University of Toronto urbanist-in-residence Zahra Ebrahim brings change and gets paid.
Followers of IntegrityTO on Instagram have become angry about revelations that University of Toronto School of Cities urbanist-in-residence, Zahra Ebrahim, has been awarded lucrative contracts since helping get Ausma Malik elected in 2022. She's also been getting contracts from the Toronto Police Service Board which Amber Morley sits on.
Urban designer Zahra Ebrahim is one of the founding advisors of the advocacy firm Progress Toronto, which played a key role in the election victories of Ausma Malik and Amber Morley in 2022. According to documents released by IntegrityTO on Instagram, since 2022 Ebrahim's urban design company Monumental Projects has gained a number of very lucrative contracts from the City of Toronto.
Ebrahim billed the City of Toronto $60,000 for a "naming project" in March 2022, and then another $24,000 for another naming project a few months later. An FOI request shows she has billed the City of Toronto $4,500 for a speaking engagement.
Between 2022 and 2025, Ebrahim's design firm Monumental billed the City of Toronto for a total of $254,617.79. She's also listed as a founding advisor of Progress Toronto , the powerful advocacy group that was instrumental in Chow becoming mayor in the last byelection. Progress Toronto provides logistical, financial and labour intensive ground support to help its candidates get elected.
In addition to helping Ausma Malik getting elected in 2022, Progress Toronto also supported four other City Councillors who were successful in 2022. One of those, Amber Morley, sits on the Police Services Board, which has also become an important client for Zahra Ebrahim's design firm. In 2025, the Toronto Police Service Board paid $152,640.00 to Monumental, according to a document available online at Toronto Police Service Board. Progress Toronto has been running Facebook ads stating that Morley hasn't wavered from the principles she was elected with.
In addition to her advisory role at Progress Toronto, Ebrahim is also an urbanist-in-residence at the University of Toronto's School of Cities. She did not respond to a request for an interview.
