Ausma Malik

This report requests that Toronto and East York Community Council deny the request for a permit to remove one privately owned ravine-protected tree located at 171 Neville Park Boulevard. The applicant indicates the reason for requesting removal of the tree is as a precautionary measure to mitigate the risk of failure that could result in serious injury or loss of life.

The red oak tree (Quercus rubra) measures 93 cm in diameter. The City's Tree By-laws do not support the removal of this tree as it is healthy and maintainable. The permit was denied, and the applicant is appealing the decision. Community Council has delegated authority from City Council to make a final decision as to whether a permit may be issued when an applicant appeals the City's decision to deny a tree permit.

The legacies of Dr. Jane Goodall and Dr. Anne Innis Dagg have reshaped global and Canadian understanding of wildlife and conservation. At the Toronto Zoo, young people get inspired every day to follow in their footsteps with curiosity about the natural world and how we can respect and learn from it.

Dr. Jane Goodall has inspired generations worldwide through her groundbreaking research on chimpanzees and her tireless advocacy for conservation and youth empowerment through the Roots and Shoots program. Dr. Anne Innis Dagg, a Canadian zoologist, author, and trailblazer in animal behaviour research, is internationally recognized as the pioneer of modern giraffe field research and a tireless advocate for both wildlife conservation and the advancement of women in science.

Both Dr. Goodall and Dr. Innis Dagg embody values of courage, perseverance, and hope for protecting the natural world, and their legacies can ignite passion in young people to take positive action for our future. Access to nature provides students with unique experiential learning opportunities that cannot be replicated in a classroom, fostering empathy, critical thinking, curiosity, and a deeper understanding of biodiversity and the challenges facing our planet.

Creating a “Legacy of Learning” program that provides free school field trip access for Toronto students to the Toronto Zoo will both honour the extraordinary contributions of Dr. Jane Goodall and Dr. Anne Innis Dagg and invest in the next generation of Guardians of Wild, ensuring that young Torontonians inherit not only knowledge but responsibility to care for the planet.

Learning through direct connection with animals aligns with the Toronto Zoo’s mission of connecting people, animals, traditional knowledge and conservation science to fight extinction, and with its Guardians of Wild Strategic Plan goal to inspire youth to become active champions for wildlife and the environment and supports the Toronto Zoo’s TZNet0 Plan. This program will also support the City of Toronto’s Poverty Reduction Strategy and various City efforts to support young people.

This motion is urgent as adequate time is required to develop the program design and implementation plan to report back as part of the 2026 budget process.

Intimate Partner Violence is a pervasive and urgent issue that affects individuals, families, and communities across Toronto. It manifests in various forms—physical, emotional, financial, sexual, and coercive control—and its impact extends far beyond the individuals directly involved, leaving lasting harm on children, families, and communities. 

There are many services available to Torontonians, including shelters, hotlines, and crisis programs—but many people don’t know they exist, or feel too afraid or ashamed to reach out. Advocacy groups continue to sound the alarm that professionals are seeing increased cases of physical violence, confinement, and financial and emotional abuse in recent years. For example, Toronto’s Barbra Schlifer Clinic alone served 18,000 survivors from April 2023-March 2024.

Recognizing the severity of this issue, Toronto City Council, led by Mayor Olivia Chow, declared intimate partner and gender-based violence an epidemic on July 20, 2023. This declaration was passed unanimously and aligns Toronto with over 30 Ontario municipalities that have made similar declarations, following the recommendations of the 2022 Coroner’s Inquest into the deaths of Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk, and Nathalie Warmerdam. This inquest highlighted the urgent need for systemic change and called for formal recognition of Intimate Partner Violence as an epidemic. 

Despite Council’s declaration, Intimate Partner Violence incidents continue to rise in Toronto (from 2023 to 2024), with Toronto Police attending to 18,119 incidents in 2024. Many individuals still suffer in silence due to fear, stigma, and lack of awareness of available resources. A comprehensive public communications campaign is crucial for raising awareness, reducing stigma, and ensuring that every resident knows where to turn for assistance. Such a campaign would not only inform but also empower individuals to seek assistance, fostering a community-wide response to this epidemic. Survivors should be able to access key information across the City in the many places where they interact with City services. 

Pickleball is one of the fastest growing sports in Toronto. Its courts are in high demand, with hundreds now across our city.

In 2023, City Council directed a report back as part of the reassessment of the Parks and Recreation Facilities Plan a review of the need for pickleball provision across the City, this work is underway.

Since this direction, other groups, including the City of Ottawa and British Columbia Recreation and Parks Association have developed their own pickleball strategies which have included noise mitigation efforts, due to the loud and frequent sound of the hard plastic ball hitting a solid paddle. As pickleball popularity grows, City Councillors offices are receiving more frequent complaints related to noise from these courts. To address these concerns holistically, implementation of the Parks and Recreation Facilities Plan’s recommendations on Pickleball should include considerations for noise impacts generated by this activity.

Although Toronto Public Health promotes eye examinations, it does not offer school-based eye examinations based on the dental model. Studies have shown that students with visual impairments have limited ability to learn incidentally. This affects how they form concepts and develop schema or frameworks for understanding new ideas and vocabulary that provide essential foundation skills for comprehension and abstract reasoning. Visual processing directly impacts one’s ability to learn, read, and retain information. Learning in school is typically directed at visual processing 75 percent of the time. So, to do well in school and in life, developing one's visual system is critical. Educational studies and epidemiological results have documented the high prevalence of poor vision among school-age students because of exposure to prolonged vision-demanding academic tasks and prolonged indoor sedentary lifestyles. Megan Collins, a pediatric ophthalmologist at the Wilmer Eye Institute, associate faculty at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Consortium for School-Based Health Solutions concluded in one study that “giving kids the glasses they need helps them succeed in school. This collaborative project with Johns Hopkins, Baltimore City and its partners has major implications for advancing health and educational equity all across the country.” Toronto Public Health has noted, “Each year, thousands of children start school without ever having an eye exam. Parents often believe that their child will let them know that they cannot see well, but children are rarely able to tell that they have poor vision because they have nothing to compare it to. That’s why we recommend that all children have their first eye exam at 6 months old, again at 2-3 years old, and every year after that." As many do not take this advice, it is recommended that Toronto Public Health explore the viability of co-ordinating school-based eye examinations for elementary students in high needs areas at the start of the school year.

The City employs thousands of motivated, skilled, and trained professionals and subject matter experts. The services and advice that these public servants provide on a daily basis helps to ensure that Toronto is consistently ranked as one of the best cities in the world to live in.

Unfortunately, a troubling trend has emerged in recent years. Spending on outside consultants rose markedly over the tenure of the previous administration. From 2014 to 2023 (the most recent year data was made available), the City and its Agencies increased spending on outside consultants from $11.2 million to $57.7 million. This figure does not capture considerable additional expenditures on consultants involved with the delivery of capital projects.

While the City will always require some external expertise, core responsibilities such as playground design, planning studies, and crosswalks should not be contracted out to high-priced firms. Apart from the increased cost of contracting consultants, there are also ancillary benefits of performing more of this work in-house. A City of Toronto employee has flexibility to perform several roles on our residents’ behalf as opposed to an outside consultant hired to do a discrete task. Job satisfaction is also higher when public servants are engaged with the work they trained for instead of managing external partners to perform the same job. Hiring consultants also involves issuing a request for proposal, which can delay the start of a project by months while staff evaluate the contract bids.

This motion requests the City Manager and Division Heads to prioritize the use of our public service over procuring outside consultants to more effectively deliver services for Toronto residents.

This report recommends that City Council refuse the proposal to erect a structure on and adjacent to the property at 2 Whitney Avenue under Section 42 of the Ontario Heritage Act.

The subject site is a B-rated property located in the North Rosedale Heritage Conservation District. The applicant is seeking retro-active approval for the retention and completion of a partially constructed masonry wall, a structure that was erected without a heritage permit. All public and private lands within the boundaries of a heritage conservation district are designated under Part 5 of the Ontario Heritage Act.

The proposed wall, a substantial portion of which was built prior to the owner of 2 Whitney Avenue stopping work at the City's request, does not comply with the North Rosedale Heritage Conservation District Plan, the Official Plan or the Parks Canada Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada. As such, staff recommend that this application be refused.

As the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) operates a transit service on Bathurst Street, City Council approval of this report is required.

The focus of this report is Bathurst Street, from Eglinton Avenue West to Bathurst Station North Exit. The recommended changes, which consist of extensions to No Stopping restrictions on the east side of Bathurst Street in the afternoon and weekend, as well as changes to some No Left-Turn restrictions, are intended to clear parking in the curb lane and prohibit turning vehicles from blocking buses and general traffic at intersections, for periods where the 7 Bathurst service is significantly impacted by congestion. An analysis of the TTC's 7 Bathurst operations supports the recommendations in this report.

The proposed extended traffic regulations are intended to improve the reliability of the afternoon bus route and reduce traffic congestion in the afternoon outside of peak hours. Conditions will be monitored following implementation, to determine whether the changes have the intended effect, and whether any further adjustments are required.

In addition, the TTC is currently undertaking a Bunching and Gapping study to improve the service reliability of select TTC routes, including the 7 Bathurst. The study focuses on shifting route management from an emphasis on departures at end terminals to a more customer-oriented approach, recognizing that customers depend on vehicles arriving at regularly spaced intervals, and not a schedule. Additional recommendations for the 7 Bathurst are expected to come from the TTC's Bunching and Gapping study, once the study concludes.

Environment, Climate and Forestry is committed to the continued implementation of tree maintenance service improvements as recommended by the Auditor General in their report entitled "Getting to the Root of the Issues: A Follow Up to the 2019 Tree Maintenance Services Audit".

Improvements have been focused on strengthening processes and increasing productivity and service quality to drive a more effective and efficient tree maintenance operation. Progress to date includes improved contract language and management practices, increased oversight of Urban Forestry Operations, and timely responses to complaints.

In line with these improvements, Environment, Climate and Forestry continues to focus on the quality of its tree maintenance services through a multi-faceted review of operational practices. As reported to the Infrastructure and Environment Committee in the Tree Maintenance Review Update (2024), an external review was conducted in 2023 by Ernst and Young with a focus on service quality enhancements. Ernst and Young recommended a pilot project to evaluate service quality improvements and cost reductions achievable through insourcing of tree maintenance services.

In response to this recommendation, Environment, Climate and Forestry completed a quality service pilot in 2024 that evaluated the most effective service model to deliver tree pruning and small tree removal services. The results of the pilot and subsequent cost analysis show similar quality, productivity and operating costs between insourced and outsourced tree maintenance crews. A key difference is that insourced crews offer greater operational flexibility than outsourced crews, in that insourced crews can be re-directed and customized quickly and easily to respond to changing priorities in real time.

Based on the results of the pilot, Environment, Climate and Forestry recommends a phased approach to insourcing tree maintenance services, beginning with staff position conversions to optimize crew role assignments, enabling deployment of five (5) additional insourced tree maintenance crews in 2026. The phased approach will be monitored to assess impacts to service levels, with an eventual target of providing equal levels of insourcing and outsourcing, to achieve a better balance between self performed and contracted service delivery. 

Further to the quality service pilot, Environment, Climate and Forestry is currently undertaking a comprehensive third-party review with Beacon Environmental Ltd. examining existing tree maintenance programs, including staff training and qualifications, and aligning with industry standards for tree pruning. This work incorporates engagement sessions with key industry and public stakeholders and a jurisdictional best practices review. The project will conclude in the second quarter of 2026 with a framework of improvements to strengthen reactive and proactive tree maintenance services.

City Council on June 26 and 27, 2024, referred Item IE13.4 to the Infrastructure and Environment Committee for further consideration with the Parking Strategy in the first quarter of 2025, and requested the General Manager, Transportation Services, in consultation with other appropriate City Divisions, to report on the following:

a. the impact of allowing an expanded free-floating car-share program outside of permit parking areas / streets in the development of the Parking Strategy;

b. the impact of allowing an expanded free-floating car-share program outside of permit parking areas / streets on winter maintenance operations;

c. the possibility to continue to enforce parking regulations when car-share vehicles are in use;

d. the options for free-floating car-share vehicles dropping off and picking up off-street parking arrangements, rather than solely in public locations designated for permit parking under Municipal Code Chapter 925; and

e. the development of a communications strategy on the expansion of the free-floating car-share program outside of permit parking area / streets.