Ready to use · each gap is documented, not suspected

The Asks: Twelve Things Toronto Won’t Publish

Every item below is a documented absence or refusal — a number the public used to get and no longer does, a figure the City’s own auditor says is not tracked, or a dataset that has simply never existed. Each comes with ready-to-use wording. Ask them at deputations, in letters to your councillor, through a freedom-of-information request, or at all-candidates meetings. The receipts behind each gap are on the facts page and the receipt shelf.

Why this works: an unanswerable question is more powerful than an accusation. Each ask below names a specific document or number, so “we’ll get back to you” has a follow-up date, and “that doesn’t exist” is itself a newsworthy answer, on the record.

1 · The per-shelter price list, 2013–present

Published every year through 2012 ($20.25–$75.75/night, every operator, by name). The system has since grown from $60.7M to $898M with no published unit prices.

“Please provide the current per-diem or equivalent unit funding rate for each purchase-of-service shelter contract, by operator and site, for each year since 2013 — the same schedule the City published annually through 2012.”

Route: FOI to Toronto Shelter & Support Services · or a councillor inquiry at Economic & Community Development Committee.

2 · Any dollar figure for the Exhibition Place winter respite

A 250–300-bed program ran three consecutive winters with no published contract value, per-space cost, or venue fee — and no Council item authorizing it.

“Please provide the total cost, per-season contract values, and venue licence fees for the Better Living Centre winter respite program for each season it has operated, and identify the delegated authority under which each season was approved.”

Route: FOI · councillor inquiry · Auditor General suggestion line (the AG’s February 2025 audit already found $2.9M in unrecovered surpluses in this program class).

3 · Current funding for any named shelter

For individual shelters the City published exact annual funding from 2011 to 2020 — then stopped. Today’s figures exist internally and are simply not published.

“Please provide the annual funding allocation for [shelter name] for each year from 2021 to the present, in the same form the City published for 2011–2020 in its annual shelter funding-allocation reports.”

Route: FOI. The 2011–2018 published series is on the receipt shelf as the template.

4 · The “final” shelter funding model promised in 2016

The 2016 funding model was adopted as “interim… until such time that City Council approves a final funding model.” No final model has ever been confirmed as brought to Council.

“On what date did City Council approve the final shelter funding model that the 2016 interim model was adopted pending? If it has not, when will the final model come to Council, and under what item number?”

Route: councillor question — this one belongs on the Council record.

5 · Walk-in turnaway counts

The Auditor General found the division counts only unmatched phone calls; people turned away in person at shelter doors every day are not counted at all.

“What is the City’s count of people turned away in person at shelter, respite, and warming-centre doors, by month? If no such count exists, when will the division implement the tracking the Auditor General’s February 2025 audit identified as missing?”

Route: councillor question · deputation at Economic & Community Development.

6 · Encampment fire deaths since 2020

The last public figures — 7 deaths since 2010, 216 encampment fires in 2020 alone — come from a December 2020 staff letter. Public updates then stop.

“Please provide the number of fires in encampments, and the number of deaths and injuries resulting, for each year since 2020, in the same form as the December 2020 staff letter to the Planning and Housing Committee.”

Route: FOI to Toronto Fire Services · councillor inquiry.

7 · The unlabeled $59.5M

The shelter division’s own 2025 budget note lists federal, provincial, and City revenue that sums to $838.5M against a $897.96M gross — leaving $59.46M (6.6%) with no named source.

“In the 2025 TSSS Budget Notes, the itemized revenue sources sum to $59.46M less than the gross budget. Please identify the source and nature of the remaining revenue.”

Route: Budget Committee deputation (budget season) · councillor question.

8 · The complete operator list, with contract values

The City works with roughly 75–81 contracted shelter and service operators. No complete list with contract values has ever been published; only fragments surface through procurement items.

“Please provide a complete list of all organizations holding purchase-of-service shelter, respite, or warming-centre contracts, with the current annual value of each contract.”

Route: FOI · this is also a clean audit suggestion for the Auditor General.

9 · The 330-program inventory, with dollars

The City’s own 2025 all-of-city homelessness service inventory lists 330 programs across 11 divisions — with not one dollar figure anywhere in it.

“For each program listed in the all-of-city homelessness service inventory (2025), please provide the annual budget and funding source.”

Route: councillor inquiry at Executive Committee, where the inventory was received.

10 · The corrections-to-homelessness pipeline, costed

Ontario jails released 7,455 people with no fixed address in a single year, at $326/day incarceration cost — and no one has ever quantified the overlap population or its cost.

“How many people released from provincial custody with no fixed address entered the Toronto shelter system within 30 days, in each of the last five years — and what discharge-planning agreement exists between the City and the Ministry of the Solicitor General?”

Route: split it — the City half to TSSS, the provincial half to your MPP.

11 · Who sleeps at City Hall tonight

No official dataset counts people sleeping rough at specific civic sites — City Hall, Nathan Phillips Square, Metro Hall — on a given night. The only receipted analogue: in summer 2023, up to ~100 people a night slept outside the City’s own intake office. Anyone can build this count; until it exists, present-tense claims can’t be receipted.

“Does the City maintain any count of people sleeping overnight at civic squares and buildings? If not, will Streets to Homes publish its outreach contact counts by location?” — and, for community groups: a simple, respectful, repeated same-hour count at one site, published with dates and method, would create the public record the City doesn’t keep.

Route: councillor question · or citizen documentation (count, don’t photograph faces; dignity first).

12 · Hidden homelessness — the number the province disowned

Every official Toronto count excludes hidden homelessness by design. Ontario’s own internal estimate (234,000 provincewide) was called “inaccurate” by the government — which then never issued a corrected figure.

“What is the Ministry’s current estimate of total homelessness in Ontario including hidden homelessness, and what methodology replaced the internal 234,000 estimate the government disavowed in 2024?”

Route: your MPP · provincial FOI (Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing).

What to do with the answers

Send anything you get back — documents, refusals, non-answers — through the Harvest. Refusals are findings too: they go on the facts page with everything else. And if an ask above gets answered and published, we retire it here, in public, with the answer linked.