Toronto still struggling to track snow plows with GPS, auditor finds

The city's plan to use GPS and field checks to track the work of snow-clearing contractors is still ineffective, Toronto's auditor general found in a new report.

The key finding is part of a follow-up review of the city's snow-clearing service, which has been plagued with questions about effectiveness and efficiency, especially after it inked a controversial deal in 2021. 

Those questions grew louder after Torontonians filed tens of thousands of complaints to 311 in the wake of back-to-back-to-back storms that paralyzed streets this winter. 

Mayor Olivia Chow, who called last winter's storm response a "failure," is looking forward to reviewing the auditor's latest report, her office said in an emailed statement.

"Ultimately, Torontonians expect snow to be cleared — we are going to get it fixed so this doesn't happen again," said Zeus Eden, Chow's press secretary.

Auditor Tara Anderson first looked at snow clearing with a damning probe of the service in 2023, which showed the contractors struggled to get equipment on time and hire enough staff. In this follow-up, she found city staff still haven't implemented nine recommendations her office made, despite officials claiming all 30 had been completed.

The GPS matter is especially key, her report notes, because it's the primary way the city tracks what work is getting done during a storm and whether it should be applying penalties to the contractors for not getting their plows out on time.

"Ongoing GPS dashboard reliability issues hinder the Division's ability to monitor contractor performance," Anderson said in one document.

Further, she said, "significant effort is spent manually comparing expected routes with GPS information, which is labour-intensive and time consuming."

The auditor's review also shows, for the first time, how much money the city has sought from contractors stemming from performance issues. Anderson found staff are using an "inefficient, unsustainable, and unreliable method" to penalize the companies for non-compliance.

Councillors voted in March for a full review of how the city handles its winter operations, which Chow's office said should be released this month.

Councillors will first get a chance to ask the auditor questions about this report next Friday. 

CBC Toronto sent several questions to the transportation services division but did not receive answers by publication time. This story will be updated.

New details about how city monitors contractors

Some 70 per cent of snow-clearing in Toronto is handled by private companies. In 2021, the city inked a deal that saw two companies and their joint venture win the rights to handle almost all of that work, the only exceptions being the Willowdale area and the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway. 

Three years in, Anderson found there are still issues with tracking the contractors' performance via GPS. 

Specifically, her new report states the "GPS dashboard used to monitor route completion is still not effective," noting it also suffers from "reliability issues."

Multiple city councillors voiced frustration during the March meeting, recounting times where they were told by staff that streets had been plowed when they could see with their own eyes that wasn't the case. 

In response, transportation staff noted field audits — when staff go out to check on conditions — also take place. 

However, Anderson's report shows how little ground is covered by those audits and recommended the city use longer street segments to figure out where things are going wrong.

The city's field audits, Anderson found, range in length from 60 metres to 1.36 kilometres. In total, she found the city was reviewing just two per cent of the contract area per storm. 

Worse, about half of those audits were missing "one or more" pieces of information. 

Penalties far lower than staff had suggested

The auditor has previously flagged major changes to how the city penalizes companies, and this report has some final dollar figures. 

In 2023-2024, the city charged $43,000 in liquidated damages, Anderson found (liquidated damages are an amount of money, agreed to by both sides during a contract negotiation, to be paid out by one of the parties if a provision of that contract is breached). It also charged $381,000 in disincentives.

In 2024-2025 (as of January) the city charged $63,000 in liquidated damages and $195,000 in disincentives.