Two things happen when Toronto’s forestry officers find a tree contravention on your property. First, the work that caused it stops. Second, the city decides what you owe: replacement trees, root zone repair, and on conviction a fine of up to $100,000 per tree. The letter in your hand tells you which stage you’re at.
Two Orders, Two Different Clocks
A Stop Work Order halts whatever’s happening on site right now. It gets used when officers find an active problem: fencing down, equipment inside a root zone, a tree already cut. Nothing else on the property moves until it’s lifted.
An Order to Comply is the follow-up. It’s served personally or by registered mail, and if it goes by mail it’s deemed served on the third day after it’s sent, whether you opened it or not. The order sets a deadline for the corrective work and tells you what that work is: stop the activity, fix what you damaged, or both. You can get both orders at once.
Officers investigating can enter your property at reasonable times to inspect, take photos and samples, and request documents. Refusing access can lead to enforcement on its own, separate from whatever triggered the original visit.
What the City Can Demand
An Order to Comply can require three kinds of remediation: reinstall or repair whatever tree protection is missing, restore the damaged root zone with soil and mulch, and remove anything encroaching on the tree protection zone.
Then there’s replanting. For a tree removed without authorization under Chapter 813, the City’s contravention page states five replacement trees for every one removed. A February 2026 staff report replaces that flat ratio with a diameter-based one, from 5:1 up to about 23:1, effective September 1, 2026, with no published table. In ravine and natural feature areas under Chapter 658, a size-based table has applied since November 2022. It runs from 2:1 for a tree 19 cm or smaller up to 23:1 for a tree 150 to 159 cm. For a tree injured without authorization in a ravine area, the City’s contravention page lists two replacement trees per tree injured. A permitted injury is replaced 1:1 under Urban Forestry’s table.
Replacement trees have to be kept in good condition for two years, to the city’s satisfaction, with dead ones replaced again, work done by or under an arborist. If planting all of them on site isn’t possible, the alternative is a cash payment equal to 120 percent of what it would cost to plant and maintain them for two years.
The Money
A conviction carries a fine of $500 to $100,000 per tree, and that’s per tree, not per incident. On top of that, the city can seek a special fine of up to $100,000. If you’re a corporate officer or director and you knowingly went along with the contravention, you can be held personally liable too.
Ignore the Order to Comply itself and that’s a separate offence, stacked on top of whatever the underlying contravention already cost you. And if you don’t do the corrective work by the deadline, the city can send in its own crew, do it, and bill you. Under the ravine bylaw specifically, unpaid costs can go straight onto your property tax roll.
There’s also a contravention inspection fee, charged per tree investigated and due within 90 days of the order, or added to your tax roll if it isn’t paid. It is a cost-recovery fee, not a permit fee. In 2026 it runs $304.51 to $913.58 per tree: $304.51 where no construction is involved and $913.58 for construction-related cases.
If your property backs onto a ravine, that bylaw adds a penalty the private-tree bylaw doesn’t have: a continuing offence there can run $500 to $10,000 per day. That per-day clock doesn’t apply outside ravine areas.
No ticket lets you pay and close the matter. Prosecution for a tree bylaw offence goes through the courts, not a set-fine system like a parking ticket. The City has floated adding one, but it is a proposal under review, not a rule in force.
What Contravention Cases Have Cost
The $100,000-per-tree number is a ceiling. None of the cases below came near it.
In 2016, a developer clear-cut 40 mature trees, some over a century old and one linden roughly 150 years old, across two Bayview Ridge properties over a July long weekend. The city said no permit had ever been issued. The company disputed that. Rather than prosecute, city legal pursued an Order to Comply: just over $155,000 in remediation and 200 replacement trees, with deposits refunded per tree as each survived two years. It wasn’t a court fine. As reported by CBC, then-councillor Jaye Robinson called the outcome “a slap on the wrist.”
That same year, an Etobicoke homeowner cut 34 trees in the ravine-designated part of his own backyard over a long weekend. As reported by CBC, he was ordered to pay almost $6,000 in penalties and plant more than 100 replacement trees.
The one case that did go to court: an Oakville development company pleaded guilty in 2021 to clear-cutting hundreds of trees without a permit. Sentenced at Provincial Offences Court in Burlington, the company was fined $50,000 plus the provincial victim fine surcharge, payable over a year, as a first offence and a joint submission.
There’s also an active one. As reported by CBC in 2025 and 2026, a Toronto multiplex developer is under city investigation for unpermitted tree removal at eight or more properties, including a roughly 80-centimetre honey locust cut after a removal application for it had been denied. The matter is before the courts, with no findings made yet.
What Changed on September 1, 2026
Council adopted a set of bylaw amendments that took effect on September 1, 2026. None of them change the $500 to $100,000 per tree fine range.
The amendments do not change the contravention replacement ratio. A separate February 2026 staff report changes that ratio.
If a tree is already gone by the time officers investigate, a stump 40 centimetres or wider, measured 30 centimetres above ground, lets officers treat the tree as protected (s. 813-25 B(5)), closing a gap where cutting a tree flush to the ground made it harder to prove what had been there.
Compensation and development-condition trees, the ones planted because a permit required it, are now protected the moment they go in the ground, regardless of size. A new Distinctive Tree category also covers healthy private trees greater than 61 centimetres in diameter, expanding what counts as protected.
How to Respond to the Order
Once a Stop Work Order or Order to Comply lands, the instinct is to fix the visible problem yourself, fast. Don’t. Touching anything else in the tree protection zone before you have a plan the city has seen makes things worse, and any protection barrier already up can’t be moved or altered without the general manager’s authorization.
Get an arborist on site to assess the damage and put together a remediation plan before you respond to the city. That plan needs to speak to the specific order you received: what protection gets reinstalled, how the root zone gets restored, and what the replanting obligation looks like given the tree’s size and location.
The City sends a contravention inspection form, an Order to Comply and a cover letter by email, with copies by registered mail. Reply to confirm you received them. If an arborist, builder or lawyer will deal with the officer for you, the owner confirms that in writing first, because officers will not discuss the file with an agent before then. Meet each deadline in the order, such as repairing hoarding or clearing a protection zone, and send photos the day the work is done. A missed deadline brings follow-up contravention fees. A Stop Work Order stays in place until Urban Forestry issues a permit for the work, so file the permit application with the district Tree Protection and Plan Review office as well. That application waits until the order is met, and the planner then asks for a revised arborist report that separates the injuries already done from the work still to come.
Then engage Urban Forestry directly, with the remediation plan in hand. Our stop work order clearance service covers this sequence: an emergency site assessment, a deficiency analysis against what the order requires, a remediation plan and direct liaison with the city.
If the original problem was inadequate tree protection fencing rather than root or trunk damage, the fix is narrower, but you still need City sign-off before anything comes down. That close-out step is not optional (see when protection fencing can legally come down for the full process), and skipping it is its own separate contravention. Once remediation work is done, send the officer photos and documents of the finished work. The Order to Comply is fulfilled once the officer accepts them, with no separate inspection request.
Getting the Order Closed Without a Second Contravention
The Toronto permit rules that governed the original tree are the same rules your remediation plan has to satisfy.
We handle Stop Work Order and Order to Comply responses for Toronto and GTA properties, and we deal with Urban Forestry directly. Contact us with a copy of the order and your property address, and we will identify the documented deficiencies before the site visit.