Item - 2026.MM43.50

Councillor Brad Bradford, seconded by Councillor James Pasternak, recommends that:

1. City Council request the Mayor to assume, in person, the seat on the Toronto Police Service Board reserved for the head of Council by subsection 31(5) of the Community Safety and Policing Act, 2019, at the start of the 2026-2030 Term of City Council.

2. City Council affirm the principle that ultimate political accountability for community safety in Toronto rests with the Mayor, and that this accountability cannot be delegated.

3. In the event the Mayor declines to assume the seat, City Council request the Mayor to report to City Council, in writing, setting out their reasons for declining to occupy the seat.

4. City Council forward this motion to the Toronto Police Service Board.

There is no responsibility of municipal government more fundamental than the safety of the people it serves. No measure of a city's success matters if residents do not feel safe in their homes, on their streets, and on their transit system.

The Toronto Police Service Board is the civilian body that employs and holds to account the Chief of Police, sets the objectives and policies that govern the Toronto Police Service, and approves the largest single line item in the City of Toronto’s budget, which in 2026 stands at $1.43 billion.

Every day, Toronto’s front-line officers have a demanding and important job to keep our city safe. The city’s leadership must be seized with providing them with the resources and oversight they require. But since 2010, the city’s ratio of per-capita police officers has fallen from 208 officers per 100,000 residents to 172 – a 17 percent decrease.

In enacting the Community Safety and Policing Act, 2019, the Ontario government provided (in subsection 31(5)) that the first seat on a municipal police services board belongs to the head of the municipal council or, only if they choose not to be a member, their designate. The seat reserved for the head of council is therefore a deliberate statutory design reflecting the principle that accountability for the safety of a city should rest with the person its voters elected to lead it.

Successive Mayors of Toronto, including the current Mayor's immediate predecessor, have understood that sitting on the Board is not a burden of the office but part of the job of leading this city. The elected leader of Canada's largest city should be present in the room where the most consequential community safety decisions facing Toronto are debated and decided.

This motion seeks to build on these principles by affirming the Mayor’s ultimate accountability for community safety in Toronto and requesting that they assume their seat on the Board when appointments are made at the start of the next City Council term.

The presence of the head of council on the Board would signal to every resident, every victim of crime, and every front line officer that community safety is the personal priority of the Mayor of Toronto, and not a file to be assigned to others.