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The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) has blamed over one-fifth of its 2025 budget deficit on the federal government’s refusal to cover the cost of policing protests over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A report<\/a> to the Ottawa Police Service Board’s finance and audit committee says that $6.5 million of the $28.9 million deficit in the 2025 OPS budget was due to the federal government declining to reimburse the OPS for costs incurred from policing demonstrations in Ottawa over the ongoing war in the Middle East.\u00a0<\/p>\n The report, submitted by the OPS and Chief Eric Stubbs, says Public Safety Canada (PSC) last year declined a supplemental funding request for policing the protests after the OPS exceeded an annual $3-million funding agreement under the the National Capital Extraordinary Policing Costs program.\u00a0<\/p>\n “PSC advised OPS that police forces in many Canadian cities incurred costs related to these demonstrations, and that it was not a unique and extraordinary cost related solely to the National Capital Region,” an OPS spokesperson told CBC in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n Since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7<\/a>, 2023, OPS officers have policed numerous events involving both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators. These include marches from Ottawa city hall to Parliament Hill, gatherings at the human rights monument on Elgin street, and protests outside the Israeli Embassy on O\u2019Connor Street and OPS headquarters on Elgin Street<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over the past five years, PSC has reimbursed the OPS $109.3 million under the National Capital Extraordinary Policing Costs program, the OPS spokesperson said. This has covered costs associated with the convoy protests, National Capital Region security, Canada Day and policing legal protests. <\/p>\n A contentious issue<\/p>\n The expense of policing protests has been a contentious issue in recent years in Ottawa, where overlapping jurisdictions raise questions over shared responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n PSC was contacted for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Parliamentary Protective Service (PPS), which is responsible for security on Parliament Hill, at the Senate and throughout the surrounding parliamentary precinct, declined to comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n The union that represents RCMP members has previously argued that the Mounties should be put back in charge of security on Parliament Hill, though PPS declined to comment on the current OPS deficit related to protest coverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n The funding shortfall for covering protests wasn’t the largest item in the report explaining the OPS budget deficit. The report said $11.2 million was due to overtime pressures, and $7.5 million was related to a collective agreement settlement.<\/p>\n OPS expects to resume negotiations with the federal government over the next five-year agreement for the National Capital Extraordinary Policing Cost program after the end of the fiscal year on March 31, the report said. <\/p>\n “To mitigate the potential impact of demonstrations on OPS\u2019 financial position, while maintaining our obligations to ensure adequate and effective policing, OPS is currently evaluating if and how it could reduce policing costs for demonstrations,” the OPS spokesperson said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-547709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}