Toronto City Council solidifies and expands the scope of SafeTO

Today, Toronto City Council took further action to address community safety through prevention and public health support by endorsing new updates to the City of Toronto’s SafeTO: Toronto’s 10-Year Community Safety & Well-Being Plan.

SafeTO brings forward a fundamental shift in how Toronto addresses community safety by transitioning from primarily using reactive emergency response operations to a culture of prevention and a public health approach to safety.

The SafeTO plan update report provides outcomes from Phase 1 (2022-2024) implementation and reinforces the importance of working across governments to sustain community safety and wellbeing work, while also outlining the priorities for Phase 2 (2025-2027) implementation.

Highlights from the 2025-2027 plan include:

• Empowering the Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS) to work with the TTC to expand its service to help respond to mental health related calls. TCCS currently serves TTC stops and stations but does not respond to track level calls.

• Addressing gender-based and intimate partner violence by continuing to develop a comprehensive approach led in collaboration with the City, community agencies and the Toronto Police Service.
• Continue working with Indigenous community partners to develop an implementation plan to guide the City’s response to the Calls for Justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Woman and Girls.

Council also directed staff to consider a review of youth employment opportunities as well as options for communities to mobilize Neighbourhood Watch programs.

The 2025 Update on SafeTO Implementation report also included the launch of a new community safety and wellbeing dashboard that presents data related to the progress of key Toronto community safety and wellbeing initiatives, a SafeTO community report and program videos. These new SafeTO products can be found on the City’s website: toronto.ca/SafeTO.

More details about the City Council decisions are available on the City’s website.

About SafeTO: Toronto’s 10-Year Community Safety and Well-Being Plan:

Since SafeTO began, more than 90 per cent of the 26 priority actions identified in the SafeTO plan are completed or in-progress. For example, the City created TCCS, the City’s fourth emergency service, which has responded to more than 25,000 mental health crisis calls and resolved 78 per cent of calls transferred from 911 without police involvement, established a Violence Prevention Toronto Office, and expanded the Community Crisis Response Program to be available seven days per week.

More information about SafeTO: Toronto’s 10-Year Community Safety & Well-Being Plan is available on the City’s website.

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