The Listening Project
Toronto’s future shouldn’t be one person’s idea of it. This page is where anyone can add to it — a vision, something you know, or something that’s happened to you or someone you know. Every way to send something below works today, through channels that already exist — email, a voice memo, a link to a video you control. Nothing new to sign up for, nothing to install.
Three things you can tell us
Your vision
What you want Toronto to become — a sentence or a page, however you’d say it.
What you know
A problem you’ve seen up close, or an idea you think would actually work.
What’s happened
Something you’ve lived through, or watched happen to someone else, in this city’s systems.
Your vision for Toronto
What would you want this city to become, if it actually worked for everyone in it? Big or small, a dream or a fix — write it however you’d say it out loud.
- Write it: ✉️ unknownsoldier@unitetolove.ca — opens an email with a short template. Delete it and write your own words if you’d rather.
- Say it: record a voice memo on your phone and attach it to the same email.
- Show it: record a short video, put it somewhere you already control (an unlisted YouTube link, a Google Drive or Dropbox link, anything you can share), and paste the link into the same email. We don’t need you to upload anything to us directly.
What you know
Maybe you’ve worked in a system that’s broken, or seen a fix somewhere else that actually works, or have a professional’s eye on a problem the rest of us only guess at. This is where that goes.
- Write it: ✉️ unknownsoldier@unitetolove.ca — same address, its own template.
- Say it: a voice memo, attached, works exactly as well as writing it out.
- Show it: same as above — a link to a video you control, pasted into the email, rather than an upload.
What’s happened
If what you want to tell us is about something that happened to you, or to someone you know — a way this city’s systems failed someone — read this part first. It works differently from the two sections above, on purpose.
Nothing is recorded or kept until you’ve told us how it can be used. Right now, all we’re asking for is a way to reach you. Please don’t write your story into an email yet — a real person will reach out first, talk it through with you, and only then, if you want to go further, record anything.
When that conversation happens, you get to choose two separate things, independently, and either answer is fine: first, how much of what you say — if any of it — can ever be shared publicly, and in what form; second, whether what you tell us can ever be used in an actual complaint to an official body, like a city watchdog. Sharing it publicly is a different question from sharing it with the authorities — you can say yes to one and no to the other, in either direction, and that’s entirely your call.
If you ever do record something with us: it’s turned into text by a program that runs on our own machines — never sent to ChatGPT, Google, or any other outside AI company, ever, for any reason.
You can change your mind about any of this later, including after today.
To start, just tell us how to reach you:
- Write it: ✉️ unknownsoldier@unitetolove.ca — just a way to reach you and a good time to call.
- Say it: a short voice memo saying the same — a way to reach you — works too.
If you need to talk to someone right now, whether or not you talk to us at all: Toronto Community Crisis Service / 211 Ontario — dial 211. Distress Centres of Greater Toronto — 416-408-4357. Canada’s 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline — call or text 988.
What happens to what you send
Everything gets read by a person — nothing sits in an unwatched inbox. What we can’t honestly promise is a personal reply to every single message; at the scale we hope this reaches, that’s not a promise we can keep, so we won’t make it. What we do promise instead: what people are telling us shows up in the open, regularly, as an aggregate — counts, themes, what changed because of it — the same radical-transparency standard the rest of this site holds itself to. Being heard should be demonstrable, not just claimed.
The Shelter Declaration
Toronto’s shelter and homelessness system, confronted in one page: what the public record already shows, and four demands — an independent investigation, full financial transparency, reform to what the evidence proves, and a public answer — addressed to every level of government. Torontonians sign it online and on paper; the full text, exactly as signed, lives on its own page.
Read and sign the Shelter Declaration →
— The Unknown Soldier · uniteTOlove · Toronto