The Law Union of Ontario calls on Toronto City Council not to approve the Toronto Police Service’s 2025 budget request
January 15, 2025
The Policing Subcommittee of the Law Union of Ontario is calling on City Council not to approve the police budget request submitted by the Toronto Police Services Board as is its right under the Community Safety and Policing Act.
The proposed budget increase of 3.9% ($46 million), if approved, will come at the expense of other essential services and programs vitally needed to address the City’s housing crisis, burgeoning homelessness, crippling traffic congestion, and deteriorating public transportation and infrastructure. The long-term safety and wellbeing of Toronto residents depends on our willingness to build a caring and thriving community with opportunities, quality of life and equality for all rather than on a blind reliance on ever-increasing police budgets and police presence in our communities.
The proposed increase does not include the additional 5% retroactive pay increase granted to Toronto Police officers and civilian staff for 2024. This increase will add another estimated 4.5% ($53 million) to the budget outlay for 2025. All this comes before the inevitable pay increases for 2025 and beyond under the new collective agreement with the Toronto Police Association currently under negotiation.
The City faces serious financial constraints; committing to ever-increasing police budgets will only serve to worsen this situation and hamper the City’s ability in years to come to address its needs and problems.
The Law Union urges Toronto residents and community groups to email the Mayor (mayor_chow@toronto.ca) and their councilor to express their opposition to these increases.
“We need to fund solutions, not more policing,” said Howard Morton, Chair of the Law Union’s Policing Committee. “Law enforcement is only a small part of a much larger whole picture. The City needs to address the root causes of crime and social disorder, such as poverty, lack of housing, drug addiction and social alienation. Putting more officers on the streets will not end homelessness, reduce the unemployment and underemployment of our young men and women or get kids off the streets into schools, libraries and recreation centres. It will just mean more arrests, more court time and more jail, creating an endless spiraling up of costs and criminalization at the expense of programs that might make a real difference.”
The budget request also lacks transparency and accountability. It hides a $92 million black hole in an item called “Detective Operations Confidential.” This category lumps together Intelligence Services and Organized Crime Enforcement (including Guns & Gangs, Drug Squad, Financial Crimes, and Fugitive Squad) but provides no breakdown of the expenditure by unit or squad for the coming year or for previous years. City Council and the public are left in the dark about how their money is being spent for these critical police services.
The budget also provides no breakdown by program, function and services as required by City Council in 2020 as part of its police reform package in response to the demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd and by the Toronto Police Service Board’s Budget Transparency Policy passed in 2021. The Chief of Police has never complied with this policy and the Board and City Council have never held him accountable for this.
“Knowing where the money goes is essential for proper governance, informed public input and accountability,” said Alok Mukherjee, a former Chair of the Toronto Police Services Board. “Equally important is for the Chief of Police to be held accountable for any failure to comply with Board directives. This is what governance is all about. Police Service Boards in this Province have been repeatedly criticized by judicial inquiries about their failure to live up to their mandate to provide strong civilian oversight and governance of our police forces. This is just the latest example of this failing.”
There are other problems with the Budget. The Toronto Police have lost control over premium pay provided for overtime, callbacks and the like. For 2024 premium pay overshot its budgeted amount by 66% ($38.8m), repeating a pattern dating back to 2022. Some officers appear to have been able to take advantage of the rules to garner extraordinary levels of pay. The latest version of the Ontario Sunshine List shows a police sergeant making $379,000+ for 2023, some $15,000 more than the Chief of Police. Four other sergeants and two police constables were paid over $300,000 that year. The Toronto Star recently reported that a senior Toronto Crown Attorney told Crowns to limit contact with officers outside of their shifts to curb the practice of some police officers billing three to four hours of OT for even a short call (Toronto Star, December 4, 2024, Four hours of OT for a five-minute call: Crown attorneys told to stop calling Toronto police officers to help curb overtime ‘insanity’).
The amount budgeted for community outreach by the Toronto Police remains minuscule, representing less than 0.5% of the budget request, belying any belief that the budget request includes an increased focus on community policing. City Council, the Toronto Police Services Board and the Toronto Police need to understand what community policing means. Community policing is a systematic approach involving an ongoing partnership between the community and the police to use problem-solving techniques to proactively address the conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime. When implemented correctly it can significantly reduce apparently intractable problems such as gun violence. This budget does not begin to implement such an approach.
Finally, the Chief of Police has requested a 14% increase for his office alone for no apparent reason.
The Law Union of Ontario is a community of lawyers, paralegals, law students and legal workers who are committed to social justice and human rights, and who understand that their role in the administration of justice affords not just an opportunity but a responsibility to work for systemic social change and to counter the traditional hierarchies of power and privilege.
The purpose of the Policing Committee is to hold the police accountable and to advocate for meaningful police reform.
