Montreal Police Overspend Budget by $50 Million in 2022

The Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) received a $63 million budget increase for 2023, after overspending their budget by $50 million in 2022.

The SPVM has overspent their  budget by around $9 million each year between 2011 and 2020. 

What’s the reason for overspending? The SPVM is overspending due to overtime being worked by officers. The SPVM says this is necessary in the fight against violence by firearms, but if the police have been overspending by millions since 2011, how necessary is this?

For the last four years, overtime hours ranged between 37.4 million and 42.4 million. Since 2018, money spent on overtime hours for the SPVM ranged between 37.4 million and 42.4 million.

Local 514 reached out to the SPVM to understand the need for overtime and see if there is a plan in place for how the SPVM intends to remain within budget for the next year and coming years, but the media relations team was unable to respond to these questions before the release of this report. 

Local 514 asked Alain Vaillancourt, who is responsible for public safety on the Executive Committee of the City of Montréal the same questions, but Vaillancourt’s team did not respond.

Concordia professor and journalist Ted Rutland has been challenging Projet Montreal on their rapid budget increases towards the SPVM. 

Rutland said the SPVM is overspending by an average of $30 million per year.

"No other police force overspends by this much," he said. He said that the second highest police forces overspending in Canada are the Vancouver police and Peel region police, who overspend close to $2 million a year, "but this is far below Montreal," said Rutland.

Rutland says the city decides the budget by paying out the SPVM for overspending.

He said when asked to explain the need reason for overtime hours, both SPVM and city say it's due to increased crime and the pandemic, but there's never an ability on the part of SPVM or the city to actually explain why overtime happens.

"We want to seek a balance," said Rutland. They continue to increase police budget, but we absolutely need to deal with social programs, he said