The City of Toronto bought a five-storey building from an organization co-founded by a top bureaucrat – and it appears it may already be planning to give it away. Just months after last year’s $16-million purchase of 720 Bathurst St., City Hall has indicated it may hand over the deed to a group that has signed on to run a homeless shelter exclusively for Indigenous men out of that brick building.
The building on Bathurst was bought from the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), an organization co-founded by Pat Tobin, who runs the city’s economic development and culture division. The city told the Toronto Sun in a statement that all protocols were followed, including conflict-of-interest safeguards for staff. Tobin, when asked for comment, pointed to the city’s statement and said he has not had official involvement with CSI in many years.
Details of the Deal
The 720 Bathurst deal is one in a collection of under-reported or unreported transfers of land or money to either the Aboriginal Labour Force Development Circle (ALFDC), a non-profit that oversees a multimillion-dollar city housing fund, or one of the constellation of groups affiliated with its lobbying of Mayor Olivia Chow in 2023. The ALFDC has been sent $39.4 million by City Hall since 2020 to distribute to various groups. City Council agreed to put 20% of Toronto’s housing and homelessness grant money into a funding stream overseen by the ALFDC – an organization that operates out of a building two hours east of town – a few months before Chow met with the group’s lobbyist.
Taking over 720 Bathurst is the Native Men’s Residence, better known as Na-Me-Res. Executive director Steve Teekens told the Sun that getting that land would make a real difference in lifting up some of the most vulnerable people in Toronto. “We’re just grassroots folks here trying to help out,” he said, “and it’s appalling that there’s a disproportionate number of Indigenous folks experiencing homelessness in this city.”
Funding and Lobbying
The city’s flow of cash to the ALFDC is laid out in a spreadsheet obtained by the Sun after a freedom-of-information request. While not an authoritative list of Toronto’s funding of Indigenous-related groups, the spreadsheet shows $66.5 million has been paid out to several organizations since 2020. The Sun had asked for all funding of organizations declared as Indigenous, but City Hall refused, saying payments are not tagged or categorized on the basis of being for First Nations, Indigenous or other Aboriginal groups – despite the city’s special processes for procurement and its Indigenous funding stream administered by the ALFDC. Data was later provided for groups with specific words such as “First Nations” or “Indigenous” in their names.
Groups funded through the stream – such as Na-Me-Res and the Native Women’s Resource Centre (NWRC) – can also get money from City Hall outside of that process. For example, the spreadsheet shows one funding stream recipient, New Frontiers Aboriginal Residential Corp., got $8.4 million directly from the city. A 2022 document the city shared with the Sun shows the ALFDC gets a 15% cut to oversee funding, some of which comes from the federal and provincial governments. The amount sent to the ALFDC to oversee has grown dramatically since July 2023, with at least $29 million sent to the non-profit in that period.
Role of Former Mayor McKelvie
In 2023, the ALFDC was sent nearly $11.7 million in grant money, $7.3 million of it after a motion brought forward that June by Jennifer McKelvie. Now a Liberal MP representing Ajax, McKelvie was then serving as Toronto’s temporary mayor, following John Tory’s exit. Just days before the byelection that saw Chow take the mayor’s chair, McKelvie’s motion was brought forward without notice, and it passed without debate. Another motion that same day also led to something much bigger, as a governance review laid the seeds for the renaming of Yonge-Dundas Square.
Having secured oversight of 20% of City Hall’s housing funding, the ALFDC sought something else from the new boss. A city registry shows that StrategyCorp, a lobbying firm, was repeatedly in contact with the mayor’s office in 2023 to seek support and funding for housing for Toronto’s Indigenous community on the ALFDC’s behalf. StrategyCorp met with Chow on Oct. 17 of that year, then met twice more with a staffer that month. All told, StrategyCorp contacted her office on nine days in fall 2023. Other beneficiaries of StrategyCorp’s lobbying, as listed in the registry, included Na-Me-Res and the NWRC. The ALFDC called these prospective project partners and said the meeting was not related to the new shelters those groups will operate.
Shelter Plans and Timeline
More than a year later, in early 2025, Na-Me-Res applied to run a new shelter. Last September, they were told that application scored very well and was approved – a surprisingly fast turnaround, Teekens said. At the end of last year, around the time the sale of the building was making its way into the press, Na-Me-Res was delighted to learn it would operate a shelter at 720 Bathurst. City representatives said the NWRC will be given 68 Sheppard Ave. W, which was a parking lot until last month, to operate a shelter for Indigenous women and children only. The shelters at 68 Sheppard and 720 Bathurst are not expected to open until at least 2028.
Teekens said he sees the donation of 720 Bathurst not as a done deal, but potentially a pipe dream. He doubts there is political will at City Hall right now to transfer the property. “Council will shoot it down unequivocally,” Teekens said. Acquiring the land would be no mere gesture: Ownership of the building would mean Na-Me-Res could tap into that equity to leverage more housing opportunities in the future.
CSI's Perspective
In a statement, CSI CEO Tonya Surman said 720 Bathurst sold at market value, and her group has no formal partnerships or official involvement with any entity mentioned in this article relating to that sale. The CSI continues to operate out of a building on Spadina, and Surman said it has no further involvement in 720 Bathurst. City Hall would not confirm if it has plans to donate Toronto land as part of any other shelter deal.
