Researchers with the University of Toronto are hoping their knowledge can lead to policy alternatives to ever-expanding police budgets in Ontario and throughout Canada. Mélanie Seabrook, lead researcher, spoke with The Sarnia Journal about the report she co-authored, Reducing the Burden on Police Services Through Investment in Promoting Healthy Communities: Challenges and Opportunities. “We're hoping […]
Researchers with the University of Toronto are hoping their knowledge can lead to policy alternatives to ever-expanding police budgets in Ontario and throughout Canada.
Mélanie Seabrook, lead researcher, spoke with The Sarnia Journal about the report she co-authored, Reducing the Burden on Police Services Through Investment in Promoting Healthy Communities: Challenges and Opportunities.
“We're hoping that through this report it might prompt different municipalities, as well as local actors across the province, to get more engaged in consultation and strategizing processes for community safety plans,” Seabrook says.
Two key takeaways of the report are that police services across the province are overburdened, and that investment in social programs, rather than in police budgets, will reduce this burden.
“Investing in services like housing, social assistance, public health, early childhood programs, and education are really much more powerful in terms of keeping people safe and healthy in the community,” Seabrook says.
The report details how police are increasingly called on to respond to issues beyond their scope and training, including mental health crises, social concerns, and homelessness issues. This trend is known as “policification,” where the traditional role of police gradually expands to cover responsibilities they are ill-equipped to handle.
Seabrook helped conduct an earlier study of Canada’s 20 largest municipalities, comparing their police budgets and crime rates. The study found that police budgets have steadily increased in most Canadian jurisdictions since 2010, but that these increases show no correlation to a decrease in crime rates.
The police “don't seem to play a big role in actually preventing most crime,” Seabrook tells us.
Despite this evidence, municipal police spending continues to outpace spending on other public services. The report calls for a shift in the public narrative, identifying this as a major challenge in de-prioritizing police budgets.
Even though public opinion polls have shown that a significant portion of Canadians support reallocating police funds to other services, the influence of police boards, unions, politicians, and the media all pose a challenge to redirecting out-of-control police budgets. Mainstream narratives around crime and crises are difficult to counter in an atmosphere of public fear, the report says.
Police boards and unions routinely accuse those who suggest budget cuts of being “soft on crime” and stoke fear of crime spikes. In the past, unions have protested budget cuts by threatening a “Blue Flu,” where officers call in sick en masse, or have threatened to withhold revenue by reducing ticketing activity.
The Ontario Community Safety and Policing Act, 2019 requires "sufficient funding for adequate and effective policing," but the report indicates this is often interpreted and leveraged in a way that results in police budget expansions. Police boards use the threat of an appeal to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission if municipal councils do not approve their budgets.
Seabrook says that politicians also “tend to believe and prioritize the constituents and voter voices that are pressuring for more police presence in response to rising crime rates.”
Yet, as Seabrook points out, “there is wide support for reallocating police funds to other more health-promoting services.”
“I think since the movement in 2020,” she says, referring to the Defund the Police movement that began after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, “there has been a lot of people and a lot of organizations and municipalities starting to look more closely at the issue and start to consider these alternative options.”
Now, there are more studies and data to back up the call for rethinking how we police our communities.
Along with investing in social programs, the report also encourages the development of non-police crisis response services. It cites the City of Toronto’s Community Crisis Service, launched in 2022. An evaluation reported positive experiences, with clients saying they felt respected, meaningfully supported, and received holistic care. As a result, the city has announced plans to expand the service. Last year, Ottawa launched a mental health-specific crisis response service.
“This kind of system is starting to be implemented in different municipalities across Canada,” Seabrook says.
The U of T report has helped inform Project Right Response, a proposal for the City of Sarnia developed by The Sarnia Journal for an alternative paramedic-led crisis response service.
“I think success of an alternative crisis response system does at least partly depend on investing in and having those supportive services available,” Seabrook says. “When you send a crisis responder to a situation, they want to be able to connect the individual in crisis with those supportive services.”
“Every municipality is going to have their own specific needs and higher priorities,” she adds. “Certain areas may have a wider gap in housing, for example. Some areas may need more mental health and addiction services. That's why, in our report, we emphasize the importance of community consultation.”
Here in Sarnia, the rising police budget reflects a continued investment in law enforcement, technology, and facilities, while the violent crime severity index also rises (11.4% in 2024). While police have implemented some community-focused initiatives, their primary approach—as reflected in their budget and operational focus—remains on law enforcement and criminal investigations. This contrasts with the U of T report's recommendation to reprioritize funding toward social services.
For her part, Seabrook is keenly interested to see what progress can be made in Sarnia as we look to find positive alternatives for an overburdened police force.
