City could lose 140 officers in budget freeze, police warn

Suspension of hiring, promotions would reduce diversity, report says

If the Ottawa Police Service's budget were to be frozen at 2021 levels, as many as 140 police officer positions may have to be eliminated, according to a new report submitted to the police board.

The report, which will be discussed at the next Ottawa Police

Services Board meeting on Monday, presents three budget scenarios for 2022: a budget freeze and increases of 1.5 or three per cent.

If the force were to continue to operate in 2022 with no spending increase over 2021, the report submitted by OPS paints a dire picture, describing “major organizational capacity and service delivery impacts.”

Those impacts, it says, would include the “separation” of 130 to 140 employees, mostly officers. That could mean voluntary departures, including retirements, but it could also mean layoffs.

Another impact of a budget freeze: “The suspension of all recruiting, hiring and promotions — this will directly result in the immediate and long-term reduction in overall levels of diversity within the OPS (and at all ranks in the OPS),” the report says.

Such a freeze is exactly what many community members have urged from the police board, the civilian body that oversees the police service, and the board has committed to looking at the prospect.

The report says a 1.5 per-centincrease in the OPS operating budget could see the elimination of 60 to 70 full-time police staffers. The report cited this option as having a “medium” impact on the police's ability to deliver service, and like a freeze, it says, it would prevent the force from hiring and recruiting.

But even with a three-per-cent budget increase, the highest in the scenarios studied by the report, the OPS would see a “moderate” impact to its ability to deliver service. Some of those impacts could be offset, the report says, by some new initiatives designed to “advance public trust.”

Those initiatives include potential new investments to create an alternative communication-centre system that would refer community calls for services to external partners and service providers instead of the police.

The bulk of the OPS operating budget is spent on staff salaries and benefits. A full-time officer earns a base salary of $100,000, which, according to the report, means that every million-dollar budget reduction would result in 10 fewer officers.

The OPS has found $20 million in savings through efficiencies, the report says, but despite that it predicted a 3.6-per-cent increase would be needed in its 2022 budget to account for a higher cost of living and increases in compensation and benefits.

Ottawa city council approved an increase of no more than three per cent in the police tax levy as part of its budget directions this week.

“Our community has been calling for a renewal of policing service and the building of community capacity to deliver some of the social supports currently provided by the police,” the report concludes. “That said, such a transition/transformation cannot, and should not, happen in any way that causes increased health and safety risks to community members, service providers and/or OPS members.”

Our community has been calling for a renewal of policing service and the building of community capacity to deliver some of the social supports ... provided by the police.