Demonstrators march in Toronto in August 2020, calling for the defunding of police. “Across the country, police budgets have continued to increase since the 2020 protests, with some cities passing larger increases in the period after the protests than before,” Shiri Pasternak and Ted Rutland write.
Demonstrators march in Toronto in August 2020, calling for the defunding of police. “Across the country, police budgets have continued to increase since the 2020 protests, with some cities passing larger increases in the period after the protests than before,” Shiri Pasternak and Ted Rutland write.
Prior to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in May 2020, there was little media attention given to movements demanding to defund or abolish police forces. Suddenly, the words “defund” and “abolish” were in the streets and on everyone’s lips. Decades, if not centuries, of Black activism against police violence bore the fruit of a new generation’s politics.
In Canada around this time, the streets filled with people demonstrating their own demands for justice and systemic change. They grieved the injustice of multiple killings of Indigenous and racialized people by our own forces in the months following Floyd’s death: Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Eisha Hudson, Chantal Moore, Rodney Levi, Ejaz Ahmed Choudry. All but one of these killings were a result of “wellness checks.”
There is a good reason people called for systemic change to police power rather than more reform. Reforms like diversity hiring, body cameras, and anti-racism training have been implemented since the 1980s. They have failed for decades to reign in structural racism, misogyny and violence in local, provincial and national forces, or to introduce meaningful accountability measures should the worst happen.
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Evidence of “starlight tours” in Saskatchewan, when police abandoned Indigenous people in sub-zero temperatures on the outskirts of towns, date back to the 1970s. Recent reports from Gull Bay First Nation in Ontario indicate that they continue. “Carding” practices that disproportionately targeted Black youth in Toronto for decades were formally phased out in 2017 but research shows that racial profiling never stopped. Numbers of Black people stopped by police have actually gone up.
Reforms that fail are blamed by police on the behaviour of a few bad apples. Then why not toss out these apples? Instead, ranks have closed around accused police officers who benefit from extraordinary rates of impunity. Officers who attempt to change the internal culture of police forces have been silenced or pushed out, as recent class action lawsuits have shown.
This year has been a startling juxtaposition of news stories that feature policing failures alongside police budget increases across the country. In Winnipeg, police have refused to search the landfill for Indigenous women who were victims of a serial killer. That is despite a $7-million dollar raise in this year’s budget.
The inquiry into the “Freedom Convoy” protests in Ottawa revealed that despite warnings from intelligence that protesters had booked hotel blocks for 30-day stays, local police dismissed concerns. Residents had to deal with the consequences. Last year, Ottawa received an additional $11.5 million in police funding. For 2023, an increase of $13.4 million was just approved.
In Edmonton, one of the deadliest forces in the country, RCMP officers violated a man’s bail conditions and dropped him off in the city unsupervised, where he beat two people to death. Edmonton police also did not intervene when they interacted with him days earlier. The force was awarded a $7-million budget increase for 2023.
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Across the country, police budgets have continued to increase since the 2020 protests, with some cities passing larger increases in the period after the protests than before. These moves defy a 2020 survey showing a majority of Canadians (57 per cent) oppose increasing police budgets. It also confounds the promises of politicians in 2020 to reckon with police violence and systemic racism.
The disconnect between growing police budgets and public consciousness has never been greater.
The movement for police abolition challenges ongoing police violence and budget increases. It questions the recourse to police to solve a myriad of social problems. The majority of 911 calls in Montreal, for example, do not involve violence or even crime. The movement also pushes for actions to prevent violence and other harms from occurring, rather than simply punishing perpetrators after the fact. For cases of domestic violence, the true lifeline to safety can be affordable housing, as well as emergency services and shelters.
But these nonpolice services require real investment. The fight to defund the police, then, is at heart a fight for political power. It is a fight to prioritize care as a society instead of criminalization. Despite bloating police budgets, this is the struggle that continues.
Correction – Jan. 12, 2023:This story has been updated. A previous version mistakenly stated that surveys show more than two-thirds of Canadians oppose increasing police budgets.
Shiri Pasternak is an assistant professor of criminology at Toronto Metropolitan University. Ted Rutland is an associate professor of geography, planning and environment at Concordia University.
