Vancouver’s Cop City Budget
Next year’s municipal budget is set to allocate half a billion dollars toward policing.
“The optics are, ‘Oh, the police get everything they want,’” Vancouver police board member Lorraine Lowe said, shortly before she voted to approve another $50 million be directed to the Vancouver Police Department from the 2026 city budget.
But it’s not just optics—there is $497.1 million allocated to the VPD in the proposed 2026 city budget.
Meanwhile, the VPD is projected to overspend its 2025 budget by $17 million. In 2024, the VPD overspent by at least $6.5 million. The VPD’s purported rationale for overspending in the last two years has focused on increases in overtime pay, particularly from policing protests and forcibly displacing people living outside.
With Vancouver hosting FIFA World Cup games during the upcoming municipal election year, we can expect that the VPD will put together new public relation strategies to rationalize their overspending.
This spending does not account for the other forms of law enforcement the city pays for, such as bylaw officers, park rangers, transit police (via Translink contributions), nor the city staff that conduct street sweeps.
While a municipal police board should—in theory—be an added layer of community oversight, Vancouver’s police board seems to have devolved into a mechanism for increasing police power and budgets.
In February 2024, one police board member quit, pointing to Lowe’s apparent conflicts of interest. Both of Lowe’s employment roles during her board tenure have been directing organizations (Sun Yat-Sen Gardens; H.R. MacMillan Space Centre) that rely on city funding, making it less likely she would oppose Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s direction.
Vancouver’s former mayor, Kennedy Stewart, relinquished his spokesperson duties on the police board in 2021, citing what he called “indefensible” inaction on systemic racism within the city’s police force.
In 2020, the city voted to essentially freeze the police budget for one year rather than increase it—at the height of COVID-19 pandemic austerity and a coordinated defund the police social movement—but the decision was overturned at the provincial-level by the director of police services (and former police officer) Wayne Rideout.
In BC, municipalities are ultimately under the control of the provincial government, who can override city-level decisions.
Under Premier David Eby and Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth, the BC NDP make up one of the most pro-police provincial governments in recent history—not only has the province public money into policing, it has also empowered police with new legal tools, including expanded criteria for apprehending people under the Mental Health Act, new civil forfeiture abilities, and discretion to decide personal drug possession quantities without using a scale or other measuring tool.
The VPD budget continues to dominate the municipal spending priorities, even as other existing (and potential) city-funded services that provide community safety and inclusion are being defunded under Ken Sim’s proposed property tax freeze.
“This means a tax freeze for the richest property owners off the backs of the poor,” says P.O.W.E.R. member-researcher Dave Hamm.
In the broad categories released by the city to date, the proposed 2026 budget includes: a 12 per cent spending cut to arts and culture; a 13 per cent decrease in the city’s real estate and facilities management spending; and a 14 per cent decrease in urban planning and sustainability. Reporting by National Observer indicates the city is planning to completely defund and dismantle its climate and sustainability department. P.O.W.E.R. has previously brought attention to how the DTES faces the brunt of climate change impacts within the city.
Grants for social programming are set to be frozen, while the underfunded Vancouver Public Libraries system will receive an increase of $2.1 million total. This year, the city also began contracting out the provision of extreme weather response sites to Homeless Services BC—shifting the city’s weather response from the public domain to a private nonprofit without the same funding options.
“Funding for FIFA, nothing for the people,” adds Delilah Gregg, a P.O.W.E.R. member-researcher and board member of Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society.
Reporting in the Vancouver Sun shows that projected public spending for hosting the FIFA World Cup has risen to as high as $624 million, with approximately $276 million coming from the municipal budget.
The VPD recently reported to city council that they will bring Royal Mounted Canadian Police officers from Saskatchewan to the city to increase policing during the international soccer tournament.
Continued decimation of community safety infrastructure
Between provincial austerity and city police spending, programming for community safety and inclusion continues to be impacted, leaving communities at risk of violence, public health harm and desperation.
“As the police budget increases to almost $500 million, we lose access to everything that is keeping us safe,” says Michelle Durham, a P.OW.E.R. member-researcher. “We are seeing funding cuts to essential services for women and gender diverse people, such as WISH, PACE Society, Sister Square, housing, and harm reduction services.”
Rather than ensure that there are services and spaces for the public to seek respite, access cultural support, receive care, food security, build community and/or have basic needs met, the proposed budget looks to actively decrease community programming with a funding freeze in the face of inflation, while increasing the presence of policing.
Samona Marsh, a board member of Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War and a P.O.W.E.R. member-researcher warns that, “As harm reduction supports are decreasing, such as access to rigs, straight pipes, and bubble pipes. In the past, when we have seen cuts to harm reduction services we see an increase in HIV and Hep C.”
And while funding for harm reduction equipment is provincial, an increase in access points could be funded through the city, particularly during the ongoing toxic drug crisis.
“What costs more, harm reduction supplies or HIV and HEP C medication?” asks Marsh.
Research shows that policing not only has a neutral impact on the toxic drug crisis—but negative ones. Police presence can deter safer consumption practices, interfere with overdose response, and police seizures of the unregulated drug supply systemically creates changes in the supply that increases risk of overdose.
Hindsight on the 2022 cop council election
In 2022, Sim and his campaign manager Kareem Allam (now running for mayor in 2026) courted an endorsement from the Vancouver Police Union.
The VPU did endorse Sim and Allam’s ABC party–the first political endorsement in the association’s history. ABC then ran on a catchy and dangerous campaign lie to expand involuntary treatment teams through the hiring of 100 police and 100 nurses (Predictably, the city did contribute to hiring 100 police officers, but fewer than 10 nurses in 2023).
Since the election, in-depth reporting by Lisa Steacy and Andrew Reichel for CTV News has shown that despite the VPD’s public focus on stranger assaults during the 2022 election campaign, these types of attacks were already on a major downward trend.
In an internal email, VPD Sgt. Steve Addison wrote to Deputy Chief Howard Chow about a social media thread he composed about two incidents of violence, “If you want it, we can help post it to your account. Good talking points, if nothing else,” in an apparent example of public perception weighing more than the impacts of the violence that hundreds of millions in police funding did nothing to stop.
On Nov. 5, VPD Chief Steve Rai told city council that although violent crime was decreasing, the public’s perception of safety has not increased. Rai interpreted this as a call for more police on the streets. The city’s consultation on the 2026 budget indicates that residents of Vancouver ranked stopping or lowering the police budget as their number one choice for reduction in services, while businesses ranked it third.
Background
Vancouver mayor can’t answer how $5M for ‘Task Force Barrage’ was approved
‘Fear and anxiety’: What our police FOI requests uncovered about Vancouver’s stranger assault scare
Chinatown divided over Ken Sim’s election as mayor
Nowhere to seek safety as gender-based violence worsens under drug supply & displacement crises
B.C. can’t police its way out of a housing crisis
Vancouver Police Union breaks with tradition and endorses ABC Vancouver for municipal election