safety.

In January 2022, Toronto’s Medical Office of Health submitted a request to Health Canada to decriminalize the possession of drugs for personal use, which would improve timely access to voluntary services that can save lives. Other activities associated with drug trafficking would still remain illegal.

Additionally, the Province has closed down and cut funding to safe consumption sites across the city without providing meaningful alternatives. This has led to more public and unsafe use on transit, in bus shelters, and in parks—and left frontline workers with fewer resources to deal with the overdose and opioid crisis.

City Council must support alternative non-police responses to overdose calls and treat overdose calls as calls for emergency medical assistance.

Research is showing that a significant number of people are afraid to seek emergency medical assistance in the event of an overdose because it is routine for the police to attend, despite it being a medical intervention. Systemic racism and discrimination in policing, combined with the threat of criminal charges, are a few reasons why people are deterred from seeking life-saving help.

City council needs to oppose any attempts to privatize social housing units. Instead vote to invest in repairs and maintenance, and the development of deeply affordable housing.

The Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) manages 2,100 buildings and provides social housing to 110,000 people across Toronto, with close to 90% of those units being deeply-affordable housing. The cost of the needed repairs to TCHC housing is currently over $1.5 billion. In 2025, Mayor Chow and City Council approved a 10-year plan to address TCHC's State of Good Repair backlog. But more needs to be done.

With over 104,000 households on the waiting list for affordable housing and many TCHC tenants living in unacceptable conditions, the last thing we need in Toronto is to lose more of our social housing stock due to lack of repair.

City Council must protect and continue funding the expansion of the universal school food program and advocate to other levels of government to fund its expansion.

In June 2025, City Council voted to implement a Vision and Strategy for a Universal School Food Program in Toronto with a plan to expand school meals (breakfast and lunch) for every student in the city. One in four households in Toronto live below the poverty line, and for Black and Indigenous households, that number is higher. Food bank use is at record levels, and one in three food bank clients are children. We know that Toronto is the child poverty capital of Canada.

A universal school meal program will help alleviate some of the pressures of rising food prices and the affordability crisis. As of September 2026, the school meal program was expanded to all public schools feeding 325,000 students. This is a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done to reach the city’s goal of establishing a universal lunch program by 2030.

City Council needs to keep its agencies, corporations, and services city-owned and publicly delivered.

Keeping city services publicly owned and delivered ensures their delivery is affordable and there is accountability. The privatization of these services has had harmful consequences and proven to be fiscally irresponsible. The privatization of waste collection west of Yonge, which represents half of the city’s districts, is an example. This move resulted in reduced public accountability and oversight. A 2025 report shows that it was more costly for the city.

Recently, it was shown that the City isn’t realizing any savings through contracted out waste, as the private providers have increased their fees. City Councillors should oppose proposals to sell off or privatize City agencies, corporations and services such as Toronto Hydro, TCHC, the Toronto Parking Authority, the TTC, waste collection and diversion programs, and Long Term Care Homes and instead vote to keep them City-owned and publicly delivered.

City councillors must support the continued expansion of shelters across the city and open more indoor spaces for those experiencing homelessness.

Toronto is facing a homelessness crisis and it impacts every corner of our city. The City’s own data shows that each night, an average of 66 people were denied shelter this year thus far. That's why the city approved the 10-year Homelessness Services Capital Infrastructure Strategy to open 20 new shelters across the city to meet the growing need. Actions that address that the current emergency and save lives are needed.

The city also needs more drop-ins and respite centres in extreme weather conditions. As we experience more extreme weather, Toronto’s unhoused population needs places to go to stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Recreation program spaces and centres must be expanded across the city and City Council should explore bringing back universally free recreation programming.

Publicly funded recreation programming is a key part of building healthy and socially-connected communities. Prior to amalgamation, each former municipality had different fees for recreation programs - including universally-free programming in the old City of Toronto. Today, there are almost 40 community recreation centres that are free centres where all City-delivered programs, fitness centre passes, and space bookings for local non-profit groups are free. The City operates 136 community centres city-wide. The City also offers the welcome policy, a means-tested recreation fee subsidy. While there are many benefits to community centre access and recreation programs, like swimming lessons, fees create a significant barrier and prevent people from participating. Space availability also creates a barrier to participation with long waitlists for program spaces. In 2013, the City explored bringing back universally free recreation programming.

City Council needs to invest in improved transit service, support capital projects, and vote against fare increases.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant loss of ridership on the TTC. According to a 2026 report, ridership levels sit at 80-83% of pre-pandemic levels. The TTC’s overreliance on revenue from fares to provide service means that this has had a significant impact on the TTC’s operating funding.

Since 2023, council has increased services, invested in State of Good Repair, and froze fares. This investment in transit will attract riders back to the system and must be continued.

City Councillors must expand the 10-minutes-or-better bus service network, protect existing transit priority lanes, and implement the bus and streetcar priority corridors as set out in the RapidTO plan.

Long commute times, reliability, and crowding have big impacts on the number of people who choose to use the TTC. With ridership gradually returning, now we need to expand the TTC’s 10-minutes-or-better service across the entire network. Expanded service would mean shorter wait times and more reliable service for users. And with 70% of all trips on the TTC taking place on surface transit (bus and/or streetcar), providing bus and streetcar priority corridors with measures like traffic signal priority and bus lanes are cost-effective and fast ways to significantly improve reliability and commute times, increasing ridership.

Amenities at TTC stops must be improved with better snow and ice clearing, seating, shelter, and adding signalized midblock crossings.

With long commutes, transfers, inadequate service levels and 70% of all trips on the TTC taking place on surface transit, people are exposed to challenging and unsafe weather conditions while they wait for the bus or streetcar. Riders deserve accessible stops, free from ice and snow, with shelter and seating so they can wait and board safely and with dignity.

City Council must help meet our climate targets by expanding access to transit and advocating for long term sustainable funding from other levels of government. 

The serious impacts of climate change on people's health, our economy, and the City's infrastructure are already being felt. As part of TransformTO, the City’s Net Zero Strategy sets out a pathway to reaching net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for Toronto by 2040. The transportation sector in Toronto is one of the largest contributors to emissions, representing 36% of the city’s emissions. A big shift in modes of transportation is needed for Toronto to meet its targets.

City Council can help meet our climate targets by voting to fully fund the third phase of the Fair Pass program, oppose fare-by-distance models, and continue to roll out the implementation of fare free public transit, starting with people who receive social assistance and youth 12-18 (kids 0-12 already ride free).

City Council must uphold fare capping and support a reduction of the cap to benefit regular riders.

In September 2026, the TTC introduced fare capping. It's a pay-as-you-go system: riders pay for each trip until they hit a monthly cap, and every ride after that is free. It gives riders the benefits of a monthly pass, without the up-front cost or the need to plan ahead. The cap initially was set at 47 rides, the same price as a monthly pass. City Council voted to lower it to 40 rides in 2027, which means a rider who takes the TTC to and from work every weekday would hit the cap and ride free on weekends.

Fare capping is an important strategy make the TTC more affordable and improve ridership. It is crucial that the cap can be reasonably reached by regular riders.

City Council should accelerate the Cycling Network Plan and treat complete streets as the default design for all new roadway resurfacing and reconstruction.

Doug Ford’s actions to tear-out our city’s existing bike-lanes, makes it more important than ever to expand our cycling infrastructure to make our roads safer. As more cycling infrastructure has been built in Toronto, the number of people cycling has been increasing. And that’s a very good thing. According to the City of Toronto’s climate action strategy, we need a big shift away from motor vehicles if we are going to meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets. That’s why a key goal in the plan is for active transportation (cycling and walking) to account for 75% of trips under 5km.

Cycling infrastructure makes our roads safer and saves lives. While cycling infrastructure has been expanding in the last few years, many areas of the city have historically received less investment and continue to have many unsafe roads. Toronto’s Cycling Network Plan must be built faster across the city. This can be done by streamlining the process, and by requiring all road reconstruction to be complete streets, sharing publicly completion targets and progress information, and ensuring adequate staffing to complete the projects.

City Council must ensure adequate funding for the City to meet its snow and ice clearing service levels. Snow removal must account for pedestrians, cyclists, and people with disabilities by not storing snow and ice in bike lanes and on narrow sidewalks.

In the face of proposed cuts to winter maintenance service, Progress Toronto successfully advocated for increased snow and ice clearing on city sidewalks, including for parts of Toronto that didn’t have the City clearing their sidewalks before. This is key for building an accessible city for people with disabilities and mobility issues. The major snowfall in winter 2025 however highlighted that much more needs to be done.

City Councillors must stand up for Toronto’s local democracy and ensure Torontonians have a say in how they are governed.

Since his election in 2018, Premier Doug Ford has been trying to run Toronto from Queen’s Park. In 2018, he slashed wards in the middle of the election. He put forward huge cuts to critical services, including Public Health funding. In 2022, he centralized City Council’s power in the mayor’s office in an effort to achieve provincial priorities. In 2025, Ford removed the city’s ability to use automated speed cameras to control speeding on our streets.

Ford has also threatened our water-front with a plan to expand the Billy Bishop airport despite massive opposition. Ford is threatening to remove bike lanes that have already been approved and built by the city. Torontonians didn’t ask for this. Ford’s unilateral decisions take power away from local City Councillors and the constituents who elect them. We need representatives who will stand up to Ford and protect our local democracy.

Roads should be built by design to reduce speeds. Community safety zones should be expanded and City Council should push back against Ford so the city can install Automated Speed Enforcement cameras.

As a city, we have a goal of zero fatalities from traffic collisions, but we are not anywhere close to meeting this goal. Every year, too many cyclists and pedestrians are killed or seriously injured on our roads. Studies have shown that speed matters. If a driver is going over 50km/hour, there is a much greater chance of pedestrian or cyclist being killed in the event of a collision. Lower speeds save lives but simply lowering the speed limits isn’t enough. Changing our road design is the most effective way to improve driver behaviour and reduce speeds. Automated Speed Enforcement cameras have also been proven to reduce the number of speeding drivers.

A City-owned municipal broadband network that helps provide affordable high-speed internet access should be supported and implemented.

Internet access is necessary for people to participate in the economy, education, and day-to-day life. But with the high cost of internet services, the digital divide in our city is growing. Research shows that low income households will allocate money away from food and other necessities to keep the internet going at home, and that racialized communities have to choose between having internet at home or mobile services. The City’s ConnectTO Program originally proposed helping to address this through the creation of a City of Toronto Municipal Broadband Network. The expansion of the City-owned fibre network would eliminate the need for the City to lease fibre from the private sector, reducing costs and improving security for the City. It would also allow the City to provide more equitable internet access.

City Council must take ambitious actions to reduce waste and help us meet our goal of becoming a zero waste city.

The City of Toronto manages over 900,000 tonnes of waste a year, with most of that ending up in landfill. There are more steps we can take as a city to move towards zero waste, preventing pollution, creating local jobs, and avoiding greenhouse gas emissions from extracting and wasting resources. City Council must support the elimination of unnecessary single-use items and require a shift to reusable foodware, supporting small businesses through the transition. They must help ensure Torontonians have access to waste diversion like recycling and green bin programs no matter what building they live in and vote to maintain the City’s commitment to waste diversion rather than sending Toronto’s garbage for toxic incineration.

There must be a moratorium on new AI data centres until the City has completed research and adopted a policy ensuring protections and local benefits.

AI data centres are being proposed in neighbourhoods across Toronto. In July 2026, City Council passed a motion to study the impacts of these facilities on 20 communities, the environment, jobs, and more. City Hall needs to ensure these projects benefit local residents—especially since many of the companies behind them are American-owned.

The environmental impacts of data centres remain unclear, including their electricity use, water consumption, fossil fuel emissions, rising local temperatures, and air and noise pollution. Neighbouring municipalities have already acted: both Mississauga and Oakville voted for one-year moratoriums while they studied these impacts and developed policy. Toronto should do the same; pausing new approvals while the City conducts robust reporting and adopts a policy that guarantees strong environmental protections and community benefits, including good local jobs and investments in community.

City Council should take a more active role and using all the tools at its disposal to combat AGIs and protect renters.

AGIs, or Above Guideline Increases, are one way that landlords get around rent-control. There is little to no oversight over AGIs. Similar to the renovictions by-law, the city could use its powers to develop a by-law or direct resources to help tenants fight unfair AGIs.