City of Toronto only implemented 8 of 19 snow-clearing recommendations it claimed were complete: Auditor

A worker uses a snowblower to clear snow from Nathan Phillips Square at city hall following a heavy snowfall in Toronto, on Thursday, February 13, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Arlyn McAdorey

A new report by Toronto’s Auditor General has found that city management claimed to have fully implemented 19 recommendations around snow clearing ahead of a major February snowstorm that brought the city to a standstill, when in fact it had implemented just eight – fewer than half of what it claimed.

The report follows a request from City Council in March to review a number of areas of concern around snow clearing, including whether previous recommendations from the auditor general had been implemented ahead of the February storm.

Auditor General Tara Anderson assessed nine of the recommendations as not having been fully implemented, and two as no longer being applicable.

Problems with field audits

Toronto was walloped by a pair of winter storms that dumped some 53 centimetres of snow on the city in February.

Despite numerous complaints from the public about the state of snow-clearing, Anderson found that the 100 field audits she reviewed did not document any contractor problems.

Anderson found that some of the field audits reviewed just 60 metres of roadway and that total kilometres assessed ranged from 6.45 km to 9.38 km per contract area, out of a total pavement length of about 510 km, on average, per contract area.

She also found that over half the field audits sampled by her team contained one or more pieces of missing information, such as time and location, the total distance inspected, and the inspector’s name and signature.

Anderson found “the limited detail in the reports raises concerns about the adequacy of the inspections and the quality of documentation.”

She noted that the records could also be used as legal evidence in slip and fall incidents, raising further problems arising from unreliable reports.

Auditor has been issuing reports on snow clearing for 5 years

Toronto has struggled to implement best practices around snow clearing for several years. The city’s snow clearing efforts were the subject of three previous reports from the auditor general. Among other problems, they found poor implementation of GPS tracking of snow-clearing vehicles and poor enforcement of contract standards.

In the latest report released Friday, Anderson called on the city to speed up its implementation of the recommendations.

“It has been between two to five years since these previous report recommendations were issued,” she wrote. “Combined with the challenges the City faced during the 2025 winter storm, it is critical for management to expedite fully implementing these 12 recommendations.”

Among the ongoing problems are “persistent challenges” with the GPS Dashboard system created by a third-party provider and launched in 2023.

Despite regular communication with the vendor, Anderson wrote, the system continues to be plagued by “inaccurate data, slow performance, and overall unreliability.”

“Despite ongoing meetings and significant investment, some of these problems remain unresolved, even though the City is now over three years into the performance-based winter maintenance contracts,” she wrote.

“This hinders the Division’s ability to efficiently monitor contractor performance and compliance with service level standards and the effectiveness of contractor oversight.”

Anderson added that it is “critical” that the issues with the dashboard be resolved before the next winter season so that the city is able to hold contractors accountable.

In a statement, Mayor Olivia Chow’s office thanked the auditor for her report and vowed to do better.

“We accept the Auditor General’s recommendations and look forward to reviewing the report,” Chow’s office said. “The City Manager will also bring forth a report this month. Ultimately, Torontonians expect snow to be cleared - we are going to get it fixed so this doesn’t happen again.”

Other recent reports from the auditor have found poor reporting on work performed by the parks department and in assessing ageing and broken park and playground facilities.