From The Mayor's Desk

Doug Lawrance, Mayor, Sioux Lookout

Cancellation of Controlled Access to LCBO

The Municipality has been working for several years with the Police Services Board, OPP and LCBO on pilot projects to reduce alcohol related crime in Sioux Lookout.  One of those pilot projects was a controlled entry system to the local LCBO.  The Municipality was pleased when the planned implementation of the program was announced by the LCBO in mid-February. We were surprised when several days later the cancellation of the program was announced by the Provincial Government. In response to that cancellation, this Mayor’s Desk article was sent to the Minister of Finance in letterform.

Global News recently ran a series of articles on Sioux Lookout which highlighted our unique role and situation as the northern service centre for approximately 30 First Nations. The first article focused on policing. The article noted the number of police cells (19) in the Sioux Lookout OPP Detachment facility as the highest of any OPP Detachment.  Of the 311 municipalities in Ontario who contract the OPP for municipal policing, Sioux Lookout is an extreme outlier in policing costs. The comparative measure used on the policing bills is the ratio of calls for service (CFS) hours to the number of properties in a municipality. In Sioux Lookout that ratio is seven times the OPP municipal average. We are told by the local OPP that 90 to 95% of those calls for service hours are related to alcohol addiction and abuse – mental health and addictions issues.

In early 2022, after cooperative work between the LCBO, OPP, and Sioux Lookout Police Services Board, a pilot project was introduced which saw the Sunday closure of the LCBO. Analysis showed that calls for police service were reduced by more than 50% on Sundays.  Closure on Mondays followed and similarly calls for police service on Mondays were reduced by 50%. 

As well as the now Provincially cancelled controlled entry program to the LCBO, the Municipality has worked with many agencies over the years to counteract

the challenges brought on by our role as a service centre and mental health and addictions. Projects include:

• Sunday and Monday closure of LCBO (resulted in 50% reduction in CFS on those days),
• Mobile Crisis Response Team,
• Safe Sobering Beds,
• Emergency Shelter,
• Warm-Up Centre,
• Makwa Patrol,
• security cameras, and more.

These projects have resulted because of collaboration between many agencies at the local level.  They have relied on a combination of volunteers, patch-work funding, humble facilities, term-limited funding, and a lot of local agency cooperation. The OPP and Police Services Board continue to work closely with the agencies whose addresses are associated with a high frequency of calls for police service. These addresses are associated with or proximate to:

• health care – hospital, hostels, air transportation
• shelter system
• food and alcohol retail
• multi-unit residential

Similarly, when individuals are identified as high frequency generators of calls for police service, the OPP works closely with local agencies to find a better path for the people than police interactions and arrests.

As the only legal retail outlet selling liquor in our region, our local LCBO serves and sells to the full range of the population. It is susceptible to theft, often by desperate people who cannot afford the product they need.  There is a danger to staff and public when this occurs.  There is also a financial cost:

• The cost to the LCBO is approximately $30 per bottle stolen
• The cost to the Province is their 20% dividend - $6
• The cost for the single police call for service is $635 - as a billed ‘Theft Under $5,000’

That is the cost whether the perpetrator is caught or not and if caught, whether the case is dismissed or not by the justice system. There are over 30 such calls for service per year at the LCBO. And there are other calls for service.

Using the pre-covid year 2018 as a baseline the following presents an overall summary of the trends in total police calls for service in Sioux Lookout:

The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario website notes that the share of the Provincial Health budget spent on mental health and addictions is about the same as the LCBO dividend to the Province, approximately $2.5 billion. Clearly in Sioux Lookout the Province needs to spend more on addressing the challenges associated with mental health and addictions and less on policing those challenges through the Municipal tax base. We have learned recently that a new OPP Detachment facility is being planned for Sioux Lookout.  Those plans include increasing the number of cells from the current nineteen. This speaks to the continuing increase in calls for police service and a continuing reliance on cells and municipally funded policing as the primary measure of addressing mental health and addictions challenges in Sioux Lookout. 

The Municipality has advocated for years to the Province for both measures to mitigate the high calls for police service and discounts to reduce the high policing cost burden to the local tax base. Global News referred to the high volume of Municipal advocacy to the Province in their article. With all that advocacy we have achieved little in Provincial funding for facilities and long-term programs and services to address the policing challenges we face.  Those challenges were not created by the people of Sioux Lookout – they have been created by a history of failed Provincial and Federal policies such as the Indian Residential School System, the Sixties Scoop, by chronic underfunding of First Nation communities related to housing, education, healthcare, infrastructure and more.  They have been created by society at large.  They should be addressed and paid for by society at large.  After years of essentially failed advocacy and Provincial intransigence, last September the Municipality informed the Solicitor General’s office that starting in January 2024 we would be paying normalized OPP policing costs of $300 per property rather than our currently discounted cost of $608 per property ($935 before any discount).  We reiterated that position of the Municipal Council of Sioux Lookout at a meeting with the Ministry of the Solicitor General in January. We have now received our first monthly billing for OPP services from your Ministry of Finance and confirm for you that we are paying normal policing costs calculated at a rate of $300 per property.

As always, we would be pleased to work with you to come to an equitable solution to our policing costs rather than this current state of partial payment of the amount billed to us by the Province. Some possible solutions we could explore with you could include:

• Revising the Regulatory Discount Table
• Determining an alternative formula for predictable and normal policing costs
• Revising the OMPF factors to account for situations like our policing costs
• Some other form of credit or rebate

We look forward to hearing from you.

We sent this as a letter to the Minister on February 18^th and we have no reply yet.  We will continue to work on the municipal and human challenges related to alcohol in Sioux Lookout.