Toronto’s Mayor John Tory announced Tuesday the Toronto Police Service’s budget request of an additional $48.3 million, which will add 200 police officers to Canada’s biggest city.
If the budget is approved, the 200 new police officers would include 162 officers added to priority response units, with 25 of those officers just for the downtown core. Major case management would gain 22 more officers. The neighbourhood policing program would gain an additional 16 officers to expand the program beyond the 52 neighbourhoods that currently have dedicated community police officers.
The mayor said instead of police “arriving with the lights and sirens after something has happened,” the service would have officers working a beat in the same neighbourhood for years. The residents become “comfortable ... they see somebody walking a beat, who they know by name, who knows them by name, who gets to know the kids, who gets to earn their trust.”
Toronto Mayor John Tory speaks during a press conference at Queen’s Park in Toronto on June 27, 2022. (Cole Burston/The Canadian Press)
On Dec. 28, Tory told CBC Toronto that when he goes to neighbourhoods where a shooting has taken place, the residents “want more money spent on police, they want more police officers.”
“One of our principal responsibilities is to keep our community safe, and to keep Torontonians safe. This will show itself in a proposed 4.3 percent increase in the police budget,” said Tory at a news conference on Jan. 3.
Tory said Toronto Police would be able to add 90 special constables to help with frontline service delivery, and an additional 20 emergency 9-1-1 operators.
“There is no issue that concerns me more than community safety. We have to combat the crime and violence we have seen. I want a safe city for every resident, everywhere in Toronto, at all times,” said Tory.
No Defunding of Police
“I will be very firm in my position that we are not going to engage in defunding the police budget,” said the mayor, who added that recent crimes had increased, many of which were serious, leaving citizens increasingly concerned.
“I know that people are extremely anxious about recent acts of violence that we’ve seen in our city and across the GTA, including on our transit system,” said the mayor.
“So we must do everything we can to address crime, and to keep people safe and have them feel safe in our city,” he said.
According to the Toronto Police Service, there was one Toronto Police officer for every 468 residents in 2011. In 2021, there was one police officer for approximately every 600 residents.
The 2023 budget, which will be presented to the budget committee for final approval on Jan. 10, increases the police budget by 4.3 percent of the 2022 budget, bringing the total police budget to more than $1.1666 billion.
Police attend the scene of a collision in the west end of Toronto on March 31, 2022. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press)
The Toronto Police budget was approximately $1.118 billion in 2022 and about $1.076 billion in 2021. The proposed budget increases still have to be approved by the Toronto Police Services Board at their next meeting on Jan. 9. The year opened with the city reporting a $1.4 billion deficit.
Tory was formerly on the Toronto Police Services Board but said he has not been “for a couple of months now.”
“Despite the tremendous progress we’ve made towards building capacity at the Service, there’s more work that needs to be done to ensure we maintain the core services that the public expects from us,” Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw said in a news release on Jan. 3.
“As we considered our 2023 priorities, it was clear that our budget must reflect what we have heard from the public. It must be about core services and response times to emergency calls from Torontonians,” said Demkiw.
“This budget request reflects the critical need to hire more officers, 9-1-1 operators and special constables to increase operational capacity, and in turn public safety. It also prioritizes modernizing our operations to enable the Service to keep pace with the increasing demands of our growing city.”
With the recent new powers granted under the “strong mayor” legislation put forward by the province, it would only take one-third of the city council to approve the proposed budget.
