Police funding | A study calls for “reinventing the Quebec model”

There is an urgent need to “reinvent the model” of funding police forces in Quebec, in order to redistribute more resources to the many other actors who intervene in urban security – a field “much broader than crime” –, pleads a new study published Wednesday.

Henri Ouellette-Vezina
The Press

“What we observed in this study is that the current funding of the police, it is not intelligent or efficient, moreover. First, the funding model is spread over years, and it is not adapted to current needs, which have evolved since the time when this financial framework was put in place,” says the researcher associated with the Institute for Socio-economic Research and Information (IRIS) Roberson Édouard, who is co-author of the study.

According to figures given in his report, public safety remains the number one item of expenditure in Montreal. Between 2002 and 2022, the budget of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) has increased from 429 million to 724 million, an increase of 169%. In Quebec, it went from 87 million in 2002 to 155 million in 2020, a significant jump of 178% there too.

Meanwhile, spending on social housing, land use planning, community services – all of which also have major repercussions on citizen safety – “have not grown at the same rate at all”, laments Mr. Edward. “We are not the only ones to say it: the current funding model is not sustainable. Cities cannot support the fundless, endless call for defunding the police,” he says.

“Better distribution of money”

According to IRIS, on the contrary, it would be necessary to “better distribute the money” in services which intervene on a daily basis with certain populations with whom the police “do not always have the skills to intervene”. “When we say to reinvent the model, that means moving resources to the right sectors, for the right intervention, including the community network,” says the researcher.

“We gain by investing more in prevention than repression. Investing in the hygiene of life, early childhood education, land use planning, community services, assistance to young people who could be recruited by criminal groups, is to prevent security. It is to ensure that the police do not have to intervene for reasons that would be settled upstream, ”he insists again.

For him, the debate on the revision of the model does not mean “defunding the police”. “We are not asking to take from the police budget. We are asked to review the way of conceiving security. There is a way to better arbitrate expenditures so that, ultimately, resources contribute as adequately as possible to the safety of citizens, which is defined more broadly than by the simple definition of crime,” concludes Mr. Édouard.