2023 By-Election for Mayor: Candidate & Third Party Advertiser Questions to the City

In order to provide equal access of information for the 2023 by-election for mayor, the City has established a protocol for responding to requests for information from candidates and third party advertisers about City services and programs.

Questions received and responses given will be provided in writing and posted here without revealing the source of the request. This page will be updated as information becomes available.

Candidates and third party advertisers may submit a request to the City about services and programs by emailing: candidaterequests@toronto.ca

 

 

Questions:

  • What is the total cost to deliver recreation programs for children and youth?
  • How much is offset in user fees?
  • How many children and youth do we serve annually through recreation programs?
  • How many are on waitlists for programming?

Answer:

As PFR does not organize its operating budget by age category, staff have used the proportion of service delivery allocated to Children and Youth to estimate the allocated funding to services for these age groups. Please note that these are estimates, and information is not presented in this format in the Council-approved 2023 budget.

The 2023 operating budget allocated to the delivery of children and youth registered and leisure drop-in programming is approximately $85M Net with $117M in gross expenditures and $32M in revenues. For 2023, this budget funds approximately 36,000 programs with 366,000 registered spaces, and 236,600 hours of drop-in programming with an estimated 3 million participant visits for this age group.

Year-to date, we have had a cumulative 204,653 child and youth registered participants in Winter, Spring and upcoming Summer camps, with 593,390 visits to drop-in programming.

Winter session (Jan-March) had 41,832 waitlisted child and youth spaces and to date, spring programs and summer camps have 48,686 and 39,672 waitlisted child and youth spaces, respectively.

PFR is currently using 84 school locations for recreational program delivery.

Question:

Would you be able to find the number of encampment fires and fatalities that have occurred from January 2020 to date?

Answer:

From January 1, 2020 to date, TFS has responded to 781 encampment fire incidents.  During that same period of time, there have been two fatalities as a result of encampment fires – 1 in 2022 and 1 in 2023 to date.