Police cash in

Mayor John Tory insists a new collective agreement with Toronto police “sends a message” of restraint to everyone working in the civic domain. That’s only half true. There’s a signal being sent, all right — but it’s that Toronto’s gold-plated police force remains largely immune from pressures faced by other public employees.

The four-year pact, announced last week, guarantees wage increases amounting to more than 8.35 per cent. The agreement will cost taxpayers an extra $65 million over the life of the deal, and follows two previous contracts that gave officers raises in excess of 20 per cent over just seven years.

As reported by the Star’s Betsy Powell, the base salary for a first-class constable will swell to $98,450 by 2018. But most Toronto police officers already earn more than $100,000 counting overtime, a retention bonus and lucrative paid-duty opportunities.

If Tory was joking in describing this deal as sending a message of restraint, Toronto’s pampered police can afford to chuckle. Nobody else in the public sector is laughing.

Queen’s Park, in particular, has taken a hard line in collective bargaining demanding wage freezes and cutbacks. Compare the deal for Toronto police to a four-year pact signed with Ontario’s 11,500 unionized managers and professional employees last August. These workers received a total wage hike of about 2.8 per cent and, to get that, they had to accept elimination of some existing benefits, such as an exit pay provision.

This is what restraint looks like. Ironically, any of those workers who live in Toronto will now be funding local police with even more of their hard-won dollars.

The only way the new Toronto police contract bears any semblance to restraint is in comparison to the even more lavish deals signed in the past. The pact does include some union concessions. For example, the Toronto Police Association agreed that newly hired officers should no longer qualify for an 18-day sick-pay gratuity. But all who are already on staff can still cash in. Some minor entitlements are capped, and both sides agreed to set up joint committees to look at scheduling and other issues.

All told, it’s a sweet deal for those in uniform — not so much for residents stuck paying the bill over the next four years.

The cost of policing Toronto’s streets is already well over $1billion. It was noted, in budget committee debate, that major crime dropped by 27 per cent since 2005, but the police budget swelled by a remarkable 37 per cent.

With that in mind, an appropriate response to Toronto’s generous new police contract would be to trim the number of officers. That’s another way to impose some checks on this unrestrained sector.