The City of Toronto: Services without fear

At its meeting of June 10 – 13, 2014, City Council confirmed its commitment to ensuring that ALL Torontonians can access City services without fear. What does it mean?
This program would make City services available to all residents, regardless of their immigration status. The policy would ensure that ALL city residents, including people without full immigration status, could access essential services (social services, housing, health, education, and emergency services) without fear of being detained or deported.

At its meeting of June 10 – 13, 2014, City Council confirmed its commitment to ensuring that ALL Torontonians can access City services without fear. What does it mean?

This program would make City services available to all residents, regardless of their immigration status. The policy would ensure that ALL city residents, including people without full immigration status, could access essential services (social services, housing, health, education, and emergency services) without fear of being detained or deported.

Policy at the City of Toronto would ensure:

Access to city services is not discriminatory on the basis of immigration status. All residents of the city would have access to vital City services, including health care, education, emergency services, housing, food banks, and social services.
City workers, along with applications for City services, would be forbidden from inquiring into immigration status. All residents of the City with less than full legal status as citizens or permanent residents could apply for and use City services without fear that their immigration status will be discovered.
City workers, should they discover the immigration status of persons accessing City services would be prohibited from sharing this information with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. All residents of the City would be able to access City services without fear that information they provide will place them in risk of deportation and detention.

Proof of identification or residency is not necessarily an official government document – depending on the service being accessed, it can be as simple as a telephone bill that shows resident’s address.

City division, agency or corporation providing the service	Service	Proof of Identity NOT Required	Proof of Identity Required
	Service	Proof of Identity NOT Required	Name	Address	Date of Birth	Income or Assets	Immigration Status
311 Toronto	Service Requests	X
311 Toronto	Information Requests	X
Children’s Services	Toronto Early Learning and Child Care Services		X	X	X
Children’s Services	Child Care Fee Subsidy		X	X	X	X
Emergency Medical Services	EMS / Ambulance	X
Emergency Medical Services	Referrals to Community Care Access Centres		X	X	X
Equity, Diversity and Human Rights	Human Rights Complaint and Assistance	X
Fire Services	Fire Services	X
Public Health	Dental Clinics		X	X	X	X
	Primary Care Clinics (Sexual Health, TB, The Works / Needle Exchange)	X
	AIDS and Sexual Health Infoline General health referral line or online referral	X
	Healthy Babies Healthy Children program Infant hearing, Infant vision	X
	Vaccination Program	X
	Prenatal Counselling Breastfeeding support Postpartum adjustment Parenting Workshops	X
	Food Handler Certification program (fee program)		X	X	X
	Registered health education sessions (e.g. smoking cessation, diabetes programs)	X
	Other health education workshops in the community (e.g. food skills, car seat safety, sun safety)	X
	Youth Leadership Program	X