Province restores $5.7M in requested funding to Vancouver police, overriding city's budget decision

The Vancouver Police Department has won its appeal to the B.C. government to receive $5.7 million in funding that it was denied in the city's 2021 budget.

The police board received a ruling in writing Monday from Wayne Rideout, assistant deputy minister and director of police services, ordering the money be restored.

The board had appealed a December 2020 vote by Vancouver city council to freeze police funding in the 2021 city budget. 

At the time of the vote, the city cut funding to many of its departments' budgets by one per cent in response to the financial challenges associated with the pandemic. The budget passed with six councillors for and five against. 

As a result, the budget allocated for city policing in 2021 was $316,379,342 — a shortfall of $5,689,974 from what the police board had requested.

According to Vancouver Police Department Chief Adam Palmer, the financial hit to the force had a direct impact on the number of officers it was able to hire to meet the city's policing needs.

In a statement, Palmer thanked the province for its decision, saying it means improved public safety for residents and business owners.

"I am committed to ensuring everyone feels safe again," said Palmer.

The City of Vancouver now spends more than a million dollars every day on policing, with a budget that has increased from $317 million in 2019 to $367 million in 2022 — accounting for more than 21 per cent of total city spending.

City manager Paul Mochrie said in an email that the ruling is being reviewed but "will result in an additional $5.7 million in expenses on top of the already approved 2022 budget.''

Vancouver is not allowed to run a deficit and Mochrie says the budget process for this year is complete, so reserves will be used to offset the shortfall.

He warns permanent funding must be found to balance next year's accounts and says property taxes pay for most public safety costs, so a tax increase of about 0.6 per cent will likely be needed in 2023 to pay for the restored police budget.

Mayor Kennedy Stewart said despite not receiving the funding it wanted, the department was always supplied with what it needed.

"It is important to note that at no time did the Vancouver Police Department lack access to requested funds thanks to the city's budget reserves," said Stewart in a statement responding to the province's decision.

Mochrie said the VPD ended the year with a deficit of $10.5 million, half of it due to the disputed 2021 shortfall, while increases in benefits and an arbitrated wage settlement made up the rest.

Rideout said to inform his decision, two consultants — Peter Lockie of Inverleith Consulting and retired RCMP superintendent Peter Lepine — were hired to study the situation and report back.

The consultants concluded VPD was able to maintain an adequate and effective level of policing in the community with the budget it was provided with. However, Lockie and Lepine said this did come at a cost to department programs, overtime costs and employee health and wellbeing.

Their reporting showed the largest component of the VPD budget, at 90 per cent of its total, is salaries and benefits.

Palmer said since council voted at the end of 2020, Vancouver has been "gripped by an abundance of public safety challenges" including gang conflict, more than 1,000 protests, a surge in violent street crime and concerning levels of hate crimes. 

During that same time period, the Black Lives Matter movement and criticism of police actions at protests and wellness checks have amplified calls by advocates to reduce police budgets and shift funding to social supports.

Ben Ger, an activist involved with the movement to defund policing in Vancouver, was disappointed in the province's decision and said the money could have gone toward preventing crime as opposed to reacting to it.

"Crime is not an inherent quality that people strive for," he said. 

"Crime and any sort of antisocial behaviour comes out of certain conditions" including poverty and homelessness, he added.

Vancouver Coun. Christine Boyle, who proposed the original amendment to freeze police funding, said the decision to restore the money to the VPD set a dangerous precedent.

"A lot of what's being addressed by the Vancouver Police Department is actually the result of significant underfunding for decades — of affordable housing, of mental health services, of income supports and poverty [supports]," Boyle told Gloria Macarenko, host of CBC's On The Coast.

"Now for the province to force our hand, in basically giving a blank cheque each year to the police department, I do have real concerns about what that means for local oversight."

Boyle said that city council made its decision after hearing from hundreds of residents on the issue of police funding, and that other councillors shared her concerns.

In June 2020, in the wake of protests in Vancouver calling for systemic changes to the VPD, Stewart called for a comprehensive review of all policing in the province. 

A special committee of MLAs is currently reviewing the 1996 Police Act act with plans to update how police respond to mental health and substance use calls and investigate systemic racism in departments.

The original deadline for the report was May 14, 2021, but this has been pushed back by the B.C. government to the end of April 2022.