Grow the police with the city
Public safety / policing
Grow the police with the city.
In 1995, when the regional police service was formed, Ottawa set a minimum of 42 patrol cars on the road at all times. The region had about 721,000 people. Today Ottawa has about 1.1 million people across 2,790 square kilometres. The minimum is still 42.
It is written into Article 12 of the police collective agreement, and it has never been formally reassessed. This plan raises that floor, guarantees patrol coverage for every part of the city, and goes after the small, repeat crime that wears a neighbourhood down. It asks the federal and provincial governments to pay their share of policing the capital, and it brings the next level of police training home to Ottawa.
Ottawa grew 50%. The minimum didn’t move.
The City’s Auditor General found in 2025 that police aim for 48 cars on the road, but “the contractual minimum of 42 is often all that is achievable, particularly during night shifts and shift changeovers.” Frontline overtime rose 242% from 2020 to 2024, and sick leave costs rose 57%. The Auditor General said that reliance on overtime “contributes to officer fatigue and burnout.”
At the end of 2025, Ottawa had 1,611 sworn officers on the books, but 87 positions were empty because of long-term absences. In 2019, Ottawa had 121 officers for every 100,000 residents. Calgary and Toronto had 162. Edmonton had 188. And Ottawa covers more ground than Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg combined.
Ottawa’s officers are doing more with less. They need more people beside them.
If it isn’t an emergency, you wait.
Police arrive within 15 minutes for 94% of life-threatening emergencies. Every other kind of call falls short of its target. Urgent calls meet their 15-minute target 75% of the time. Priority 3 calls meet their 30-minute target 66% of the time. The police service’s own report explains why: “Daily prioritization of P1 and P2 calls results in delays for P3 and P4 response.” That is the right call for officers to make. But when 42 cars cover the whole city, the break-in where the thief has already left goes to the back of the line.
In Vanier, a repair shop owner was broken into three times in just over a week. He waited more than 24 hours for an officer. This is not a failure of the officers or the people who lead them. It is what happens when a city of 1.1 million is policed with a 1995 minimum.
Downtown gets served first. The suburbs and villages wait.
Ottawa’s patrol cars are run as one centralized operation and dispatched by the priority of the call. When a serious call comes in, cars go where they are needed, even from one end of the city to the other. That is the right call in the moment. The problem is what it leaves behind. There is no published minimum number of cars for any part of Ottawa, so no suburb or village is guaranteed a car when downtown gets busy.
The Chief’s new district model is the right direction: four full-service districts, West, Central, South and East, each with its own superintendent, and smaller zones inside each district so officers own a neighbourhood and answer for it. It needs the officers to make it work.
Small crime is still crime.
Property crime was up 28% in the first five months of 2026 compared with the same period last year. Shoplifting files are not consistently assigned for follow-up because of staffing limits, the police service told its board in January. Ottawa’s weighted clearance rate was 32.7% in 2025, against the service’s own benchmark of 40%.
Part of the answer is detectives. The Chief told city council in December that the fraud unit had a team of ten dealing with more than 6,500 reports in a year. You can’t hire a detective off the street. Detectives are experienced officers, usually several years on patrol, who are then trained in criminal investigation, interviewing and search warrants. Every detective Ottawa will need in 2030 is a patrol officer being hired now.
A small number of offenders commit a large share of property crime. When police follow up on the small stuff, they find them. In May, Ottawa police charged one man with nearly 120 offences and closed 40 investigations. Toronto’s 23 Division made 546 shoplifting arrests in two years, 259 of them repeat or prolific offenders. In Lowell, Massachusetts, cleaning up 17 hot spots cut calls for service by almost 20%.
The plan: eight moves
That restores the coverage Ottawa had per resident in 1995. After that, the minimum rises automatically with population so it never falls 30 years behind again.
The police service is dividing each of its four districts into smaller zones. Every zone gets a published minimum of patrol coverage, including set rural coverage, so no suburb or village is left without a car when downtown gets busy.
Alex will add about 290 more frontline officers over the term, to match the staffing per resident Calgary and Toronto already have. Those officers are also the detectives of the next decade.
A dedicated repeat-offender and retail theft unit will be set up. Every shoplifting and theft file will be assigned for follow-up. Police will use bait bikes, push a citywide bike registry, and put problem-solving teams at known hot spots downtown, in the ByWard Market and in suburban plazas.
City crews will clear graffiti, needles, broken lighting and illegal dumping at hot spots within 48 hours of a report.
Alex will go after the $6.5 million the federal government refused to pay for policing demonstrations in the capital, and push for a funding deal that covers the full cost of policing protests, national events and embassies, every year. He will press Ontario to renew its Ottawa public safety funding past 2027 and to fund front-line officers, the way it did for two decades and the way Alberta and Saskatchewan do today.
Recruits will keep going to Aylmer; that is provincial law. Alex will press the province to co-fund Ottawa’s new training centre and accredit it to deliver the investigator, interviewing, search warrant and specialized courses officers need after their first years on the road, for Ottawa and for every police service in eastern Ontario.
The Chief committed to a new, evidence-based minimum deployment standard, as the Auditor General recommended. Alex will fund what it finds, make the standard public, and review it every five years so Ottawa never again goes three decades without an update.
What it costs, and who should pay.
Raising the floor from 42 to 64 cars takes about 110 officers, because each car on the road around the clock needs about five officers to cover every shift. At the Ottawa Police Service’s own cost of about $180,000 per new position, that is roughly $20 million a year, or about $42 for every household in the city. Ottawa should not carry that alone.
Parliament’s protests, Parliament’s bill. Ottawa police managed 370 events and 415 demonstrations in 2025. The federal government pays for part of that: $10 million a year for the Parliamentary District team around the Hill, and $3 million a year through its program for the capital’s extraordinary policing costs. That program is capped at $3 million, and the service says its extraordinary costs now run about $20 million a year. When Ottawa asked for help with the cost of policing the demonstrations over the war in the Middle East, the federal government said no, because other cities had those protests too. That left $6.5 million unpaid by the end of 2025, and Ottawa’s property taxpayers covered it. No other city is the capital. No other city has about 130 embassies and high commissions.
Ontario has set the precedent. Now go further. Under the 2024 New Deal for Ottawa, the province is putting about $6 million a year into the Ottawa Police Service for three years: the mounted unit, the ByWard Market strategy, special constables and mental health response teams. That is the right instinct. But the money runs out in 2027, and none of it pays for a patrol car on the road. From 1998 to 2019, Ontario paid a share of the salaries of front-line officers in cities across the province. Alberta and Saskatchewan fund city officers today.
Growth pays its share. Taxes on newly built homes brought $5.7 million into the 2026 police budget. More homes and more employers grow the tax base that pays for more officers.
Bring the next level of police training home.
Every new police officer in Ontario must complete the 12-week Basic Constable Training program at the Ontario Police College in Aylmer, nearly 600 kilometres from Ottawa. That is provincial law, and this plan does not pretend to change it. But Aylmer is where a police career starts. It is not where it is built. Officers who move into investigations, intimate partner violence or sexual assault cases need specialized courses, and every officer requalifies in use of force every year.
Ottawa’s police are delivering that training out of borrowed rooms. Algonquin College ended the 25-year agreement that housed most police training, and training now runs out of eight sites across the city. Toronto, Peel, York, Durham, Halton, Hamilton and Niagara all own training centres with a range. Ottawa is the outlier. Alex will press the province to co-fund Ottawa’s new centre as the place where that next-level training is delivered for all of eastern Ontario, in both official languages.
Credit where it’s due.
Chief Stubbs and the Ottawa Police Service have moved on the right things. The district model, launching in January 2027, brings policing closer to neighbourhoods. Police hired 133 officers in 2024 and 150 in 2025. Shootings fell from 52 in 2024 to 38 in 2025. This year, home break-ins are down 26% and car thefts are down 27%. That is good news.
None of it raises the 42-car floor, and none of it guarantees a car to the suburbs or rural Ottawa. That is the job of the next mayor and council. Mark Sutcliffe has promised 200 more officers for worthy priorities, but his plan doesn’t raise the 42-car floor. This plan is the only one that does.
Three commitments.
Added, not shuffled. New cars go on top of today’s coverage. No suburb or village loses a car to fill a gap downtown.
Aimed at repeat offenders and hot spots. Enforcement follows the evidence: the small number of people who commit most property crime, and the places where disorder builds. Success is measured in solved files and safer streets.
Paid for without raising the police share of your tax bill. Ottawa already pays for its police through the police levy on every property tax bill. This plan does not add to it. The new cars are paid for three ways: the federal and provincial governments paying their share of policing the capital, the savings identified in the Back to Basics Budget, and a growing tax base. If the federal and provincial governments are slow to pay, the savings cover the gap. The levy does not.
Read the full plan, with every source (PDF)
We’ve got a lot of work to do.
Ottawa deserves better.