Poll finds majority in Toronto, GTA want people moved from encampments to support facilities

Posted November 5, 2026 6:00 am.

A new Canada Pulse Insights poll conducted for CityNews finds eight in ten residents in Toronto (80 per cent) and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) (85 per cent) believe people camping on streets and in public parks should be moved to supervised support facilities even if it violates their rights.

The poll also found that a strong majority believe unhoused people struggling with addiction should be required to enter treatment.

“In Toronto, 82 per cent agree they should be required to enter treatment run by health professionals, as do 85 per cent in the GTA, even if some say this violates their rights; 40 per cent and 39 per cent strongly agree,” Canada Pulse noted in a release on the findings.

“Support for requiring people in encampments to move rises with age,” the release states. “Across Toronto and the GTA, 72 per cent of residents aged 18 to 34 agree, compared with 82 per cent of those aged 35 to 54 and 92 per cent of those aged 55 and over.

“Required treatment receives broad agreement across all three age groups: 80 per cent, 83 per cent and 86 per cent, respectively.

When it comes the public’s assessment of how communities care for vulnerable people, the poll found only 24 per cent of Torontonians and 27 per cent of GTA residents give their communities an A or B grading.

“The findings suggest a gap between the intervention residents endorse and the care communities are judged to provide,” Canada Pulse writes.

“For political leaders, the task is to work with local agencies, service providers, advocacy groups, people with lived experience and other community stakeholders to turn calls for intervention into workable, humane alternatives—not simply move the problem elsewhere.”

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Methodology: This survey was conducted among adult (18+) residents of the City of Toronto and of the Greater Toronto Area outside Toronto — the City of Mississauga and the regional municipalities of Durham, York, Halton and Peel by Canada Pulse Insights between September 14 and 25, 2026. The margin of error for a comparable probability-based random sample of the same size is ±4.3 percentage points for Toronto and ±3.4 for the GTA, 19 times out of 20. Any discrepancies between the detailed tables and published results are due to rounding.

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