A comprehensive strategic plan proposing a major shift in how Sarnia handles emergency calls has been delivered to City Council and the Police Services Board. Developed by The Sarnia Journal, Project Right Response calls for reallocating $10 million from the police budget to fund a new health-led unit to respond to non-violent crises.
A comprehensive, five-year strategic plan proposing a significant shift in how Sarnia handles emergency calls has been delivered to Sarnia City Council and the Sarnia Police Services Board this week.
The proposal, titled Project Right Response, calls for reallocating $10 million from the Sarnia Police Service’s operating budget to Lambton EMS over a five-year period. The goal is to create a specialized, health-focused Community Paramedic Response Unit (CPRU) to act as the primary first responder for non-violent emergencies related to mental health, addiction, and welfare checks.
The plan was developed and released by The Sarnia Journal as an act of accountability journalism.
The proposal argues that Sarnia’s current emergency response model is fiscally unsustainable and operationally strained. Citing data from the Sarnia Police Service (SPS) and a 2025 policy report from the University of Toronto, the plan notes that between 70-80% of all calls for police service in Canada are non-criminal in nature.
This trend is reflected locally, where the SPS budget has grown by approximately $9 million in three years, while Sarnia’s Violent Crime Severity Index jumped by 24% in 2023. Project Right Response suggests that by funding a paramedic-led unit to handle health and social-related calls, two key outcomes can be achieved: vulnerable residents will receive a more compassionate and appropriate response from a trained medic, and police officers will be freed up to focus on their core mandate of investigating and deterring serious crime.
The plan is not a top-down directive but an alignment with the stated vision of Lambton EMS, which has already begun moving toward health-led crisis response with a provincially funded pilot project pairing community paramedics with mental health workers.
Under the proposal, the new Community Paramedic Response Unit would be dispatched to 911 calls where no violence or weapons are reported, such as a mental health crisis, an overdose, or a request for a welfare check. This ensures a person in distress is met by a healthcare professional instead of a law enforcement officer.
The plan also directly addresses the ongoing debate over the need for a new multi-million-dollar police headquarters. It argues that by successfully diverting the majority of non-criminal calls to the CPRU, the operational pressures on the current police building—such as cell overcrowding and administrative strain—would be fundamentally reduced. This could make a more modest $4.4 million repair and modernization plan for the existing facility the most fiscally responsible path forward.
The Sarnia Journal developed the strategic plan over several months and has donated the completed work to the City of Sarnia and its residents free of charge. A plan of this scope, if commissioned through external consultants, would typically represent a significant taxpayer expense of approximately $75,000 – $150,000.
The full report has been sent to municipal leaders, and the public can view the full strategic plan online.
