Ottawa Police Service Budget Information

This information was initially compiled in 2002 for the 2003 Police budget from an 80 page handout at the December 16, 2002 Ottawa Police Services Board meeting (dated November 13, 2002). It was never distributed electronically, which would have allowed interested citizens and City Councillors (or members of the OPSB) to analyse it properly.

The summary of the 2003 Police budget on the Ottawa Police web site simply said that they will spend $136 million dollars in this fiscal year, without providing the public with any breakdown of how this will be spent.

More complete budget information is provided here in an effort to inform Ottawa citizens of how their tax dollars are distributed with respect to police expenditures. The 80 page Ottawa Police Service budget dated November 13, 2002 is a fairly comprehensive document and provides a good deal of information about their finances. However, this information is not available to the general public other than by calling the OPS finance department (tel. 236-1222 #5561) and asking for a printed copy. Or downloading it from this web site. Greater transparency in the Police budget process is necessary.

The Ottawa Police Services Board, at its January 27, 2003 meeting received and approved a third quarter financial statement from the Ottawa Police Service which did not say what they spent in the third quarter of the fiscal year! This report only provided indicators of variances from the budget. This lack of scrutiny of the OPS budget and expenditures by the Board appears to be considerably below that expected of the Boards of Directors of even the smallest charities, much less of a municipal government body with a budget of $136 million per year! In the past, the City of Ottawa removed all Ottawa Police Services Board minutes and documents from its web site when the meeting was over, making it impossible to research Board decisions online. This has changed recently as minutes from back to 2001 are now on the site.

The original presentation of the 2004 Ottawa Police Service budget did not provide this summary information either. The original 14 page document stated on page 3 that total expenditures would be $160.1 million dollars, but did not break that down by either department nor expenditure type. The information below was finally put on the OPS web site as PDF files upon the request of a member of the public and was scanned into a spreadsheet to permit a more thorough analysis of the budget than possible on the basis of the original submission. If you would like a copy of the spreadsheet, please write to <witnessgroup@rogers.com>

Note that with a request for $12.9 million more for 2005, the OPS budget, if approved, will have increased by over 74% in 10 years vs an overall City spending decrease of 6.4% from 2000 to 2004.

2003 Draft Budget Summary
2003 Draft Budget by Expenditure Type
Ottawa Police Third Quarter Financial Report - January 2003
[Note: the tables in this report are not viewable on the City website due to poor web design.]
2004 Draft Budget - Summary and Details
OPS 10 Year Budget Summary