About 100 people attended an online protest on Tuesday to rally against the City of Ottawa finance and economic development committee’s decision to increase the Ottawa Police Service’s levy by three per cent in 2022.
The decision, which was approved on July 6 by the finance committee, would see the OPS funding rise by $13.5 million. However, the 2022 police budget has not been submitted and the OPS could draft a budget for less funding than directed.
The online rally, originally planned to take place in-person but moved online to Zoom due to weather, was organized by community groups including Horizon Ottawa, Ottawa Black Diaspora Coalition and the Coalition Against More Surveillance (CAMS).
Featured speakers included Catherine McKenney, city councillor for Somerset Ward. McKenney said they felt “gaslit” by the City Council as they saw increases in police funding approved each year, while other services were cut.
McKenney said during their years as a city councillor, colleagues often reassured them that budget directives were not final, adding that the police board can draft a budget that does not fill the total funding. However, McKenney said since they were elected in 2013, “budget directives have never changed [once approved].”
McKenney said they will introduce a motion at a council meeting on July 21 to freeze the police budget for 2022 so the funds can go towards public health.
Other speakers also highlighted alternative areas for the city to direct tax levies.
Maya Basudde, a speaker at the event, is a poet and member of Asilu Collective, a group that advocated for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board to end the Ottawa Police Service School Resource Officer (SRO) program. The program assigned an officer to schools in Ottawa to serve as a personal police contact and was terminated on June 24 following a vote by school board trustees.
Basudde spoke about her experience of disrupting the “school to prison pipeline” and emphasized tax levies could be directed to student support systems as opposed to police.
“I have friends whose incarceration is a direct result of Ottawa’s school to prison pipeline that continues to push children out of schools and into prisons,” Basudde said. “I have personally been to more funerals than graduations and birthday parties because of the impact of policing over care.”
In 2021, $3.69 million was spent on the SRO program, which Bassude said was money taken away from support systems for students.
“We need care, not cops,” Bassude said. “We demand a defunding of the Ottawa police, not an increase in funding.”
At the rally, Sam Hersh, a spokesperson for Horizon Ottawa, said community members have not forgotten a motion passed by the police board which called for a report on freezing the budget. Horizon Ottawa published a press release ahead of the rally stating the levy decision was inconsistent with a promise to “support the police board” in their work to reduce or freeze the OPS budget.
However, the city council motion Horizon Ottawa referred to is not a commitment to freeze police funding. The Oct. 28, 2020 motion on mental health strategies encourages the police board to undertake a consultation and report outlining alternative community safety responses that do not involve the police.
The OPS has written a budget scenario report to be reviewed by the police board on July 26. The report outlines funding reduction options and indicates that a zero per cent tax levy from the city would have “major” service impacts, including a pause on all hiring and the firing of 130 to 140 officers, as a significant majority of OPS funding finances officer compensation and benefits. A reduction of $2.3 million dollars, which would reduce the directed tax levy increase by 0.6 per cent, would have a “moderate” impact, according to the report.
The police board has also approved contracting StrategyCorp consultants firm to review the OPS budget and use of force policy.
Hersh said the consultants demonstrate a double standard on which public servant’s jobs are protected.
“You do not need to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on consultants to cut funding for transit or lay off librarians,” Hersh said in an interview before the protest. “But we do for police.”
During the finance committee meeting on July 6, city solicitor David White said The Police Services Act limits the municipality in that council can provide a budget direction to the Ottawa Police Services Board but cannot prescribe a line-by-line budget.
In the time leading up to the submission of the 2022 budget, Laura Shantz, a member of CAMS, said community members are prepared to keep pushing stakeholders to reconsider.
“Police are trying to rebuild trust with us. They told us how they are listening and learning,” Shantz said. “We are listening and learning too. We’re learning that we need to stand up to the status quo.”
Featured image from file.
