Mississauga Mayor wants Brampton to pay more for police, says city’s extra $106M bill not a fair deal

Mississauga’s Carolyn Parrish is calling on Ontario Premier Doug Ford to correct what she calls a “lack of balance” when it comes to paying for Peel Regional Police, while Brampton’s Patrick Brown says safety at Pearson International Airport and a new influx of marine officers make up for the split.

Parrish made the comments in an interview on Newstalk 1010, and took aim at the cost split between the two cities for police services.

“We pay 62 per cent of Peel Regional Police budgets, and Brampton pays 38 per cent. And we actually have a lower population. I’m not going to speculate on the crime levels, I think that’s too technical, but I think we’ve done a really good job,” Parrish said.

She said paying the lion’s share of the police budget has been a hard hit on Mississauga taxpayers amid rising budgets year after year, and is paying $106 million to “subsidies” Brampton. And while she says she understands the difficult job police do and wants them to be fairly compensated, she doesn’t “understand why, for 50 years, we’ve paid 62 per cent and Brampton has paid 38.”

Parrish says she’s met with Ford and asked the premier to even out the cost split over a three year transition “because I don’t want Patrick Brown to be hit with the same problem we’ve had.”

“So if we can get a fair balance and do it over a three year period, I think it will work just fine,” Parrish said.

But Brown fired back against the proposal on Wednesday, saying Mississauga pays more because of the airport and marine unit in that city.

“Mississauga has 62 per cent of the Peel Police staff and pays 62 per cent of the bill,” Brown said, highlighting the $35.3 million in payments in lieu of taxes paid to the City of Mississauga last year by the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.

The Brampton mayor also noted a Region of Peel Council vote last week to double the size of the marine unit as part of the new south-end police station being built in Port Credit, saying Parrish “can’t vote for major new police projects in your own jurisdiction and then complain about police costs.”

“If Mayor Parrish believes the cost for policing is too high, I want to know exactly which policing staff of her 62 per cent of Peel Regional Police staff in Mississauga she’s proposing to fire,” he said.

Over 780 new officers have been hired across Peel Regional Police since 2023, including a record 300 hired last year.