Police forces in smaller Ontario cities struggling to pay for new training standards
The new Community Safety and Policing Act is made up of 263 sections, passed in 2019 and took effect in April 2025, replacing the 34-year-old Police Services Act.
The law applies stricter regulations to local police forces, including the training officers must go through. It raised the standards and, according to police, increased costs at the same time.
The new legislation, however, did not come with any new funds for local police forces to handle the changes.
In a difficult budget season, some smaller towns say they’re struggling.
“I will note there was no funding from the province to help us get compliant with that stuff, so it has been a challenge,” Owen Sound Deputy Police Chief Dave Bishop recently told councillors.
The town has a population of around 22,000 people and is served by roughly 40 officers, the mayor says. Local taxpayers are responsible for just over $9 million per year to fund the force, which raises in the region of $5 million through other revenue streams.
Rushing to get officers trained and meet new standards is a fresh cost the force said it will struggle to absorb.
“All of that mandated training that now kicks in for our advanced training for the officers that we have, where we now have timeframes where we have to have it done by, what it does to our budget is — most of those courses are happening off-site, so we’re looking at hotels, meals, mileage on top of the course costs,” Bishop said.
“We’ve had a bunch of costs come in related to trying to get compliant with the act.”
There are other costs too — increased standards for equipment like breathalyzers to meet court requirements or the growing cost of storing digital evidence like cellphone or dashcam footage.
Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy said the changes are welcome to improve policing, but the lack of funding accompanying them suggests smaller towns have been left out of the thinking.
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“A lot of those decisions are made in Toronto, and they make sense for a big police force like Toronto,” he told Global News.
“It’s very hard in the City of Owen Sound, with a population of approximately 22,000 or 24,000 and a police force of somewhere around 40. It’s difficult for a small town to carry a full-time police force… and have the changes of regulation from the province that end up on our budget.”
Owen Sound is not alone. Sault Ste. Marie has asked — and been denied — a costing to explore ditching its police force and using Ontario Provincial Police resources.
The key concern is a lack of regular, guaranteed funding for small local forces.
Smaller towns with their own police departments are eligible to apply to the provincial government for grant funding, although it isn’t guaranteed.
Since the Progressive Conservatives formed government in 2018, for example, Owen Sound has received an average of $1.5 million per year in grants for its police force. That’s roughly 10 per cent of its current annual budget.
A spokesperson for Solicitor General Michael Kerzner emphasized to Global News that grants were available, but local municipalities will have to find a way to make up any shortfall.
“Our government is making record investments in Police Services across the province,” they said in a statement. “Operating costs for police services are the responsibility of the respective municipalities they serve.”
Peterborough recently sent a letter to the province asking for higher, more stable funding to cover the growing costs.
The letter, which took the form of a council motion forwarded to the provincial government, said the local force was seeing increased costs “directly related to new compliance and operations standards” brought in by the new Community Safety and Policing Act.
“Therefore, be it resolved that, Council request that the Province of Ontario provide targeted financial assistance to municipalities to offset any additional costs that are directly and demonstrably incurred as a result of compliance with the Community Safety and Policing Act, 2019, and not general increases to police budgets,” part of the letter read.
Boddy said Owen Sound is looking for the same reliable funding, rather than being forced to compete in “the Hunger Games world” where municipalities fight each other for resources.
“We would like to see standard funding coming to municipal services equal to the benefit that OPP municipalities are seeing,” he said. “Not grants here or there that we can apply for and hope to get — just consistent, long-term funding.”
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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