Toronto's tree bylaw just got tougher — what it means for your backyard, your addition, and the house next door

Fall is when Toronto's tree work happens. Leaves come down, arborists get booked up, and homeowners planning a spring addition, garden suite, or pool start thinking about the maple in the way. This year there's a wrinkle: the City's tree bylaws changed on September 1, 2026, with more queued for 2027.

The basics haven't moved (yet)

• Any tree on private property with a trunk 30 cm or more in diameter, measured 1.4 m above the ground, is protected. Injuring or removing one needs a permit.
• Street trees of any size are protected, and so is every tree in a designated ravine or natural feature area.
• "Injure" is broad. Excavating, storing materials, parking equipment, or pouring concrete inside a tree's protection zone counts — 2.4 m from the trunk for a 30–40 cm tree, up to 6 m for a metre-wide trunk.
• Pruning doesn't need a permit, and neither does removing a 100% dead tree. A hazardous or terminally diseased tree needs a written permit exception first.

Quick measure: wrap a tape around the trunk at chest height and divide by 3.14. If the answer is 30 or more, you need a permit.

What changed on September 1, 2026

The City's Tree Bylaw Review brought in a first batch of amendments:

• A new "Distinctive Tree" category. Healthy trees over 61 cm in diameter (the City's comparison: a car tire) now get added weight when staff review a permit to injure or remove them, plus a maintenance incentive pilot through 2026–27.
• Steeper replacement ratios for violations — a diameter-based scale starting at 5:1 and climbing for bigger trees.
• Stump diameter counts as evidence. A stump of 40 cm or more can establish that a removed tree was protected.
• Trees planted under an enforcement or development condition are protected at any size. Cutting down the sapling you were ordered to plant is now itself a violation.
• New ravine permit fees, from $87.57 per tree for a non-construction removal to $549.08 per boundary tree in a construction application.

What's coming in 2027

• The protected size drops from 30 cm to 20 cm. Council has endorsed it in principle, pending an implementation plan. A 20 cm trunk is about a 63 cm circumference — a lot of ordinary backyard trees that are unregulated today would be covered.
• Quarterly public reporting of permit and contravention outcomes on the Open Data portal, starting in 2026. Today, whether a lot was fined for an illegal removal is hard to find out; that record is supposed to become public.

Why a neighbour's building permit is your cue

Tree permits are handled by Urban Forestry, not Toronto Building, and they don't appear in the building permit dataset. What does appear is the work that triggers them.

Take 17 Cranbrooke Ave in Eglinton-Lawrence: a July 2026 application, currently at the "application acceptable" stage, for a basement second suite, a rear basement walk-out, and a one-storey rear carport addition. A walk-out means excavation along the back of the house; a carport means a new footing in the yard. If a 30 cm+ tree stands within a few metres of either — on that lot or the neighbour's — a separate tree permit is required and the design may have to change. None of that shows up in the building permit record. (Data via PropertyMonitorTO, from the City's Building Permits — Active Permits dataset.)

Ownership matters too: a boundary tree straddling the line belongs to both owners and needs both to consent, and a permit never lets anyone remove someone else's tree.

Before you sign or dig

• Buying? Walk the lot with a tape measure. A 61 cm+ tree is now a Distinctive Tree, and any future addition or pool will be reviewed against it. Check the Ravine and Natural Feature map — a striped lot means every tree is protected and grade changes need a permit.
• Renovating? Get an arborist report early. As-of-right status doesn't exempt you, and the City can refuse a tree permit for a garden or laneway suite that would remove a healthy protected tree — even if the building permit is fine.
• Living next to construction? Pull the neighbour's permit history to see what's approved, then check what falls inside your trees' protection zones. If hoarding or excavation crosses in, report it to 311.

Start with the property snapshot for the permit and order record on any address, and turn on monitoring so a new permit next door lands in your inbox before the excavator does.