Rats are overrunning many Toronto neighbourhoods, and the seemingly non-stop construction across the city is playing a major role in forcing rodents up from the underground.
Coun. Alejandra Bravo plans to bring Toronto’s rat response plan before the Economic and Community Development Committee next week, calling it a proactive plan that gets to the source of the problem, which she says has created the “perfect rat storm.”
“Construction, especially, shouldn’t be raining rats in our neighbourhoods,” Bravo said, noting that under the proposal, construction projects will be required to have a rat management plan before shovels hit the ground.
“Before you dig, you trap.”
Other action items include a rat response coordination team, a rat response enforcement table, and targeted inspection blitzes in areas with a higher reported rodent presence.
Last year, pest control company Orkin listed Toronto as its “rattiest” city in Canada for the third year in a row. Etobicoke, Brampton, Mississauga and Scarborough joined Toronto in the top 25 of Canadian cities with rodent issues.
Dr. Alice Sinia, the resident entomologist with Orkin Canada, says in order to help tackle the issue, there needs to be robust public education, proper enforcement of rat management plans at construction sites, and possibly, taxpayer-funded pest control programs for residences that can’t afford it.
“If there’s going to be a solution, it has to be very strategic and it has to be integrated and everybody has to be on board,” she said.
“Finding solutions to this problem is going to take time because you’re not going to get one single solution that’s going to solve everything.”
The City of Toronto tells CityNews there were almost 1,900 service requests and 411 general inquiries to 311 for rodents or rats in 2024.
So far in 2025, the city says it has received 1,337 service requests and 199 general inquiries.
For the last five years, Karen Wickerson has been at the helm of the rat control program in Alberta, which has been a rat-free zone for almost 70 years.
The province says it does not allow rat populations to establish themselves, and while small infestations might occasionally occur, those rats are isolated and eradicated when found.
Wickerson says a multi-pronged approach is necessary, but ultimately, the province prescribes a strategy of elimination based on vigilant citizen reportage.
Wickerson says the project that began in the 1950s has been so successful that many Albertans don’t even know what a rat looks like, sometimes sending pictures of tree squirrels to the official government reporting email.
Files from The Canadian Press were used in this report
