Scott Stinson: Money isn’t solving homelessness. It’s time Ford made tough choices 

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Last month a group of municipal politicians known as the Big City Mayors put out a statement pleading with the provincial government to step up the fight against homelessness, saying the crisis continues to worsen and that cities had “reached their limit” in dealing with it.

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The statement avoided using the politically sensitive phrase “involuntary treatment,” but it nevertheless called for it, asking the province for a review of the Mental Health Act and the Heathcare Consent Act among other requests. There was immediate pushback from groups who say such programs, which as the name suggests can force individuals into addiction treatment they do want, do not work.

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On Thursday, Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office released a report on homelessness that might as well have been a series of exclamation marks at the end of the mayors’ earlier lament.

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That there is a growing homelessness problem in the province is evident to anyone who has been to one of its urban centres and has eyes, but still the numbers are bracing. The FAO found that the “known” homeless population in Ontario jumped to more than 76,000 in 2025-26 from around 62,000 people in 2022-23, an increase of more than 23 per cent in just three years.

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And it’s not just a Toronto problem: some of the sharpest increases were in other cities like Ottawa (19.7 per cent), London (18.3 per cent) and Windsor (53.8 per cent). Toronto suburbs such as the regions of York, Peel and Durham, while all having relatively low homeless populations per capita, all saw their rates increase by between 80 to 130 per cent.

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(The data was compiled using a process that began five years ago called the By-Name List, where municipalities collect information to track the homeless population. It does not account for those who decline to have their information collected and so is almost certainly an undercount.)  

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The FAO also found that four of the 10 highest rates of homelessness per capita were in Northern Ontario, with Cochrane and Rainy River leading the list. It is a problem that touches all geographic points of the province.

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Against that, one can see why Marianne Meed Ward, the mayor of Burlington and chair of the 29-member Big City Mayors, said last month that “the status quo was not an option” when putting out their call to action. Or why Cam Guthrie, the mayor of Guelph, said on social media on Thursday that he “cannot stress enough the absolute magnitude of this crisis that is clearly not being addressed.” Guthrie, who is not seeking re-election, said the homelessness problem took up five per cent of his time when he took office 12 years ago. “Today, it’s easily 75 per cent,” he said.

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When asked about involuntary treatment last month, Health Minister Sylvia Jones sidestepped the question and talked instead about the money the province has spent on homelessness and addiction.

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And indeed, the province has spent increasingly on homelessness programs, more than doubling the amount over a decade, adjusted for inflation, although it is forecast to decline in the coming years due to the expiry of time-limited investments made during the acute crisis of the pandemic.