An unlimited supply of money from taxpayers: police board refuses to look at 23.3% budget increase, ignores council request

In a two-page letter that appears to have been prepared before a request from Regional Council was even made to review a 23.3 percent police budget increase for 2025, the board that governs the force flatly rejected any review of how the department plans to spend an extra $144 million of the taxpayer’s money next year. 

At the November 28th meeting of regional council, a majority of the elected members voted to send the proposed 2025 budget for Peel Regional Police back to the police services board for review. Councillors said the request was not “anti-police”, but an effort to find wiggle room to lessen the impact the additional spending will have on residents while many are suffering unprecedented financial hardships.

The motion was approved in the afternoon following lengthy debate that saw councillors split along municipal lines, with all of Mississauga’s councillors who voted lining up in support of a review and all of Brampton’s members against it. A letter was sent to the Peel Police Services Board, along with the motion, later the same day. 

In a two-page response dated the very same day, the board’s finance chair Al Boughton immediately dismissed any chance of the board reviewing the increase that was described as going from “a Chevy to a Lexus”; “unsustainable”; “ludicrous”; and led to the resignation of Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish from the police board over her inability to oppose the unprecedented increase. 

“I certainly was shocked by how quickly the letter came back to us, indicating that they were not interested in any discussion or reconsideration of their budget request,” Mississauga Councillor Brad Butt told The Pointer. Councillor Butt introduced the motion to review the budget increase, seconded by Councillor Joe Horneck. “I would have hoped that the police services board would have at least gone back and taken some time, at least called a meeting… said maybe some of our asks were a little much in one year, maybe we could go back, show a little bit more respect for the taxpayers of the Region of Peel.”

Instead, a response letter dated the same day as his motion, was issued. 

“I must respond with clarity and resolve,” Boughton wrote. “The proposed 2025 budget cannot be reduced without jeopardizing immediate public safety in Peel Region or the Board’s statutory mandate under the Community Safety and Policing Act (CSPA) to ensure adequate and effective policing.”

The CSPA, a recently amended version of the Province’s Police Services Act, dictates that police forces in Ontario must provide “adequate and effective” policing. The suggestion in Boughton’s letter is that without the additional funding, and the 300 new officers proposed for next year, the force will not be able to provide “adequate and effective” policing. 

But that is not what the department said just a few months ago. In a contradictory press release this past August, PRP stated in the headline that Peel “continues to be one of the safest communities in Canada.” 

Boughton, who wrote that he was representing all Board members as well as Chief Nishan Duraiappah, suggested that in a few months Peel Region has gone from one of the safest places in the country, to a region whose police force, without 300 fresh new, inexperienced cadets, would be at risk of being unable to provide “adequate and effective” policing.

The letter fails to provide any financial analysis or evidence to justify how this increase in police spending—bringing the total operating budget alone for PRP to just under $750 million (a more than $130 million increase from the current year)—would result in a safer region.

“The proposed budget is not simply a financial plan—it is a strategic response to the escalating public safety concerns in Peel. It represents the minimum investment necessary to meet the critical and evolving needs of our community,” Boughton writes. 

Numerous studies have pointed out that there is no correlation between pouring more money into police organizations (most of which goes to hiring more officers) and reductions in crime.

A study of local police funding published in 2023 analyzed the budgets and crime rates of Canada’s 20 largest municipalities between 2010 and 2021, including Peel, and found no consistent correlation between increased police spending and a reduction in criminal activity.

This “strategic response” as described by Boughton without any details of how the spending will reduce crime, has been Chief Duraiappah’s approach since he arrived in 2019. Over the last five years since, spending has increased a staggering 77 percent, dwarfing the increases given to other large GTA forces, and yet, as Boughton suggests, the region is the worst it has ever been, supposedly at risk of violating its mandate under provincial legislation, despite almost double the amount of funding over five years. 

Studies have shown there is no correlation between increased investment in policing and reduced crime rates.

(The Pointer Files)

Data from PRP show the approach being trumpeted by Boughton—who has no experience in policing outside of being appointed by the PC government to the board in 2019— Chief Duraiappah and politicians like Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, is not working. 

An analysis of PRP’s solvency rates for all types of crime in Brampton and Mississauga shows that while the force has received more money and more officers every year since 2019, its ability to solve these crimes has gotten worse.

Solvency rates for Crimes Against Persons have dropped from 77.9 percent in 2019 to 68.7 percent last year. Crimes Against Property solvency rates dropped from 29.8 percent in 2019 to 17 percent last year, potentially driven in large part by the increase in auto thefts across the region. It remains to be seen what impact the additional 135 officers approved in 2024 will have on this statistic. 

Claims that these statistics could be explained by dramatic increases in population and overall call loads for crime, are actually debunked by more data, which show the numbers of calls and certain types of crime have actually been going down, despite claims by the Chief and the board, which has refused to challenge him.

While receiving more money and more officers every year since 2019, Peel Regional Police have solved less crime.

(Joel Wittnebel/The Pointer)

Instead of a review of police spending and a shift toward investing in upstream approaches (food security, affordable housing, mental health and addictions programming; which have been shown to reduce the workload burden on police—which has been acknowledged by Chief Duraiappah) Peel Police is doubling down on a strategy that has been shown not to work. 

“This is a bad direction to go,” Michelle Bilek, who has worked in Peel's affordable housing sector for decades, told regional councillors last week. She noted there is no evidence to support the budget request from PRP and no social services in Peel will be getting anywhere close to the same level of increase. It is more likely that money that might have been directed to a range of services, will instead go to police.

Experts have repeatedly pointed out that putting money into social services results in not only a cut to the workload for police, especially the types of calls they are ill-equipped to respond to, i.e. mental health crises—but also saves municipalities money in the long run.

Melanie Seabrook, a researcher at the University of Toronto and lead author of a study of police spending, previously told The Pointer there is growing evidence that shows investing in social services that keep people housed and healthy is a far better pathway to reducing crime.

“Existing research really has demonstrated that socio-economic insecurity is a predictor of crime rates and also all sorts of other crises,” she said. “The evidence is a demonstration that under-resourcing of all these other support systems, like social services; housing and client services; education; and the need to reinvest in those services if we want to better support people in their lives and help to prevent these longer term impacts like increased crime and increased personal crisis that the police are currently responding to and overburdened with.”

Despite evidence to the contrary, Boughton claims the unsustainable budget increase for PRP is “the only viable path forward”. What other paths were analyzed?

The only evidence provided by Boughton to support his claim that these investments are working is the effort PRP has made to combat auto thefts and the improvement being observed in wait times for 911 calls, which decreased by 78 percent this year. Over 81 percent of calls are now being answered within 20 seconds. 

While this could be used to justify the hiring of some of the 65 new civilian positions, 10 will be 911 communicators, there is little correlation to explain why 300 new frontline officers are needed.  

It’s clear additional communicators are required in Peel. The call volumes continue to increase year over year as Peel’s population grows. But there is an important distinction to be drawn between a call to 911 and a call that actually requires a police response. This is why overall call numbers are a poor indicator of officer workload. As the Region of Peel and PRP have repeatedly pointed out, abuse of 911 is notorious in the region—as it is in all municipalities. In 2023, 43 percent of calls were accidental or non-emergencies. A large portion of the remaining requests do not require an officer response. 

Boughton suggests in his letter that the additional 300 officers are needed to address “rapid population growth, historic understaffing, increasing crime rates, and the rising complexity of incidents involving organized crime, intimate partner violence, and mental health crises.” 

The actual data contradicts his claims.

When looking at the workload of frontline officers, it does not follow the same upward trend as calls to 911 communicators. In fact, citizen initiated incidents decreased 8.2 percent between 2019 and 2023 and police occurrences—calls that result in a police report—dropped 14.1 percent over the same time period. Immediate response incidents increased 4 percent since 2019, or 1 percent per year, hardly justification to hire 30 new officers, much less 300. 

The “historic understaffing” referred to by Boughton continues the Chief’s and the board’s misleading narrative which was repeated during the regional budget meeting, when it appeared that blame was placed at the feet of regional council for underfunding the police force between 2008 and 2018. Over that decade, the budgets for PRP were more or less approved: what the police asked for, they received.

If crime data show gaps in performance, it was either because leaders did not know how to properly allocate funding, or they were not aware of where additional funding could have gone. 

A request sent to Robert Serpe, the executive director of the police services board, asking whether a special meeting will be called to discuss regional council’s request was not returned. 

The Region of Peel has two more budget meetings scheduled this month, December 5 and 12. Should council continue to oppose the budget there is an option to vote against it which would trigger a mediation or arbitration process. But councillors have already expressed resistance to this pathway. 

“I really don’t want to go there, I don’t think it’s the right way to do it,” Butt said. “This is not about having a bad relationship with Peel Regional Police and regional council, I don’t think anyone wants to go there.”

In a bizarre portion of the letter, Boughton states he “wishes to correct misinformation circulating in media reports”, suggesting regional council had “no options” in the police budget process. He fails to mention this statement originated from Serpe, the board’s executive director. 

According to Mayor Parrish, speaking at the November 1st police services board meeting before she resigned over the budget: “I’m really happy Rob explained to the councillors there is nothing, whatsoever, they could do about it. And so there’s no point in arguing, there’s no point in saying we can’t support this, it’s going through.”

It remains unclear why Serpe, who had no experience in policing or overseeing a public agency when he moved from a communications role in a previous Brampton mayor’s office and eventually into his current job, would give such a politicized response.

It remains to be seen if regional councillors will accept the letter from the police board and approve the budget as originally requested, or send it to an external panel to decide the fate of the 2025 Peel Police budget.

If they don’t, the message to taxpayers seems pretty clear: the police can ask taxpayers for whatever they want, and there is nothing anyone is going to do about it.

The budget discussions continue tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. 

Email: [email protected]

At a time when vital public information is needed by everyone, The Pointer has taken down our paywall on all stories to ensure every resident of Brampton, Mississauga and Niagara has access to the facts. For those who are able, we encourage you to consider a subscription. This will help us report on important public interest issues the community needs to know about now more than ever. You can register for a 30-day free trial HERE. Thereafter, The Pointer will charge $10 a month and you can cancel any time right on the website. Thank you