Critics say budget process is badly broken— not equipped to tackle city’s ‘big issues’.

As Toronto City Council prepares to make its final decision on its 2018 budget, a new report by Social Planning Toronto reveals it will fall short by $36 million on funding council’s own pledges on housing, climate change, transit, and poverty reduction.

Wealthy developers will not likely end up helping to pay for affordable housing under new regulations proposed by Ontario’s Minister of Housing, say over 60 community organizations and housing experts. The regulations effectively reverse policy aimed at ensuring developers build affordable housing with each new development— a measure called ‘Inclusionary Zoning’.

Children in the Toronto region and their families’ incomes are deeply divided along race, a new report finds.

Based on 2016 Census data, the report shows that Toronto region children from racialized families— families of people of colour— are twice as likely to be living in poverty compared to children in non-racialized families (25.3 % compared to 11.4%). The report also found that Indigenous families with children are experiencing an extremely high poverty rate of 84%.

We would like to extend our congratulations to Black Lives Matter – Toronto for their winning of the NOW Magazine’s Readers’ Choice "Best Social Justice Group". We couldn’t be prouder to place second to such a committed and effective group.

Responding to a new report released by the United Way of Toronto and York Region, Sean Meagher, Executive Director of Social Planning Toronto, called for public action to counter Toronto’s rising economic inequality:

“The report outlines an overwhelmingly divided City, created by a failure to invest adequately in our neighbourhoods and residents,” said Meagher. “With one-in-four children living in poverty, we have to do better”.

As school returns, Toronto’s students and parents are still coping with a legacy of ‘streaming', finds a new report by Social Planning Toronto. In the process of ‘streaming’, students are grouped into either academic or applied courses, with big impacts on post-secondary options and life outcomes. Unfortunately, evidence shows streaming is impacted by a variety of factors, including neighbourhood and socio-economic factors.

Toronto’s downtown and waterfront condos are now home to thousands of preschool-aged children, finds a new report by Social Planning Toronto. The report reveals the number of preschool-aged children in key downtown census neighbourhoods has more than doubled in ten years—a staggering shift that has childcare and recreation programs overcrowded as the school year comes to a close.

Toronto’s baby boomers are aging and will soon overwhelm our already backlogged city infrastructure, according to a new report released today by Social Planning Toronto. The report reveals a city-wide growth of 40% of seniors aged 60-64 over the last ten years, as well as a striking 53% increase in those over 85 years old.

The Government of Ontario could do more for almost half of Toronto’s workers who deal with precarious work, including temporary and contract workers, a new report says.

The report, released today by Social Planning Toronto, focuses on the benefits that unionization provides for precarious workers, and follows Queen’s Park’s announcement committing to changes to the Employment Standards Act and Labour Relations Act. The new changes will include a $15 minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, and personal emergency leave provisions, but only extends one-step card-based certification to some workers, and provides no changes to allow workers to organize across their sector.

Social Planning Toronto welcomed Ontario’s newly updated Growth Plan as an element in the effort to address the ‘missing middle’ of reasonably priced housing in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. However, critically, its delayed timelines allow for developers to continue to drag their heels on building more affordable units.