Municipalities across northwestern Ontario seeing surge in policing costs
Kris Ketonen | CBC News | Posted: November 1, 2024 9:00 AM | Last Updated: November 1
'Unbelievable' rise to OPP costs due to provincial downloading says Red Lake mayor
Municipalities across the north are on the hook for increases in the costs of OPP policing, and they are asking the province for help, as many mayors say the increased costs are due, in part to provincial downloading.
The mayor of Red Lake says the municipality is facing an "unbelievable" increase to OPP costs next year.
"Our costs have risen, coming up for the next next fiscal year, 22.6 per cent, which means an increase of $132 per property, which is unbelievable," Red Lake Mayor Fred Mota said. "Municipalities cannot sustain these costs."
Mota said in Red Lake's case, that increase amounts to about $350,000.
Mota is also vice-president of the Kenora District Municipal Association, and said other municipalities in the Red Lake area are also seeing increases in OPP costs for 2025.
"Dryden went up 19 per cent, Kenora went up 36.7 percent, Ear Falls up 14-and-a-half per cent," he said. "It just goes on and on and on."
"Pickle Lake, which is a small, remote communities, their numbers increased 315 per cent."
Kenora representatives spoke about their increase at a media event last week, and towns in northeastern Ontario have also reported an increase in OPP costs.
In a statement to CBC News, a Ministry of the Solicitor General spokesperson said the ministry intended to work with the affected municipalities to address the rising costs.
"We understand that some municipalities face additional costs due to their existing agreements with the OPP," the statement reads. "We will work with these municipalities to ensure they are not negatively financially impacted by this."
Mota said there are a few factors at work in the rising costs, including wage increases for OPP officers.
"I believe they're downloading those costs onto municipalities," he said. "We have to raise taxes on minimum of three per cent just to cover the increasing cost for OPP, never mind infrastructure needs such as roads, water, sewer, parks, recreation, all the other things that municipalities look after."
"When we get the OPP billing statements, there's all sorts of information in there, and you have to be a detective in order to try and decipher it all," Mota said. "We realize in communities we pay for calls for service, so if your calls for service are going up every year, we have an expectancy to pay when we receive our OPP billing. That's why so many municipalities work with our local detachment commanders to keep our calls for service down."
"If this continues, municipalities cannot afford it and the residents of our municipalities can't bear those costs," Mota said. "It's just unsustainable. So hence writing a letter representing the Kenora District Municipal Association sharing our concerns, but we haven't received any answers back yet."
"The problem we have sometimes in the north is we have more people in our communities that are not our local residents."
When calls for service involving non-residents come in, Mota said, residents still have to pay for them.
Rick Dumas, mayor of Marathon, vice-president with the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA), and board member with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO), said the wide-range of calls police respond to also has an impact.
"Policing has become everything," Dumas said, adding police are required to respond to calls relating to mental health, nuisance bears, and animal control, in addition to their normal policing duties.
"You name it, they do it. So those all impact our communities."
In Marathon's case, Dumas said the town is looking at a 23 per cent increase in OPP costs for 2025, which "is a huge increase from [$750,000] to $890,000, roughly."
"That's a lot of money to come into our new budget for 2025."
Mota said a new mine is expected to open up in the Red Lake area in the next few years, which will employ between 800 and 1,000 people, so that will bring in some more revenue to help cover increasing costs like those associated with OPP policing.
In addition, the federal government has also announced it will fund the construction of an all-weather bridge over the Berens River, which will direclty connect Red Lake to surrounding communities that don't currently have all-weather road access, like Pikangikum and Sandy Lake First Nation.
Mota said the bridge will essentially make Red Lake directly accessible to another 12,000 people.
"If I'm looking at just OPP costs, we know we are going to be increasing our population," he said. "There's a need for housing, but we're going to be having more traffic and people visiting our community."
"The question is how do we keep our policing costs lowered when we know we're going to have a growth in population," Mota said. "We cannot accept the fact that we're receiving exuberant amounts of cost such as a 22.6 per cent policing cost."
"We can't sustain that when we have to build homes, create infrastructure, we need a new arena. We, we have all sorts of many different projects that we're looking at, but when we get a bill from the province saying, 'oh, by the way, you owe us another 300-plus-thousand-dollars,' it's not sustainable."
Mota said OPP costs have been "fairly stable" over the past few years; there have been increases, but nothing like what the municipality is seeing for 2025.
"Typically, if your calls for service were going up, obviously you would pay for more according to the billing model from the OPP," he said. "But if your calls for service went down, so you know you're doing more community policing and crime is decreasing in certain areas, then obviously your calls for service go down, and your billing should reflect that."
"Every year over the past four to five years, we've pretty much gone up. But this is a astronomical increase right across the board for everybody."
NDP MPP for Thunder Bay-Superior North Lise Vaugeois said the issue is related to the province downloading costs to municipalities.
"The conservatives like to say that they never, ever increase taxes, but what they actually do is download the responsibilities and then municipalities are forced to raise taxes," she said. "It's a game, honestly, to deflect attention and make a claim that they that the conservatives never raise taxes, but actually our cost of living keeps going up."
"Municipalities have to make up that money somewhere."
Dumas said the issue of rising OPP costs will be discussed at upcoming board meetings of NOMA and AMO. Those concerns will then be brought to the province.
"We want to make sure we're working with AMO and NOMA and the province and the OPP to say, 'hey, we can understand there are increases going to be happening, but they've got to be more realistic and fair and equitable," he said.