Someone Parked in Your Driveway: What You Can and Cannot Do About It in Toronto

A tow truck offering to clear your driveway on the spot, no paperwork, is offering something Toronto’s by-law does not allow. Here is what a lawful tow needs, from the truck’s licence to the tow card.

I’m Arthur Zhao, a real estate broker in Toronto.

A car you don’t recognize has been sitting in your driveway since morning. Around noon a tow truck slows at the curb, the driver leans out and points at it. “Not yours? I can have it gone in five minutes. No forms, no waiting.” It sounds like exactly what you want. You hesitate anyway, and the hesitation is well placed.

The offer itself is the problem. In Toronto, a tow from private property is not something a homeowner and a tow driver can agree to between themselves. Ontario regulates who may operate the truck, and the City sets out what paperwork has to exist before the hook goes on. This article goes through those layers in that order: the provincial rules that apply to the truck and the driver, then Toronto’s Chapter 915, and finally the different chapter that governs a car parked on the street across the mouth of your driveway. It does not discuss blocking in or holding the car yourself; if you are considering that, the legal risk is a question for a lawyer.

What Ontario requires of the truck, the driver and the yard

Before the City’s rules come into it, the province regulates the people involved. According to the Government of Ontario’s e-Laws consolidation of the Towing and Storage Safety and Enforcement Act, 2021 (TSSEA) (2026), there are three separate certificates:

• The business. Under s.2(1), no person may provide or offer to provide towing services, or hold themself out as a tow operator, except under the authority of a tow certificate.
• The person driving. Under s.3, no person may drive a tow truck to provide towing services, or hold themself out as a tow truck driver, except under a tow driver certificate.
• The place the car ends up. Under s.4, providing or offering vehicle storage services requires a vehicle storage certificate.

Insurance is also a precondition to doing business: s.16(1) says no tow operator shall provide or offer towing services unless insured as the regulations require.

Note the word “offer” in s.2(1). The Act reaches the person who pulls up and proposes the tow, not only the one who completes it.

Estimates, invoices, and charges that cannot be collected

The TSSEA also governs how the money side works.

• Estimates. Section 26(1) requires a tow truck driver or tow operator to provide estimates for towing services, and a storage operator to do the same for storage. Who receives them, and when, is set by regulation (s.26(2)). Under s.26(3), no one may charge for preparing an estimate.
• Invoices. Section 27(1) says no tow operator or tow truck driver shall charge or demand payment for towing services without first providing an invoice in accordance with the regulations. Section 27(2) applies the same rule to storage.
• Charges in breach of the Act. Section 32(1): “An amount charged in contravention of or non-compliance with this Act or the regulations is not collectable or payable.” Section 32(2) requires a refund of such an amount, and s.32(3) lets the person who paid recover an unrefunded amount in court.
• Pressure. Section 34(1) prohibits anyone from coercing, intimidating or threatening a person to obtain consent to towing or storage services, or to get paid for them.

These sections are written around whoever receives and pays for the service, and they do not single out private-property tows. Even so, they give you a way to judge whether the operator at your curb is working inside the system at all.

Toronto’s four preconditions before a tow operator can touch the car

The starting point in the City’s by-law is simple. Section 915-2 B: “No person shall park or leave a motor vehicle on private property without the consent of the property owner or occupant.” Under § 915-2 C, if the owner or occupant has posted signs setting conditions or prohibiting parking, a vehicle left contrary to them is deemed to be there without consent.

Being parked without consent does not, by itself, let a tow operator act. Section 915-5.1, added by By-law 970-2023 (in force January 1, 2024), says no tow truck operator shall tow a vehicle from private property, connect it to a tow truck, or perform any services in relation to it without the vehicle owner’s consent, unless all of the following are true:

• A. A penalty notice has been issued and served under Chapter 610, except where the vehicle has no number plate issued under the Highway Traffic Act.
• B. A Toronto Police Services tow card has been issued, either by the municipal law enforcement officer who issued the penalty notice, or by a police officer, police cadet or municipal law enforcement officer employed by the Toronto Police Service.
• C. All pre-conditions in any applicable by-law, including waiting periods, have been complied with.
• D. Signs are posted at the property as any applicable by-law requires.

Read against the scene at your curb: a driver offering to hook the car up right now, with no officer involved, is describing the exact act § 915-5.1 prohibits.

Who issues the paperwork

Section 915-3 gives the removal power to a police officer, police cadet or municipal law enforcement officer who discovers a vehicle parked contrary to § 915-2. The costs of removal, care and storage “are a lien upon the vehicle”, enforceable under the Repair and Storage Liens Act.

The chapter then splits officers into two groups:

• Toronto Police Service personnel (§ 915-4) may not cause a removal unless a 30-minute waiting period has expired, a Toronto Police Service tow card is issued at the time of removal, and, if the vehicle has a Highway Traffic Act plate, a penalty notice is issued and served.
• Municipal law enforcement officers not employed by the Toronto Police Service (§ 915-5) face an added condition: the property must have been inspected and approved by the Chief of Police, who must be satisfied on ten listed points. Among them, the boundaries are clearly defined, Chief-approved signs are posted, and the Toronto Police Service has on file the licensed tow operator contracted to the property and the garage where removed vehicles will be stored.

The by-law does not say which route applies to a particular house. If your property has never gone through the Chief’s approval process, the § 915-5 route would not be available on its face, which points toward Toronto Police Service Parking Enforcement. That is an inference from the conditions, not a sentence in the by-law.

The consent behind all of this can come from more than the registered owner. Under § 915-1, an “occupant” includes a tenant (for the land and parking spaces allotted under the lease), and both an owner and an occupant may authorize another person in writing to request enforcement on their behalf.

The driveway exception to the 30-minute wait

The by-law defines the waiting period as the time between the “designated event” and the attaching of the tow vehicle. For a removal authorized by Toronto Police Service personnel, the designated event is the Service’s receipt of the request for service; where a non-TPS municipal law enforcement officer authorizes it, the event is service of the penalty notice.

According to the City of Toronto Municipal Code (Chapter 915, 2024), § 915-6 then lists situations where the 30-minute wait in §§ 915-4A and 915-5C does not apply. Item D is short: “A vehicle parked in a driveway.”

What the exception removes is the wait, and only the wait. Nothing in § 915-6 touches the tow card, the penalty notice, or the § 915-5.1 conditions on the tow operator. A car in your driveway can be removed sooner than a car in a large lot, but it still has to be removed through the same paperwork.

The fee cap, and the garage at the other end

Section 915-6.1, also in force from January 1, 2024, applies where a tow operator is hired to tow and store a vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating of 6,000 kilograms or less that was left on private property without consent. The operator may not charge or request a towing fee, a fee to release the vehicle before it is towed, or a storage fee “other than the applicable Toronto Police Service contract rate.” The chapter does not state the dollar figures, so this article doesn’t either.

The chain does not end when the car leaves your driveway. Under § 915-7, a public garage may not store or receive a vehicle towed from private property without the vehicle owner’s consent unless the vehicle bears a penalty notice (plated vehicles), the tow card is provided to the garage operator when the vehicle first arrives, and an approved sign is posted at the garage. That sign must state, among other things, that the garage “has no lien on the vehicle arising from the towing or storage of the vehicle unless a Toronto Police Service tow card has first been issued” (§ 915-7 C(4)).

Section 915-9 adds that the garage may not demand any payment unless § 915-7 has been complied with, the tow card has first been provided to the vehicle owner, and the owner has received a statement in an approved form. Section 915-8 requires the garage, on receipt, to forward the tow card or its information to the Toronto Police Service Parking Enforcement Unit.

Side by side: a tow with the paperwork, and one without

When the car is on the street, blocking your driveway

Everything above concerns a vehicle on private property. A car parked on the road across the entrance to your driveway is on the highway, and a different chapter applies.

Chapter 950, Traffic and Parking, § 950-400 D(1), says no person shall on any highway park any vehicle “in front of or within 60.0 centimetres of a driveway or laneway or so as to obstruct vehicles in the use of a driveway or laneway.”

That is a parking prohibition in its own chapter. The private-property consent rule in § 915-2 and the § 915-6 driveway exception are written for vehicles on private property, so they are not the provisions that apply to the car at your curb.

What to note, what to see, what to walk away from

If a stranger’s car is on your driveway, these are the items Chapter 915 and the TSSEA make relevant.