Jeanine Lassaline-Berglund of the Ontario Association of Police Service Boards clarifies the legislative framework governing municipal police budgets. She argues that the current system is a structured legal design rather than a loss of local democratic control.
I am just providing feedback regarding this article. The reference to the Police Service Act is incorrect. That piece of legislation was repealed and replaced by the Community Safety and Policing Act 2019 which had the enforce date of April 1, 2024.
As a result of the change in legislation, the names of boards are now XXX Police Service Boards, ensemble. The "s" on services was dropped and boards were advised to ensure their name reflected that change in order to reflect and align with the new legislation. I'm not sure if the author/reporter is aware that there is a provincial membership association for boards in Ontario.
We are not a regulator or an auditor. We work exclusively in Governance, providing services and tools to all boards; Municipal, First Nation and OPP Detachment Boards in Ontario. We welcome the opportunity to connect when you need verification or clarification. https://oapsb.ca/
The framing is inaccurate and misleading about how police budgeting works in Ontario. First, it is simply incorrect to say that municipal councils are "overruled" or that police boards are independent budget fiefdoms outside municipal control. Under Ontario law, police service boards and municipal councils operate within a defined framework set out in the Community Safety and Policing Act (formerly the Police Services Act), and municipalities do hold statutory authority over police budgets.
The board, which includes municipal appointees, along with Police Leadership, prepare, reviews and approves the police service’s operating and capital estimates before submitting them to council. This mirrors how every department does its budget work: the service drafts, the governing body reviews. Municipal councils have the legal authority to either adopt the proposed total budget for policing or to establish their own overall budget figure.
They cannot veto or approve individual line items in the board’s budget submission. This isn’t "over-ruling" in a vacuum; it is the legislated role of council in allocating scarce tax dollars across all municipal services. This is no different from how many other provinces handle policing budgets, where line-item control is limited by statute to preserve operational clarity.
Unlike most municipal departments where council can propose detailed edits, the current framework does not permit councils to negotiate line-by-line changes to police budgets. The decision is a package take-it-or-set-your-own-total. That’s a legislative design choice, not a renegade board dictatorship.
If council and the police board cannot agree on a total budget that both believe suffices to provide "adequate and effective policing," their legislative authority and responsibility; the dispute doesn’t end in stalemate. Either party can initiate conciliation or proceed to binding arbitration through the provincial Ontario Police Arbitration and Adjudication Commission. This is a structured dispute mechanism built into the law to prevent gridlock, not evidence that a board operates outside municipal authority.
Police boards are created through provincial statute, but the lived reality is they must work within the municipal budget process. This ensures local taxpayer dollars are allocated through a council-approved budget. In fact, the chief of police develops estimates according to municipal timelines and formats before the board approves them.
To paint this system as undemocratic ignores both the statutory framework and the practical role councils play. Councils cannot micromanage police budgets line by line under current law, but they do decide the total envelope, just as they do for every other major municipal program, and there is a formal dispute process in case of disagreement.
At its core, the role of a police services board is to take the priorities of its community, alongside growth pressures, emerging risks, and long-term trends, and translate them into clear strategic direction for the police service. Public expectations around safety, prevention, visibility, and accountability are meant to be surfaced early through engagement and strategic review, well before a budget is prepared. Those priorities inevitably carry financial implications, and the budget is the expression of those choices, not the starting point for them.
At the same time, there is an ongoing and very real tension that boards, municipalities, and police services navigate daily. Residents quite reasonably want complex criminal and societal issues addressed while also expecting policing costs and municipal taxes to remain stable. Governance exists to manage that tension transparently, to weigh competing priorities, and to align what communities want with what they are prepared to fund.
Reducing this challenge to a narrative of lost control or overruled representatives oversimplifies a system designed to balance accountability, public input, and fiscal reality. If the community wants more transparent line-item scrutiny or stronger municipal control over police budgeting details, that is a valid conversation for residents and councils to have with the provincial government. But it is not the system as it now exists.
Jeanine Lassaline-Berglund
