Current Ontario legislation requires police boards to ensure "adequate and effective policing". What legislators forgot to include was "with budgeting that must balance other municipal critical needs and not create undue affordability concerns for the taxpayers." The majority of council has the legal right to reject whole police budgets as submitted to them. Police chiefs […]
Current Ontario legislation requires police boards to ensure "adequate and effective policing". What legislators forgot to include was "with budgeting that must balance other municipal critical needs and not create undue affordability concerns for the taxpayers." The majority of council has the legal right to reject whole police budgets as submitted to them. Police chiefs know they can then appeal to an outside group for arbitration which apparently historically has always favoured police by giving them all or part of what they requested. It seems this outside arbitration group has never sided with taxpayers and said "no increase" to police.
Because of this set up and history, police chiefs across the province know they can try to coerce their boards and municipal councils into giving them whatever they want all the time. It doesn't help when police board members would be, in essence, just puppets of controlling police chiefs and act simply as just "chair warmers" in meetings.
There seems to be fundamental problems with this entire setup. In essence, this results in "taxation without representation/ accountability" which seems, at a fundamental level, undemocratic, unjust and hence to me appears to maybe be unconstitutional. It would be welcomed if a democracy or taxpayers' advocacy group initiated a court constitutional challenge on the provincial legislation.
Interestingly, in the last provincial election, Premier Ford, a former city councillor, appeared disingenuous when he criticized another party leader for increasing municipal taxes every year while mayor. He knows how city budgets are developed. He knows that, with current legislation, police chiefs can possibly make excessive demands placing significant stress on municipal budgets and ultimately municipal taxpayers. It's because of his government's legislation that municipal budgets can be impacted by what appears to be "uncontrollable" police budgeting, some with very substantial impacts. All disregarding concerns of taxpayers who must live with limitations on their income sources.
By contrast, I suppose we could ask Mr. Ford to provide "adequate and effective" health care for the province, and if he dared to raise provincial taxes, his party would be cast into the political wilderness for a very long time as taxpayers would have their say in an election. There seems to be ugly hypocrisy at play here.
For the next provincial election, concerned taxpayers should consider political parties that will ensure that all taxation, including for policing, is done entirely with "representation of and accountability to" the taxpayers, making it democratic and, I would think, constitutional.
For the next municipal election, concerned taxpayers should consider candidates that will have the courage to fight against excessive and unfair budgeting demands from police, and if these candidates should become part of the police board, to have the courage to push back on overly demanding and unaffordable police requests. The Mayor of Windsor, as a member of their police board, per media accounts, apparently serves as an example for these types of budget corrections.
