Halifax Regional Police and the RCMP are requesting a significant budget increase ahead of the legalization of marijuana in July – an increase that city councillors have yet to agree on.
Steve Craig, chair of the Board of Police Commissioners, says a lot of the extra costs come with enforcing impairment laws.
“What we need to be able to do is have our members trained in the use of kits, use of training, and really the application of and determination of impairment,” Craig says.
But how much that will cost remains unclear.
“It is going to have some impact,” Craig says. “What the resources are going to be required, we don't know that at this point.”
Police have proposed a $87-million budget, which is $550,000 heavier than the city would like. Paying for contracted salary and overtime increases is listed as almost $8 million, while hiring seven more Halifax Regional Police staff and six more Halifax District RCMP officers is expected to cost almost $700,000.
“Council's committed to a 1.9 per cent increase and no more, so these additional asks that came in from Halifax Regional Police would have been on top of that,” says Halifax Deputy Mayor Waye Mason.
While both Mason and Craig say they haven't crunched all the specific numbers when it comes to the cost of dealing with legalized cannabis, other municipalities and police forces have.
The Regina Police Service is budgeting up to $1.6 million for the first year of cannabis legalization.
Regina's policing budget is almost the same as Halifax's at about $86 million.
“We've heard numbers of two per cent of the overall operational budget being thrown out there,” says Regina Police Service Chief Evan Bray, “so the human resource part of this isn't just police officers pulling over impaired drivers, it's ensuring quality control at authorized dispensaries.”
Halifax’s total policing budget will be brought back for further debate on March 28.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Heidi Petracek.
