Toronto’s alternative crisis response model deemed a success

A Toronto emergency response program that helped inspire Winnipeg’s proposed alternative crisis response model has already expanded city-wide, just four years after launching as a pilot project.

The Toronto Community Crisis Service, launched in 2022, has become the city’s fourth emergency service, providing a 24-7, community-based response to people experiencing mental health crises. The service has handled nearly 50,000 calls through 911 and 211, dispatched mobile crisis teams to more than 41,000 incidents, made more than 11,600 referrals to health and social services and resolved the majority of eligible 911 calls without police involvement.

Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham last week proposed creating a similar “fourth crisis response pathway” that would allow 911 calls that aren’t violent or criminal in nature to be transferred to community-based crisis teams.

Under the proposal, which has support from both the Winnipeg Police Service and the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service, a centralized crisis dispatch and co-ordination hub would receive triaged calls and match them with citywide response teams, staffed in part through existing community organizations, including the Downtown Community Safety Partnership and The Link’s mobile crisis teams. The goal is to divert appropriate calls away from the WPS and WFPS.

“I see the parallel in the positioning there in Winnipeg,” Dilya Niezova, Toronto’s community development manager and manager of the city’s Alternative Safety Response Unit, told the Free Press, adding that city officials from Winnipeg met with their Toronto counterparts to discuss Toronto’s service.

Niezova said Toronto’s program grew out of years of advocacy from community organizations, with the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 accelerating conversations about rethinking crisis response.

“It brought forward some really important conversations about how crisis response could better prioritize health, safety and equity,” Niezova said.

Consultations with community groups, people with lived experience, police and paramedics all pointed to the same conclusion: there was a need for a health-led, community-based response to mental health crises.

The pilot launched in 2022 and, after demonstrating success, was expanded across the city by Toronto council. At the end of 2025, the city also introduced a dedicated crisis response team for its subway system.

In 2025, Toronto’s 911 service received about 1.6 million calls, including roughly 27,000 related to mental health.

Of those, Niezova said, 4,482 calls were diverted to the crisis response service, with about 88 per cent resolved without police involvement. Just 2.3 per cent ultimately required emergency services, such as paramedics or police, because the situation escalated.

By 2031, the city hopes to divert 10,000 calls annually.

“We have never really positioned Toronto Community Crisis Service as a service that can handle every single mental health crisis call,” Niezova said. “There are some that will still need other emergency services. What we’re trying to do is create some space and pathway here for those ones that would benefit much more from a non-police led response, a more help-focused response.”

Niezova added that Toronto has been promoting its 211 line, including with a campaign called Make the Right Call, encouraging people to contact 211 for mental health-related calls.

She said the service also includes followup support through case management, referrals and connections to community resources — an approach that is also built into Winnipeg’s proposed model.

Niezova said an independent evaluation by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the country’s largest mental health teaching hospital, concluded that its service is “effectively reaching its intended population.”

“It’s providing safe and appropriate crisis response … clients are having a good experience and they’re valuing the experience that they’re having,” she said. “And that community partners and first responders are also co-ordinating services in an effective way.”

Toronto fully funds the program, budgeting more than $37 million for it in 2026. Winnipeg has estimated its proposed service would cost about $6 million to launch, but the city is asking the province to help fund it, though Gillingham wouldn’t say what the monetary ask is.

The province would not comment on the proposal earlier this week.

A third-party report from Pensa Consulting concluded that 3,855 Winnipeg Police Service calls — or nearly 8,000 hours of officer time — and 6,356 Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service calls could be redirected to a community response model annually.

WPS Chief Gene Bowers said his service handles around 20,000 well-being checks a year, or about 53 per day.

City council will consider the proposal in September.

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca