Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
As has been said, my name is Alok Mukherjee, and I appear before you on behalf of the Canadian Association of Police Boards, of which I am the president. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to offer our comments on a study that is very important to our organization.
For some time now, our association has been working on the issue of economics of policing. In 2010 the CAPB took the lead in forming a coalition on sustainable public policing. This coalition includes the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Canadian Police Association, so if you hear some common themes, you will know that we have been working together. Public Safety Canada has been an important resource and ally in the work of our coalition.
Our active engagement with the issue stemmed from an initiative of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. In 2008 the CACP asked our organization, along with the FCM and the CPA, to endorse a framework for integrated policing on the basis that division of policing functions into federal, provincial, and local jurisdictions was artificial, since in the final analysis all policing was local.
While there was broad consensus that this framework reflected the reality of Canadian policing today, it was the CACP's position that discussion of the framework was incomplete without addressing the issue of financing of policing. As a result, in March 2010, CAPB, in cooperation with the other stakeholders, formed this national coalition. We are pleased that questions related to economics of policing are now on the national agenda as evidenced by your committee's study, the engagement of FPT ministers, and the very successful national summit hosted by Public Safety Canada recently on January 16 and 17.
The police boards and commissions that are our members are responsible for the governance and oversight of more than 75% of municipal police in Canada. One of their key responsibilities is the development and approval of the annual operating and capital budgets of their police services. It is their job to then explain and defend these budgets at their local city councils to justify the allocation of a significant portion of property tax revenue to policing. As you know, in communities where policing services are provided by the RCMP, or as in the case of Ontario by the OPP, the municipality enters into contracts directly with these national or provincial police agencies. Again, the cost is borne by the local property taxpayer.
Regardless of whether a community is served by a municipal police service or through contract policing, there is national concern and an intensifying debate as to whether our current model is sustainable. While our police agencies and the women and men who serve in them by and large enjoy high public esteem, the public at the same time is questioning the affordability of these services.
I should say this is not a new concern. In 1977 Judge C.O. Bick, the first chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, then known as the Metropolitan Toronto Board of Commissioners of Police, sounded the alarm in his final annual report as he ended his 21-year tenure at the helm. He said, and I quote:
The very real, very present danger is that the continued escalation of costs for police services will seriously weaken the financial ability of Metropolitan Toronto to contain the growth of crime. In its assessment of the future financing of police services, the Ontario Task Force on Policing stated that there is “a very real potential crisis in financing municipal police services. This crisis could result in the imposition of constraints to growth.” For us it is not a “potential” crisis, it has arrived.
That was in 1977, but Chair Bick may well have been speaking these words today, as trends in police expenditure from different police services show.
I'd like to share with you trends from three large police services in Ontario: Toronto, Durham, and Peel. These are three of the largest police services.
I draw your attention to the red line representing the rise in gross expenditures on policing. These are tracked over a period of approximately 12 to 15 years. As data from Toronto, Durham, and Peel police services demonstrate, a relatively consistent trend line was maintained until 1999. However, since then, total police expenditure growth has far outpaced all other indicators, including population growth, the growth in the number of police officers, and inflation. The situation is very similar throughout Canada.
Public policing in Canada has evolved significantly. Growing public expectations and demand for service, legislative changes, transfer of responsibility by different orders of government, and securitization of local policing in our post-9/11 world are among the factors that have changed the nature and mission of policing. Combined with trends in police sector compensation in the last decade, there are questions about sustainability of the cost of policing and the continuing relevance of the current model of financing local policing.
I have provided to the clerk of the committee a small number of background materials that shed light on these factors, and I ask that they be taken note of in any report your committee prepares.
Local policing today involves a number of functions besides dealing with crime. You have heard Mr. Stamatakis about that. Our officers are in schools. They assist people suffering from mental illness. They prevent social victimization. They police international waterways. They are involved in national security and anti-terrorism matters. They participate in integrated and joint policing projects, and the list goes on. Often they are the agency of first resort as other programs are reduced or eliminated due to the fiscal challenges we face. The mandate of our police services ranges from keeping local neighbourhoods safe from petty crime to interdicting acts of international terror.
For these reasons, we have accepted an integrated framework of policing. It stems from our recognition of reality. However, what we do not have is a sound and comprehensive economic analysis of our integrated system of policing. This is a broader analysis than of cost alone.
The discussion so far has been based on a subjective and largely political assessment that we are paying too much for policing and that the local property taxpayer is bearing a disproportionate burden of this cost, which should be shared by all orders of government. In fact, we cannot really tell what value our current model of policing truly adds in terms of factors such as community safety and wellness, national security, savings in other public expenditures, and impact on the community's total social, cultural, and economic development. We may have a fairly good idea of inputs and outputs, but we do not have any economic valuation of outcomes.
Further, we cannot tell whether the current system of financing policing from the local tax base is appropriate. We cannot tell whether, from a strictly economic standpoint, it is too much or just right to allocate between 25% and 30% of a municipality's annual budget to policing. We cannot tell objectively the extent to which this system of financing policing locally is subsidizing provincial and federal responsibilities.
I believe that an authoritative, credible, and independent economic model of local policing in Canada, taking into account all the variables, is a key prerequisite for an informed discussion of the economics of policing and the responsibility of different orders of government. This informed discussion is the missing track in our efforts to deal with the economic aspect of our model of policing.
The track on which we are beginning to make some progress is in controlling and reducing the cost of providing policing services. This was the main focus of the national summit on the economics of policing. This is what is being explored, for example, in Ontario through the provincial government's future of policing advisory committee. This is what many municipalities and police boards or commissions are trying to deal with through efficiency reviews, searching for alternative delivery models, determination of core and non-core police services, examination of functions that can be performed by personnel other than uniformed police officers and volunteers, consideration of public-private partnerships, maximization of the use of technology, efforts to determine what constitutes the right size of their services, struggling to achieve lower contract settlements, outright reduction in police budgets, and so on.
For example, the Toronto Police Services Board oversees Canada's largest municipal police service, which has total gross expenditures exceeding $1 billion. Over two years, the Toronto Police Services Board has reduced the police budget by a cumulative total of nearly 10%. There is no question that this is an important track for us to follow. By itself, however, this track will not help us deal comprehensively with the broader question of economics of policing as I have described it above. This is why it is the position of the CAPB that we first need to develop an objective and authoritative economic model of policing.
Second, we need a whole-system approach involving all our partners—those in health, education, social services, and justice, to name a few—in a meaningful dialogue on an integrated, broadly understood approach to community safety.
Third, we need the federal and provincial governments to acknowledge their financial responsibility for policing our communities. It is from this perspective that we welcome your study.
I will be glad to answer any questions.