Ontario police associations launch recruiting campaign to address staffing shortage

Several police associations in Ontario are launching a joint campaign to recruit more officers amid staffing shortages across the province.

The campaign, known as Answer the Call, will support over 50 police services and is backed by the provincial government, according to a news release Monday.

"Wearing a uniform and serving as a police officer is not only noble, but it will be something that will define what makes Ontario and Canada so special," Solicitor General Michael Kerzner told a virtual news conference on Monday.

The number of people graduating from Ontario's police officer college has increased from around 1,200 people in 2022 to over 2,100 this year, Kerzner said.

"We're going to continue to explore how to boost those numbers."

The campaign is a "practical response to a growing challenge," said Lisa Darling, executive director of the Ontario Association of Police Service Boards, which is part of the initiative.

"Police services across Ontario are under real pressure to fill critical roles, and boards see that strain every day," she said in Monday's news release.

Other associations leading the initiative are the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, Police Association of Ontario, Indigenous Police Chiefs of Ontario, Ontario Provincial Police Association and Toronto Police Association.

Police staffing shortages are impacting public safety, response times and officer well-being, Monday's news release said.

The initiative aims to address these shortages but is also focused on "modernizing recruitment and opening the door to a more diverse pool of candidates."

Other factors causing the staff shortage include officers retiring early, as well as "social shifts in terms of the perspectives of what policing is," Halton police Deputy Chief Roger Wilkie said at Monday's news conference.

The campaign will be on social media feeds and billboards over the next few months, he said.

Historically, individual police services worked independently on recruitment, often competing for the same limited pool of candidates, said Darren Montour, president of the Indigenous Police Chiefs of Ontario. This approach has left smaller and more remote services at a disadvantage, he said.

"This campaign … levels the playing field. It ensures that every service has equal opportunity to attract and recruit the right people," Montour said.

Ontario has made several changes to police training and recruitment in recent years — including scrapping a post-secondary education requirement and covering the costs of mandatory training.

The province expanded the Ontario Police College in October to make room for 80 more cadets annually. The newly opened training spots, which are expected this year, will be reserved for small, medium and First Nation police services, Kerzner said at the time.

Meanwhile, the Toronto Police Services Board approved a new five-year hiring plan in November that would guarantee the force the maximum number of police officers who can be hired in 2025 and 2026.

Toronto has a ratio of officers in the low 160s per 100,000 people, Chief Myron Demkiw said at the time.

But more police does not necessarily mean greater safety, said Timothy Bryan, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto.

Major cities in North America have high ratios of police officers to their population, but continue to have high rates of crime, he said.

"Police services themselves will not guarantee an X per cent decline in crime if we have an X per cent increase in officers, because they know that that's not how it works," Bryan said.

"These things are not quite linked in the way that they're being presented."

He said it is important to consider issues that impact public safety and crime other than the number of police officers, such as poverty and other socioeconomic factors.

"Once we dislodge the police from the centre of the conversations that we have on public safety, [we can] actually reimagine how to do public safety in ways that might be … more effective and more efficient for the residents of this province."