The City of Toronto will begin tracking homeless deaths with the goal of developing policy and legislation to stop these tragedies in the city and across the province.

Council passed a motion tabled by Councillor Paul Ainslie on Friday, directing the city to collect all data related to homeless deaths both inside and outside shelters, and for this information to be shared with the provincial government.

“People in the city and in Canada should not be dying on our streets. If they do, we should understand why so that it never happens again,” said Ainslie. “Every person counts. Every person has a right to live with dignity, and unfortunately, if they pass away, to die with dignity.”

The vote comes after a Star investigation published earlier this year revealed that neither a majority of municipalities in Ontario, nor the provincial government, track homeless deaths fully or in some cases at all. This lack of data means governments have very little idea of the scope of the problem and the best ways to solve it.

The City of Toronto already tracks the deaths of city-administered shelter residents. There were 217 shelter-related deaths between 2007 and 2015, according to the city’s records. Ainslie’s motion directs the city to broaden its scope of data collection to include homeless individuals who die outside the shelter system.

“I’m very moved by council’s leadership on this issue. It’s the first step towards positive change in helping this vulnerable population,” said Leigh Chapman, whose brother Brad Chapman, a homeless man, died last summer in hospital at the age of 43 after suffering a drug overdose in an alley near Yonge and Gerrard Sts.

Because his death was not deemed suspicious and he did not die in a city-administered shelter, his name is not recorded on any official list. Effectively, in death, Brad Chapman became an invisible statistic.

“I can’t help but wonder what families of other homeless individuals who die in municipalities outside of Toronto will have to endure when these deaths are not tracked,” said Leigh Chapman.

Deb Matthews, deputy premier and minister responsible for the province’s poverty reduction strategy, told the Star earlier this week that the province encourages municipalities’ efforts to collect homelessness data and that such information will help establish a baseline against which to measure progress in ending homelessness in Ontario.

City staff in various departments will now begin working on how best to collect homeless death data in Toronto. There is no timeframe for when the city will report back to council.