Tory pushes nearly $50M increase to Toronto police budget

Toronto Mayor John Tory is proposing to increase police funding by almost $50 million for 2023, boosting the force’s total budget to more than $1.1 billion.

The new money, pitched alongside chair of the budget committee coun. Gary Crawford on Tuesday, would be used to hire 200 more police officers, Tory says. Over 80 per cent of the new hires will be sent to “priority response units,” with the leftover to be placed in major case management and neighbourhood community policing.

“These are investments which, in my best judgment, we must make now,” said Tory.

“One of our principal responsibilities is to keep our communities safe, and to keep Torontonians safe.”

The overall budget, which is set to be considered by council in February, will grow as a whole this year in line with growing needs, Tory says, emphasizing increases to priority items like policing, housing and transit. Residents can expect a tax increase below the rate of inflation to come, said Tory. 

The plan also includes 90 more special constables to “support front-line delivery,” a city news release says, and 20 more 911 operators to improve service and response times. About $2 million of the new funding will go toward youth and families in anti-violence programming.

The proposed increase is what Toronto police have requested for its 2023 operating budget, according to a separate release from Toronto police. $18.5 million or 1.7 per cent of the increase is needed to fulfil wage increases under collective agreements, it reads.

The proposed plan will go to the Toronto Police Services Board for consideration and approval next week.

New budget in line with re-election platform

Tory said the average increase to the police budget sat at 1.6 per cent during the past eight years as mayor.

During his re-election campaign, Tory said he’d continue to pushback against efforts to de-fund the police. In a year-end interview with CBC Toronto last month, Tory signalled he would push for a bigger police budget, saying that a “fraying at the edges” of community safety make the move necessary.

New Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw said he too would ask city council to hike the service’s budget. Response times for calls are not where they should be, he said when he was sworn-in in December.

Some activists have called for reduced funding for the service in recent years in response to police killings, particularly after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., in 2020.

The last city council rejected those calls twice, instead voting to maintain or increase the amount of money going to the Toronto Police Service. Last year, the $1.1-billion police budget made up around seven per cent of the city’s total annual operating costs.

Those calls came into focus this past summer after a report from Toronto police found the service has disproportionately used force against Black, Indigenous and other diverse groups compared to their share of the population.

“I intend to lead our continued work to modernize policing, and to find more effective ways to support, for example, people in crisis involving fewer police and more mental health professionals,” said Tory.