Residents tell Peel police board they can’t afford runaway budgets; members ignore their pleas, 9.9% hike approved, 81% jump in 6 years

“It’s very concerning to somebody like myself who has geared down, and not making nearly as much money as I used to,” Mississauga resident Mike Harris told the Peel Police Board Friday. “We’re looking for fiscal restraint.”

Sue Shanly, president of the Mississauga Residents Association Network (MIRANET), said much of the same, pleading with board members, who were set to approve the 2026 police budget, to consider seniors who are fearful they may not be able to stay in their homes due to skyrocketing property taxes being driven by unsustainable police budgets. 

“A lot of what we are hearing from residents’ associations and residents across Mississauga, ‘we are struggling’. The economy has gone south even further than it was earlier this year, and people are struggling and again we would like the police services board to try and find efficiencies in this year’s budget and even more particularly moving forward to next year's budget.”

David Bosveld, a community advocate who has pushed for change within the Peel police organization for years, had the same message. 

“The ongoing shifting of resources from programs and priorities that actually address crime at its roots to policing is unsustainable. We need a government that is willing to invest in youth, jobs, housing and other supports in order to be truly safe in our communities,” Bosveld told The Pointer Friday, after the board approved the 2026 budget request including a 9.9 percent jump for operating costs (it will need final approval by Peel Regional Council). “Continuing to delay these investments while sinking endless dollars into policing will result in further harm, and will increase municipal taxes.”

In approving the largest budget increase in Peel Police history last year, many regional councillors recognized the problem. The 23.3 percent increase for 2025 was labelled as “unsustainable” by many Peel elected officials (who approved it anyway). 

Critics had harsher words. 

Alok Mukherjee, the former chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, said the request was “unheard of”—especially after Peel Police received a 14 percent increase the year prior. 

“I was absolutely flabbergasted,” he told The Pointer earlier this year. “It seems to be an utter failure of governance.”

The budget for 2026 was presented to the Peel Police Services Board today, October 24, and it continues a trend that has been criticized by Peel residents for years—unaffordable police budget increases far beyond the rate of inflation. These unsustainable amounts have a significant impact on taxpayers as the police budget is the largest portion, by far, of the regional municipality’s budget. 

For 2026, Peel Police are asking for a 9.9 percent increase to cover operating spending. This will bring the operating budget to approximately $837.3 million—an 81 percent increase from the $462.5 million in 2021. 

By comparison, between 2020 and 2025, the Toronto Police budget increased by only 13.4 percent; the York Regional Police, 27 percent; and the Durham Regional Police, 51 percent. 

The additional $75.4 million will be used to hire 175 new officers and 25 civilian positions. 

This builds on the additional $144 million received last year, which equates to about the same amount Peel Police received over an entire decade up to 2023.

These increases were presented and approved by the board without providing any financial analysis, business plan, patrolling or investigative strategy, or external audit to show taxpayers why such a massive increase is needed. 

While presenting the proposed 2026 budget to the Peel Police board, Chief Nishan Duraiappah told councillors that when he was hired in late 2019, he believed “there are opportunities to think of doing things differently.” That has not been the case. 

The hope was that change in direction meant shifting away from an outdated policing model; moving beyond unaccountable spending for more patrol officers as the sole strategy for solving and reducing crime. Numerous studies have shown that investing in strategies that support positive social determinants of health and wellness is a much more effective way to prevent crime. 

A recent study found there is no correlation between pouring more funding into police budgets and reducing crime rates. 

The research into local police funding, published in 2023, analyzed the budgets and crime rates of Canada’s 20 largest municipalities between 2010 and 2021, including Peel Region, and found no consistent correlation between spending more taxpayer dollars on police forces and a reduction in criminal activity.

“What that means is that an increase in police funding didn't necessarily relate to a decrease in crime,” Melanie Seabrook, a researcher at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study, previously told The Pointer.

The police services board brought Chief Duraiappah into the role in late 2019 as an agent of change for a troubled organization that had lost the trust of residents it is supposed to serve. At the time, the Chief said his vision extended far out from 2020 and involved a complete restructuring of how the police force operates both inside and out. 

Projections show many types of violent crime have decreased in Brampton and Mississauga in 2025. 

(Peel Regional Police)

Following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, which forced police forces to rethink how they ensure community safety, Duraiappah assured residents that his organization was ready and willing to institute change. At the time he said “the need for other systems to be strengthened in order to get upstream and mitigate risk so that we’re not the one in crisis response, is absolutely the solution.” 

Instead, the last three years of Duraiappah’s time as chief have seen budget increases like none Peel taxpayers have ever seen—at a time when property taxes are also being driven higher by cash-strapped municipalities. The money is largely for the hiring of approximately 600 new officers to patrol the region, which represents almost one-third of the force’s uniform staff.

Peel Police data itself shows this massive hiring over the last three years has had no impact on crime rates, while the force’s ability to solve some of the most serious crimes has worsened. 

During Friday’s police board meeting, the Chief failed to even present a full public budget, but board members voted to approve it anyway. 

Both Harris and Shanly stressed the need for much better transparency in the budget process. Harris repeated the demand residents made last year—which the board ignored—for an external auditor to review Peel police finances. Shanly asked for a line-by-line budget to be released publicly. 

“This is what the whole process is about,” Chair of the Board Nando Iannicca claimed following the delegations. “We want to be transparent and open.”

Iannicca has been criticized throughout his lengthy career as a Mississauga councillor and more recently as regional chair, which opens a spot for him on the police board, for his lack of transparency and repeated rubber stamping of budgets that taxpayers have to pay for. 

He came under fire in 2017 when it was revealed that Iannicca and his wife had travelled to Greece in 2015, stayed at an expensive resort for five nights that charged about triple the price of the accommodation that was being booked for the conference he attended, then failed to make public that the resort had noted the couple were celebrating their 25th anniversary. Taxpayers spent almost $3,500 for the resort stay with his wife.

The information about Iannicca’s frequent expensive travel on the taxpayer dime only came out after a freedom of information investigation by the Brampton Guardian.

On Friday, he voted to approve a police budget without any details explaining exactly how each dollar will be spent, and seemingly indifferent to concerns that the full budget has not even been made available to the public. 

After receiving whistleblower information, The Pointer is currently probing details of lavish, excessive taxpayer-funded travel around the world by senior officers in the force, members of the board and its staff, and the chief.

The full 2026 Peel Police budget is not yet publicly available—it’s unclear why the board voted to approve it despite the lack of transparency to taxpayers. It will now go to Peel Council in November for discussion and final approval. 

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