BRAD BRADFORD
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When it comes to municipal budgets, there are few things more important than our ability to ensure we have a safe city for residents.
That requires enough funding to ensure that we have adequate resources for our first responders to deploy and respond when they are called upon.
Mayor Olivia Chow’s current proposal to cut $12.6 million from the budget — approved unanimously by the police services board — will prevent the police from hiring four classes of 90 new frontline officers to both replace retiring officers and add new ones.
Make no mistake: This cut will compromise the ability of the police to respond to Priority 1 Calls, where there is an immediate threat to life.
Today, the average Priority 1 response time is an excruciating 22 minutes. That is a direct result of not having enough frontline officers, a problem that has only gotten worse as our population growth has accelerated during the past decade.
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Consider this: In 2010, we had a frontline police force of more than 5,600 officers. Today, we have around 5,100 officers — an 11% reduction in officers even as our population has grown 13%.
We need to stop the cycle of politicizing police funding and freezing budgets to ensure that our city has officers when and where we need them.
While $12.6 million may not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of Chow’s $17-billion budget, those dollars are directly tied to the police’s ability to hire those desperately needed recruits.
If you are home during a violent break-in, you would want to know the police would be there within minutes. Right now, that’s far from guaranteed.
The mayor may think she can kick this down the road and postpone hiring, but Toronto’s police force is already staring down an avalanche of retirements.
Roughly 25% of officers are eligible to retire today, which puts us in a compromised position going forward. Chow’s decision to cut the budget for hiring new officers would mean that retirements will outpace the ability to hire and train new officers, leaving us shorthanded by next year.
Now is the best time to be hiring new frontline officers so that they can learn from the experience of these senior officers before they leave the force. We expect the best from our police and that requires best-in-class training and mentorship, and both rely on having an adequately funded police budget.
As one of a city’s core services, policing is understandably one of the largest line items. But Toronto gets good value for money. At 8.7% of our city budget, it is significantly less than in Vancouver (20.9%) or Edmonton (15.2%).
There is money available. In the new deal between Queen’s Park and Toronto, $300 million was included to enhance transit safety and security. Premier Doug Ford was clear that this money should go towards more police officers on and near transit — but this budget doesn’t give a nickel from that massive cheque to the police.
If the funding is not restored, Toronto’s chief of police has said he would be forced to redirect traffic enforcement and neighbourhood officers to emergency response, which must always be the first priority of any police force. However, that would mean fewer officers dedicated to road safety, preventing auto theft, and building relationships with communities.
It’s very unusual to see Toronto’s police chief speaking out so publicly about his own budget. That he would go to this extent demonstrates just how essential this funding is to deliver adequate and effective policing.
Chow has another opportunity to restore this funding when she presents the latest version of her budget on Thursday. For the sake of public safety, I hope she’ll restore this funding.
In a $17-billion budget, finding the $12.6 million needed to restore a core city service is a no-brainer.
For the mayor and some of her allies, cutting the police budget might be driven by ideology. But for most Torontonians, providing adequate funding for frontline officers is about public safety and common sense.
— Brad Bradford is the Toronto city councillor for Ward 19 (Beaches — East York). He can be reached at Councillor_Bradford@toronto.ca.
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