Andrew Stokley warns that without an overhaul of the Police Services Act, Sarnia taxpayers will remain “handcuffed” to fiscal dilemmas they have no power to solve.
All Ontario Police Services Boards need an overhaul, or "Joe Citizen" ratepayer can expect to be handcuffed to large fiscal dilemmas going into every future municipal budget.
In Ontario, municipal police funding operates under a structure that deliberately limits the power of city councils. Unlike most other municipal departments, police services are governed by independent Police Services Boards that have legal authority over budgets, staffing, and priorities.
This separation is often defended as a safeguard for police independence, but in practice, it creates serious democratic and fiscal problems.
The legal basis for this power comes from provincial legislation, historically the Police Services Act and now the Community Safety and Policing Act. These laws require municipalities to fund “adequate and effective” policing while giving Police Services Boards the authority to determine what that adequacy looks like.
The city pays the bill, but they do not get the final say over how large that bill is.
Police Services Boards are hybrid bodies, usually composed of municipal appointees, provincial appointees, and citizen representatives. While this structure is meant to balance interests, it also means that boards are not directly accountable to voters in the same way City Councillors are.
Yet, they can commit municipalities to millions of dollars in excess spending. All other departments are scrutinized and can be kept in check.
The police budget process highlights this imbalance. A Police Services Board prepares and approves a budget and submits it to Sarnia City Council. Council can technically reject or reduce it, but the board has the right to appeal that decision to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission (OCPC).
Historically, these appeals often result in the police budget being reinstated partially or in full. This is the decision Sarnia Police Chief Davis and the board are mulling over at the moment, after Mayor Bradley exercised his “Strong Mayor” power for the first time to axe the funding requested for a new Police Headquarters.
This appeal mechanism fundamentally weakens municipal budget authority. City councils are responsible for balancing competing priorities like housing, transit, libraries, public health, and infrastructure.
When police budgets are effectively shielded from meaningful cuts, all other services become more vulnerable during fiscal restraint. Supporters of the system argue that it protects police from political interference, fearing that councils might underfund policing for short-term political reasons.
However, independence from political interference is not the same as independence from democratic oversight. City Councils are not arbitrary actors; they are elected to make value-based decisions about how public money is spent.
Removing policing from that democratic process treats it as uniquely untouchable, rather than as one public service among many. This structure also encourages budgetary inflation. When a department knows its funding is largely protected, there is little incentive to find efficiencies.
The override power distorts municipal priorities. Cities attempting to invest in upstream solutions—mental health supports, housing stability, youth programs—often find themselves constrained by ever-growing police costs. Ironically, these social investments are widely recognized as effective tools for reducing crime in the long term.
There is also a transparency problem. Police budgets are complex, technical documents that are difficult for the public to scrutinize. When decisions are made by boards rather than councils, public debate is narrowed and accountability is diffused across multiple institutions.
In effect, the law hard-codes a particular vision of public safety—one centered on police services—into municipal finance. Alternative approaches must fight uphill not only politically, but legally.
There is no equivalent protection for other essential services. Public health units, fire services, transit agencies, and social services can all face deep cuts during budget crunches. Singling out police for special treatment reflects political choices, not neutral necessity.
Defenders of the status quo often warn that allowing councils full control would “politicize” policing. But budgeting is inherently political. Choosing how much to spend on police versus housing or healthcare is a value judgment, and pretending otherwise merely obscures who holds power.
In Sarnia, this never-ending cycle will come to the detriment of all other service and infrastructure initiatives. Consider the current financial trajectory:
The Sarnia Police account for the largest single department expense in the city's budget, and despite all the recent spending initiatives, I don’t think many citizens of the city feel safer than they did 10 to 15 years ago.
Andrew Stokley
Sarnia
