Toronto needs an engineer.

Shelter is never a destination, an emergency bed is a bridge to a permanent home.

About ~8,925 people used Toronto’s shelter system on a single night in Nov 2025, and about ~9,637 were “actively homeless” over the prior 3 months, more than doubled in 3 years. On average about ~148 people were turned away nightly in Sep 2025 (down from 200+ in 2024 as fewer refugee claimants). The City is opening 1,275 additional shelter spaces for winter 2025-26; advocates say it is still not enough.

Toronto Public Health: about ~300 deaths of people experiencing homelessness in 2023; 331 in 2022; for women experiencing homelessness the median age of death was 36; overdose is a leading cause, why safe women-only spaces matter. People get stuck without permanent housing exits. HousingTO 2020-2030 is the spine.

Deliver
Move people home: every shelter stay paired with housing plan + worker; expand housing-focused shelter, rapid rehousing, rent supports, supportive housing; ties to keeping public land public.

Deliver
No one turned away into the cold: expand capacity + 24h respite; end nightly turn-aways; year-round planning not winter scramble.

Deliver
Safety, privacy, dignity as standards city-wide: protect/expand women-only and family spaces; trauma-informed design; more private/single-room capacity; staffing, security, health/harm-reduction; working complaint process.

Deliver
Single-user universal washrooms across shelter system and all city facilities, private, lockable, accessible.

Deliver
Encampments, humane: offer indoor options people will accept (safe, private, room for partner/pet/belongings) + real path to housing; not sweeps-first.

Advocate
Supportive housing, mental health/addictions, income supports funding.

Advocate
Fair federal share of asylum-claimant costs downloaded onto the city.

Honest line: the mayor runs the shelter system and can make it safe, humane, and housing-focused, ending homelessness needs the province and Ottawa on housing, health, and income. Deliver the first; never stop demanding the second.

In a city this wealthy, poverty is a choice we can change. Alongside homes people can afford, free transit and food security, I’ll use the tools only the city has: expand the Fair Pass so low-income residents get discounted transit and recreation, help people get the benefits they’re already owed, pay a living wage to city workers and contractors, and run a real, funded poverty-reduction plan with targets we actually track and report.

I commit to ending food insecurity at schools and delivering hot lunch to our children, hot lunch soon, starting next year. No kid in Toronto should sit through class hungry in a city this wealthy.

I’ll put City Hall behind universal hot-lunch delivery, funding, kitchens, and partnerships with schools and community agencies, so every student can get a real hot meal at school. I’ll also keep using the city’s land, kitchens and partnerships for community food programs, support for food banks, and community growing.

School boards and provincial education funding still matter. I’ll press Queen’s Park and the boards to match that commitment with full, permanent program funding.

I’m an engineer, so I’ll start where the honesty starts: Toronto faces roughly an $18 billion 10-year state-of-good-repair funding gap (2025-2034): the City’s own Asset Management Plan gap versus the capital plan. Most of that pressure is transit and Toronto Community Housing, with about $2 billion on the road network and more on city facilities. Every year we defer maintenance, the bill grows and the risk rises. A city that can’t take care of what it already has hasn’t earned the right to announce anything new.

And I won’t do what the current deal does, give our infrastructure away to make the repair bill someone else’s problem. The Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway were built for Toronto, paid for by Toronto, and driven by Torontonians every day. Under the 2023 Ontario-Toronto New Deal, ownership and responsibility for the Gardiner and DVP are set to transfer to the province in fall 2027. They call it a win. I call it giving away the keys to our own city. When the province owns those highways, the province decides how they’re maintained, when they’re closed, whose priorities come first, and no Toronto resident can vote a premier out over a road in their own city.

Handing our own infrastructure to the province isn’t a deal. It’s a retreat. A confident city keeps what’s core to governing itself and demands fair funding as its right, not as a reward for surrendering control.

Deliver: a repair-first capital plan, fix and maintain what we own before announcing anything new, with condition data and engineering priority setting the schedule instead of the political calendar.

Deliver: refuse to complete the Gardiner/DVP handover and keep them in Toronto’s ownership, maintained and decided here.

Deliver: treat road safety on aging structures as a Toronto responsibility, an elevated expressway over people’s heads must answer to a government they can hold accountable.

Advocate: renegotiate the New Deal so a fair-funding arrangement leaves us in control, a fight to conduct from strength, not a switch a mayor flips alone.

Honest note: the upload is a signed intergovernmental agreement, and unwinding it takes provincial agreement. I won’t pretend a mayor can reverse it unilaterally. But no mayor is obligated to finish handing away a Toronto asset, and I won’t.

You cannot fix traffic on a road you don’t control, and you cannot manage traffic one project at a time. Today the decisions about road work, transit construction, lane closures and detours are scattered across Transportation Services, the TTC, utility and watermain crews and private contractors that don’t coordinate. That fragmentation is the congestion problem.

Deliver: one coordinating authority over road and transit construction citywide, so corridors aren’t all torn up at once, detours are planned around real neighbourhoods, and the Gardiner and DVP are never fully disrupted in the same week. Not a new layer of bureaucracy, one accountable hand on a wheel too many people are grabbing at once.

Deliver: manage the space that clogs the core with a modest levy on large commercial parking lots, eases congestion where it’s worst and raises real money. City staff most recently estimated about $100-108 million a year (2025 update; 2024 staff range was about $100-150 million depending on the rate), dedicated to transit. This is not a toll on your commute.

Deliver: keep freight and deliveries moving with smarter loading rules, so a double-parked truck doesn’t shut a lane at rush hour.

Advocate: coordinate with provincial transit. Metrolinx and subway expansion, so the whole network is planned as one.

The fastest way to get cars off a congested road is to give people a better option. So I’ll do what no Toronto mayor has had the courage to do: make the TTC free for everyone. Free transit is the most direct congestion relief there is, it puts money back in people’s pockets, and it treats transit as the public good it is, like a library or a park, not a turnstile business.

I won’t pretend property tax alone can carry this. Here is the honest funding spine: the TTC collects roughly $1.0-1.1 billion a year in passenger fare revenue: replacing that is the core annual cost of free fares, before any extra operating cost if ridership grows.

Deliver: the decision itself, the TTC is city-run, so making it fare-free is mine to make.

Deliver: fund it from what the city can reach, the commercial parking levy above, plus the luxury-home, vacant-home and high-value land-transfer taxes already in this platform.

Deliver: reliable service, frequency that shows up, working elevators, faster Wheel-Trans, and the accessibility work finished so every station serves everyone.

Deliver: phase it in, starting with the riders for whom the fare is the biggest barrier and building to universal, funded at every step, never a cliff.

Advocate: a permanent operating partner from the province and Ottawa, the way every other order of government funds the systems it depends on.

A street works when everyone on it gets home safely: the driver, the cyclist, the child walking to school, the senior crossing with a cane.

Deliver: a real Vision Zero effort at the intersections and corridors where people are actually being hurt, not a plan on a shelf.

Deliver: the basics that get ignored, accessible sidewalks and curb cuts, reliable sidewalk snow clearing, Seniors Safety Zones.

Deliver: a safe, connected cycling network. When an Ontario court found that removing protected bike lanes on key corridors would put people at greater risk of harm and death (Cycle Toronto v. Ontario, July 2025), a responsible mayor builds the network, she doesn’t play politics with people’s lives.

About 80,400 licensed private transportation company (Uber/Lyft) drivers were on Toronto’s books as of December 1, 2024. Too many tell the same story: a growing, opaque cut taken by the app; deactivation with no cause and no appeal; no pay for the time spent waiting and driving to pickups. Taxi and delivery work sit alongside this, and they deserve a fair floor too under the city’s Vehicle-for-Hire rules.

Deliver: use Toronto’s Vehicle-for-Hire licence to require full fare and commission transparency, deactivation protection (written cause, notice, a right of appeal), and a fair-earnings floor on the New York model, with a real voice for drivers in the rules that govern them.

Advocate: full employment rights (overtime, vacation, EI and CPP) which are a provincial and federal matter.

Climate-resilient infrastructure is my field. Retrofit buildings (our biggest source of emissions), protect against flooding, grow the tree canopy, and electrify the city fleet on a real timeline.

The electricity grid and the building code are provincial. I’ll push for cleaner rules and sustained funding.

Multi-year budgets, repair-first capital, and no election-year gimmicks. Decisions made on evidence, with the books open.

Every tax dollar should be respected. I’ll hold property-tax increases as low as honest, evidence-based budgeting allows, through value-for-money, real audits and ending waste, not by hiding costs or backloading them past an election. I’ll expand tax and utility relief for low-income seniors and people with disabilities, keep growing the small-business discount, and make speculators, luxury owners and vacant properties pay their fair share, so ordinary homeowners aren’t left carrying the load.

Expand affordable child care and cut the subsidy waitlist, fund youth programs, and keep safe routes to school, with parents as real partners in the city’s own children’s programs.

School buildings and curriculum are provincial and school-board. I’ll use my engineer’s voice to press the province to fix crumbling schools.

The Toronto Public Library is Toronto’s great equalizer, and I will protect it, from cuts, with extended hours, and with strong children’s and newcomer programming that closes the digital divide. I will also make it work better for parents:

Deliver
Give parents real, easy-to-use tools: clear parental access to their own child’s library account and age-appropriate settings on children’s cards, and I will protect and strengthen the filtering already in place on children’s-area computers.

Deliver
Make the library open and accountable to the families it serves: a published, plain-language collection policy, open board meetings, and a clear public process for any parent to raise a concern about a title and get a fair, transparent answer.

Deliver
Appoint and support library board members who value two things at once, the public’s freedom to read, and a library that is transparent and responsive to parents.

Too many Toronto neighbourhoods (especially in the inner suburbs) still don’t have a proper community centre. That’s not fair. I’ll map the gaps and build or expand recreation and community centres where people actually live: gyms, pools, youth space, seniors’ programs, and after-school places kids can go. Every neighbourhood deserves a hub, not just the ones that already have one.

Everyone deserves to feel safe, on their street, in their park and on the TTC. Gun violence and the drug crisis are tearing at neighbourhoods, and I won’t look away. I’ll back focused, accountable policing through the Police Services Board against illegal guns and gun trafficking; expand violence interruption and youth outreach that reaches kids before crews do; and treat the drug crisis as both public safety and public health, more treatment and harm-reduction where it saves lives, more enforcement against traffickers who poison communities, and more crisis workers so a mental-health or overdose call gets the right response. On transit: more staff and lighting, well-kept public spaces, and results for every safety dollar, not just a bigger budget.

Courts, bail and criminal law are provincial and federal. I’ll press for a system that holds violent offenders accountable and supports victims.

Illegal guns and open drug markets make people afraid in their own neighbourhoods. I’ll push a clear city role: disrupt gun supply with police and partners, fund proven violence-interruption programs, expand treatment beds and outreach for addiction, and keep kids in recreation and community centres, not on the corner. Safety and opportunity have to move together.

Firearms law, border guns, and major drug prosecutions are federal and provincial. I’ll fight for the tools and funding Toronto needs, and use every city lever we already have.

Reconciliation measured in action, not words, in city land, naming, hiring, and genuine partnership with Indigenous communities.

A real answer starts with water and consent.

Canada and Ontario can talk critical minerals and “investment opportunity” while communities on Treaty No. 9 still boil water. Neskantaga First Nation has lived under Canada’s longest boil-water advisory for decades, treatment plant and distribution failures, residents asked to boil water while the crisis still isn’t fixed. That playbook is the same one human-rights organizations name in the Global South: extract wealth, leave the water undrinkable, call it progress.

The Ring of Fire is not a blank cheque. Nickel and chrome supply chains, open-pit mines, carbon sinks, wildlife, and river systems that are a source of life sit under Aboriginal and treaty rights. Free, prior, and informed consent is not optional. “Community access” roads (including Marten Falls / Northern Road Link framing) must not become a mining corridor that endangers waters and future generations without the nations who live there (including Neskantaga) able to defend home and waters.

Bill 5 and Bill C-5 speed industrial transformation and special economic zones while First Nations warn of conflict over land, weakened assessment, and colonial neglect dressed up as urgency. Ontario has admitted community access gaps; systems built in the 1990s still fail people. Mining claims and regional assessment cannot outrun Treaty No. 9 responsibilities. When nations speak (including urgent community needs and warnings about mining roads affecting waters and treaty rights) City Hall’s job is to stand with them, not look away.

Advocate
End long-term boil-water advisories with full, lasting treatment and distribution that works, not another announcement.

Advocate
No Ring of Fire / northern road / mine fast-track without free, prior, and informed consent of affected First Nations.

Advocate
Withdraw or refuse use of Bill 5 / Bill C-5 powers that sidestep Treaty and consultation duties.

Advocate
Confront addiction, climate, and infrastructure needs on First Nations as rights and responsibilities, not bargaining chips for mineral access.

Deliver
Keep Toronto’s own Reconciliation practice real: city land, naming, hiring, and partnership with Indigenous nations and urban Indigenous organizations, and use the mayor’s voice so Queen’s Park and Ottawa hear that Toronto will not cheer extraction built on undrinkable water.

Honest line: A mayor doesn’t run Treaty No. 9 or federal water plants. A mayor can refuse silence. Prosperity that requires endangering whose life gets to drink the water is not prosperity, it’s a choice. We will not get ahead by violating human rights.

Economic empowerment starts with dealing with every resident with fairness and respect, and providing opportunity.

A city that treats its people fairly is a city where its people can build. When a resident is discriminated against by a City service, denied a fair chance at a City job or contract, or treated as less than equal at a City counter, that is not only a wrong in itself. It is a door to opportunity being closed. Fairness is not separate from prosperity. It is the ground prosperity is built on.

That is the spine of this plank, and it lines up with the Equality Pledge: value every Toronto resident equally, in city services, in hiring, in decisions.

We cannot allow those with the highest funding and the most powerful lobbies to shape City policy while ignoring other groups who have no funding or who are powerless, including migrants, people with disabilities, children, elderly residents, and low-income residents. That is why one committee covers all 17 protected grounds under the Ontario Human Rights Code, and why standing subcommittees for Race, Ethnicity and Newcomers, Disability and Accessibility, and Age (children, youth, and seniors), plus Economic Opportunity and Fair Access (receipt of public assistance and fair access to City jobs, contracts, and programs) and Intersectional Rights, matter. Every community is covered. No community is left out because it cannot hire lobbyists.

The promise

Toronto handles human rights today in four disconnected advisory committees that meet a few times a year, plus a staff unit most residents have never heard of. There is no single place a resident can bring a concern about how the City treated them. That is not accountability. That is a filing cabinet.

I will establish a standing Human Rights Committee at the City of Toronto: one accountable home for the human rights concerns of anyone who deals with the City or its services. It will cover City divisions and every agency and corporation the City is responsible for: the TTC, Toronto Community Housing, the Toronto Public Library, Toronto Paramedic Services, Toronto Public Health, RentSafeTO, shelters, parks and recreation, 311, licensing, and the contractors the City pays to deliver its services.

One committee. One door. A public report on what it hears and what changes because of it.

Fair to every resident, by design

This committee is built around the 17 protected grounds of the Ontario Human Rights Code. That choice is deliberate, and it is what makes "fair to all Toronto residents" a fact rather than a slogan.

Every resident is covered by these grounds. The structure does not pick one group as more deserving than another. It protects all of them at once. No community is singled out; no community is left out.

Standing subcommittees (clusters of grounds), plus intersectional:

1. Race, Ethnicity and Newcomers: race, colour, ancestry, ethnic origin, place of origin, citizenship

2. Faith and Creed: creed (all religions and beliefs, including non-belief and Indigenous spiritual practices)

3. Disability and Accessibility: disability (physical, mental, developmental, learning; visible and non-visible)

4. Age: children/youth and seniors

5. Gender and Sexual Orientation: sex and pregnancy, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation

6. Family and Marital Status: family status, marital status

7. Economic Opportunity and Fair Access: receipt of public assistance (housing); fair access to City jobs, contracts, and programs

8. Intersectional Rights: any combination; discrimination by association; reprisal

Economic Opportunity and Fair Access is where the principle lives: hiring, procurement, program access, and treatment of residents receiving public assistance.

Deliver
Establish the Human Rights Committee as a standing body of Council, with staff support from the City’s Equity and Human Rights unit, and eight standing subcommittees. (Mayor forms committees, sets mandate, appoints chairs under strong-mayor framework.)

Deliver
Jurisdiction over City service delivery and agencies/corporations the City owns and funds. Where the City is landlord (TCHC), employer, or service provider, the obligation is ours.

Deliver
Consolidate scattered advisory bodies (Confronting Anti-Black Racism, Housing Rights, accessibility, and the rest) under one accountable committee.

Deliver
Resident-facing intake and advocate function: investigate, recommend, report publicly; works alongside, does not replace, the City Ombudsman.

Deliver
Hold City hiring, contracting, and program access to a fair-opportunity standard.

Deliver
Public accountability report each term: concerns raised, which services, what changed.

Advocate
Honest limit: formal complaints are decided by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. This committee is not a tribunal. Help residents reach the right provincial or federal door when beyond municipal reach.

Advocate
Name the HRTO backlog honestly (long waits; many procedural dismissals). A city front-line body treats residents fairly at the source and relieves pressure. It does not replace the tribunal.

Advocate
Tenant gap: LTB cannot hear discrimination as such. On TCHC, close the gap directly. For private-market tenants: fund human-rights legal support bridging LTB and HRTO, strengthen RentSafeTO, municipal tenant advocate.

Advocate
Demand Queen’s Park fix: LTB power to hear/remedy discrimination, or force tribunal coordination.

Honest line: I am an engineer. I do not promise what the structure cannot carry. That boundary is the difference between a promise that holds and a promise that collapses the first time it is tested. I have spent a career being held to a professional standard. I will hold the City to one.

For adoption by City Council on the recommendation of the Mayor.

A. Purpose

The City of Toronto is committed to valuing every resident equally and to treating everyone who deals with the City and its services with fairness, respect, and equal dignity, regardless of any ground protected under the Ontario Human Rights Code.

The City recognizes that fair and respectful treatment is the foundation of economic opportunity: residents who are treated fairly in City services, hiring, contracting, and programs are residents who can fully participate in the city’s economic life.

A dedicated, standing mechanism is required to receive, examine, and advise on human rights concerns arising from the City’s own services, agencies, and corporations, and to give Council a single accountable channel for this work.

The Human Rights Committee (the “Committee”) is established to fulfil that purpose.

B. Mandate

The Committee’s mandate is to provide advice to City Council and to serve residents by:

1. Receiving and examining human rights concerns from anyone who deals with the City or its services: residents, service users, tenants of City-owned housing, applicants for City employment or contracts, and members of the public.

2. Overseeing the City’s own conduct across City divisions and the agencies, boards, and corporations it owns or funds, including but not limited to the Toronto Transit Commission, Toronto Community Housing Corporation, Toronto Public Library, Toronto Paramedic Services, Toronto Public Health, RentSafeTO, shelter and housing services, parks and recreation, 311, and municipal licensing.

3. Advising Council on policies, programs, and practices to prevent discrimination and remove systemic barriers in City service delivery, hiring, and procurement.

4. Coordinating standing subcommittees covering all protected grounds, so that every resident is covered and no concern falls between grounds.

5. Consolidating the work of the City’s existing equity-related advisory bodies, so their advice reaches Council through one senior standing channel.

6. Referring appropriately: helping residents identify and reach the correct provincial or federal body (including the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and Tribunals Ontario) where a matter lies outside municipal jurisdiction, and coordinating with the City Ombudsman where a concern falls within that office’s role.

7. Reporting publicly each year and each Council term on the concerns received, the City services from which they arose, and the outcomes and policy changes that followed.

C. Standing Subcommittees

The Committee operates through eight standing subcommittees, which together address all 17 protected grounds under the Ontario Human Rights Code:

a. Race, Ethnicity and Newcomers: race, colour, ancestry, ethnic origin, place of origin, citizenship;

b. Faith and Creed: creed, including all religions and beliefs, non-belief, and Indigenous spiritual practices;

c. Disability and Accessibility: disability in all its forms, visible and non-visible;

d. Age: with attention to both children/youth and seniors;

e. Gender and Sexual Orientation: sex and pregnancy, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation;

f. Family and Marital Status: family status, marital status;

g. Economic Opportunity and Fair Access: receipt of public assistance in housing, and fair access to City employment, contracts, and programs;

h. Intersectional Rights: discrimination on any combination of grounds, discrimination by association, and reprisal.

Each subcommittee includes public members with relevant lived experience and expertise, reports to the full Committee, and contributes to the Committee’s consolidated public report. Subcommittees may not direct City staff, bind the City, or act independently of the full Committee.

D. Jurisdiction and Limits

The Committee is a body of the City of Toronto. Its authority extends only to the City’s own services, conduct, agencies, and corporations.

The Committee is not a tribunal. It does not adjudicate legal complaints, does not make binding legal determinations, and does not award remedies. Formal human rights complaints are adjudicated by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario under the Ontario Human Rights Code.

The Committee has no jurisdiction over the Landlord and Tenant Board or any provincial tribunal. In respect of private-market tenants, the Committee’s role is limited to advising Council on municipal supports (tenant legal support to bridge the gap between the LTB and the Human Rights Tribunal, RentSafeTO enforcement, and a tenant advocate function) and to recommending advocacy to other orders of government for reform of the tribunals.

Any Committee recommendation requiring action by City officials or Council must be considered by the appropriate standing committee and, where necessary, approved by City Council. The Committee may not direct City staff or bind the City.

E. Composition and Term

The Committee is composed of members of City Council and public members appointed by City Council on the recommendation of the Civic Appointments Committee.

Public members are drawn to reflect the full diversity of Toronto’s communities across all protected grounds, and to staff the standing subcommittees with relevant lived experience and expertise, including tenants of City-owned housing.

The Chair and Vice-Chair of the Committee, and the chairs of each standing subcommittee, are appointed by the Mayor.

The term aligns with the term of Council.

F. Support and Governance

The City’s Equity and Human Rights unit provides policy and staff support; the City Clerk’s Office provides meeting management.

The Committee meets no fewer than six times per year, and additionally at the call of the Chair; subcommittees meet as needed to respond to concerns in a timely way.

The Committee operates transparently, with public meetings and the opportunity for residents to make deputations, subject to the City’s procedures and applicable privacy law.

A resident-facing intake process is maintained so that any person who deals with the City may bring a concern forward in plain language and in the language of their choice where reasonably possible.

Prepared for Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng. Founder, Be The Change Movement. bahira.ca

Strengthen Access T.O. so every resident can use city services without fear.

Finish TTC accessibility, keep elevators working and fix Wheel-Trans; clear sidewalks and curb cuts; invest in the city’s long-term-care homes; and expand tax and utility relief for low-income seniors and people with disabilities.

Resource the human-trafficking and child-exploitation units through the Police Services Board, strengthen the city’s End Trafficking strategy and survivor supports, and use hotel, rideshare and short-term-rental licensing to require anti-trafficking training and reporting.

Child-protection agencies and the Amber Alert system are provincial. I’ll advocate for them to work.