Oliva Chow wants to ban your handguns

[rick_iles]

Police do a difficult and necessary job and deserve a good pay. What the unions have done though is devastating our economy. Automatic increases over and above inflation, especially when we are in deficit position should be illegal. No public sector employee should see any kind of raise until we are balancing budgets. Removing discretionary buying /spending power from taxpayers and giving it to government employees is gradually marching us into bankruptcy. Small towns that use the OPP are now at the breaking point and can no longer afford the annual increases of policing costs. At some point we may see the return of the small town police force. I guarantee you they would have no problem staffing them for 25% less wages with able bodied non visible minority quota candidates who would love to make $75K a year. In most of these small towns with lower real estate costs they would still live extremely well. There are 3 police officers in my deer camp who all make
the sunshine list and even they admit that the bubble will burst at some point. If municipalities start dumping the OPP then there will be be layoffs and many of those officers will be glad to get a municipal force police job even at a lower wage.

You make some valid points. However, we will never see the return of small town police services. Government adequacy standards have pretty well eliminated that policing option. No small municipality could afford their own services, because of these standards. This is the reason for amalgamations of police services, and OPP takeovers of smaller services.

[werner.reiche]

You make some valid points. However, we will never see the return of small town police services. Government adequacy standards have pretty well eliminated that policing option. No small municipality could afford their own services, because of these standards. This is the reason for amalgamations of police services, and OPP takeovers of smaller services.

Same will happen eventually with volunteer firefighting. Those in power have secured there places by putting standards in place that guarantee there is no going back to the small town policing.

Forget about 75K - there are a lot of rural municipalities where 50k would get you a long line up of full time able bodied people for policing.

[topher]

If people don't need guns as we have police to protect... Than I guess we don't need fire extinguishers either as We have the fire department