Item - 2021.EX25.4

The Executive Committee recommends that:  

1. City Council adopt SafeTO: Toronto’s Ten-Year Community Safety and Well-Being Plan as outlined in Appendix A to the report (June 21, 2021) from the Executive Director, Social Development, Finance and Administration.

2. City Council request the Executive Director, Social Development, Finance and Administration to report to the December 7, 2021 meeting of the Executive Committee with the SafeTO Implementation Plan.

3. City Council forward the SafeTO report to the Boards of Directors of Toronto Community Housing Corporation, Toronto Public Library and Toronto Transit Commission, and the Toronto Police Services Board and City Council request the Boards adopt the SafeTO Plan through a Board resolution and partner with the City on the SafeTO Implementation Plan.

4. City Council forward the SafeTO report to the Toronto District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, le Conseil scolaire de District catholique MonAvenir and le Conseil scolaire Viamonde for their consideration of the SafeTO Plan in service planning and to partner with the City on the SafeTO Implementation Plan.

5. City Council forward the SafeTO report to Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, Children's Aid Society of Toronto, Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto and Jewish Family and Child Service for their consideration in service planning as part of the provincially-mandated Child Welfare redesign, and to partner with the City on the SafeTO Implementation Plan.

6. City Council forward the SafeTO report to the following Provincial Ministries for their consideration: Ministry of the Solicitor General, Ministry of the Attorney General, Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Long-Term Care, Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Ministry of Education, and the Ministry for Seniors and Accessibility.

7. City Council forward the SafeTO report to the following Federal Departments for their consideration: Department of Justice Canada, Department for Women and Gender Equality, Public Safety Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada, and Indigenous Services Canada.

8. City Council request the City Manager to share the results of the Sunnybrook Breaking the Cycle of Violence with Empathy (BRAVE) Program with the Ministry of Health and City Council request the Province of Ontario to provide funding to support the continued operation of the BRAVE Program and the creation of a St. Michael's Hospital violence intervention program.

Under the Ontario Police Services Act, all municipalities are mandated to prepare and adopt a Community Safety and Well-Being Plan by July 2021. A provincial framework has been developed to guide municipalities in our planning to broaden our understanding of safety and centre the well-being of individuals, families and communities through long-term strategic actions that ensure community safety and well-being. The root causes of community violence, trauma and injustice are complex. A traditional enforcement approach cannot be the only response, nor the default response to building a safer city. Growing evidence calls for proactive, multi-sector responses guided by a unified vision and a set of agreed upon priorities. This shift being called for by provincial legislation mirrors what City staff have heard from community leaders, advocates and academics over many years. SafeTO is our response.

SafeTO is a comprehensive Ten-Year Community Safety and Well-Being Plan that reimagines core elements of community safety and well-being in order to shift our paradigm from a reliance on reactive emergency response to a culture of proactive prevention. SafeTO inspires us to think differently, work collaboratively across sectors, community and governments, and to do better to bring about a safe Toronto that promotes and celebrates the well-being and resilience of all residents.

Toronto has a legacy of taking bold action to address complex challenges. In recent years, Toronto City Council has committed to a 20-year plan to transform how the City addresses poverty through TO Prosperity: Toronto Poverty Reduction Strategy; has endorsed the Toronto Action Plan to Confront Anti-Black Racism to acknowledge and uproot anti-Black racism from our systems and structures; and has put into action policing reform measures to create a new community-led Community Crisis Support Service to reimagine how our systems respond to mental health crises. SafeTO provides City Council with another opportunity to think boldly and act differently to advance community safety and well-being in Toronto by:

-Expanding the definition of community safety beyond crime or policing to include well-being,
-Redefining what trauma means and deepening the ability of the City and its partners to be informed by it and respond to it,
-Enhancing our ability to act early and advance preventative approaches,
-Developing innovative mechanisms to use multi-sector data to inform decision making and integrate investments,
-Implementing an effective multi-sector governance structure that brings our critical partners into coordinated leadership and action, and
-Committing to a long-term vision of community safety and well-being and a comprehensive plan to realize it.
 

For Toronto to make the shift envisioned by the Province, the majority of community safety investments need to be focused on developing and/or enhancing programs that focus on social development, prevention, and intervention through multi-sector collaboration to reduce the reliance on reactive emergency response. The City cannot make this shift alone. For the City to be successful, a whole-of-governments approach consisting of effective partnerships with and investments from other orders of government is critical.

SafeTO will drive 26 priority actions across seven strategic goals: Reduce Vulnerability; Reduce Violence; Advance Truth and Reconciliation; Promote Healing and Justice; Invest in People; Invest in Neighbourhoods; and Drive Collaboration and Accountability. SafeTO provides a roadmap for how the City and social systems that serve Torontonians, such as community services, healthcare systems, education systems, justice systems, police and business, can work collaboratively across different sectors and across governments to support community safety and well-being.

In the process of developing SafeTO, the City has already started to apply a broader, multi-sector approach to prevent and interrupt escalating violence this summer. In the spring, Social Development, Finance and Administration Division, the Toronto Police Service and the Toronto Police Service Board, Toronto Community Housing, Toronto Public Health, Toronto Transit Commission, the Toronto District School Board, and the Toronto Catholic District School Board formed the Executive Leadership Table with the support of the Office of the Mayor to collaboratively develop a Short-term Community Safety Pilot to leverage and integrate community safety efforts across organizations for better impact on the reduction of gun violence through the summer months. Lessons learned through this collaborative work will be used to inform the SafeTO Implementation Plan which will be brought back for Council consideration in December 2021.