Solve Canada

A pothole on my street in Toronto went unreported for months, mine included, because saying something took longer than living with it. The city fixes what gets reported. Almost nothing gets reported. That is most of the reason your street looks the way it does, and it is the same in every city I have looked at since.

Solve Canada is the reporting layer that sits on top of whatever a city already runs. It is not a 311 replacement, and 311 was never the only door. A city owns roads and catch basins, but it also owns parks, schools, fire stations, transit stops, town facilities, parking lots, street furniture, and water infrastructure, each with its own department and often its own form. A resident should not have to know which system owns the thing in front of them before they are allowed to say anything about it.

Solve Canada map connecting resident reports with a city's own open data — Every asset a city publishes, on one map, and every one of them reportable.

The Problem

Toronto’s 311 system handles 600+ service types and costs the city $11 to $16 per phone call, and fewer than 20% of residents use the app. The form assumes you already know how city departments are organized, which category your issue falls under, and how to write a formal complaint. Every city I have launched in since has some version of the same gap. The crews are doing the work. The friction sits earlier, in the gap between a resident noticing something and having any fast way to say so.

How It Works

You spot something and take a photo. AI reads the image, writes a proper report, and attaches the location and the infrastructure around it, so what arrives at the city is specific instead of vague. Specific reports get acted on. The report goes to the right department and to your ward councillor, and it also lands on a public map where neighbours can see it, verify it, and watch its status change. When it gets fixed, you find out. That is the loop most reporting systems never close.

What Makes It Different

The platform starts full instead of empty. Before a single resident touches a new city, it already knows that city’s roads, parks, schools, hydrants, catch basins, transit stops, and facilities, pulled from the city’s own open data. Over three million pieces of public infrastructure are on the map across seven cities, with wards and boundaries integrated so you can see what is happening on your street and in your ward.

It also does not stop at the city line. One account, one login, one report history that works in Toronto, Mississauga, Milton, Kitchener, Waterloo, Ottawa, and Peterborough. Every city keeps its own name and its own front door, and SolveTO is the Toronto one, but underneath it is one system. Residents have filed over a thousand reports on it since February.

The hard part was never one more city. It was building one platform that does not start over every time a resident moves or a new town comes online.