REGINA — Regina city council has passed the Regina Police Services (RPS) budget for 2026/2027.
In a 6-5 vote, council approved the RPS operating budget request of over $116 million for 2026, and nearly $128 million for 2027.
Both years will see a mill rate increase of 2.2 per cent.
RPS Chief Lorilee Davies said the process for their budget started back in March, which included over 100 requests for operations, staffing and capital investments.
Over the months, Davies said the RPS executive leadership team met 11 times to carefully evaluate each request.
“Today, what you will see is the needs,” said Davies during her remarks to council.
Key expenses the RPS’s operating budget will go towards include:
- Increases in IT hardware/software and other systems;
- Fleet equipment, leases, fuel, etc.;
- Eleven new staff members, including four new alternative response officers (ARO); and
- Increase in contracted services, insurance and legal services.
The RPS will utilize money from the provincial government to cover 32 new constables and two AROs over the next two years.
Davies noted that those positions will remain throughout the years.
Council also approved the RPS capital budget of roughly $7.7 million in 2026 and approximately $8.5 million in 2027.
The capital budget will see a 0.3 per cent mill rate increase for 2026 and 2027.
Key initiatives the capital budget will cover include:
- Technology. The RPS acknowledged the threat of IT breaches. Davies said last week alone, there were 123,000 threats to their system.
- Integrated health and wellness. RPS says the investment will keep officers' healthy and working. Data from the police service suggests employee time off after injury has been cut in half since 2022.
- Facility renewal project. The RPS is still undergoing renovations to its headquarters, which is the former Saskatchewan Transportation Company terminal. The police service will renovate the second floor, which will remove expensive leases for the use of other buildings.
Delaying approval
Five councillors, including councillors Dan Rashovich (Ward 1), David Froh (Ward 3), Victoria Flores (Ward 6), Shannon Zachidniak (Ward 8) and Clark Bezo (Ward 10), believed it made sense for the RPS to have another look at their budget to find any additional savings.
Zachidniak mentioned how Regina has already asked administration and city partners to try to find savings in each respective budget.
“We’ve been asking that throughout this expanded budget process, so I think it’s a small extra step that we can take to provide a sense of security to all of us.”
Froh echoed Zachidniak’s words, poinbting to the due diligence each partner has undertaken to find savings.
Meanwhile, Mayor Chad Bachynski, who is on the chair of the board of police commissioners, said the work to find additional savings has already been done.
“I think all we’re doing is kicking the can down the road where we’ve already done the work to the level of need.”
Fellow board of police commissioners member and Ward 2 Coun. George Tsiklis questioned his peers on the idea of bringing back the budget.
“Not sure [of] the reasons why you want to send it back.”
Activists request council reject police budget
Housing activists called on the city to use the proposed increase for the RPS budget towards those most vulnerable.
In 2024, a point-in-time count done by Namerind Housing Corp. showed Regina currently has 824 homeless people, a 255 per cent increase since 2015.
Solidarity activist Florence Stratton called for the $6.5 million increase from the 2025 police service budget to be diverted to affordable housing.
Stratton also noted that at times in the past few years, Canadian cities, including Vancouver and Edmonton, have reduced their own police service budgets.
Housing activist Mandla Mthembu argued the police budget takes money away from essential services.
Drawing on input from activists, community members and police officers, Mthembu said many crime and community safety risks in Regina stem from interconnected systemic issues.
“Poverty, addiction, inadequate and inaccessible housing, lack of purposeful and adequate employment, disparities in access to health care, disparities in access to education, food insecurity, systemic racism, and other wicked problems,” Mthembu listed Regina's systematic issues.
If unaddressed, Mthembu said more people in the city will experience preventable harm.
Davies said she doesn’t believe there should be an either-or in what should be focused on and what gets cut.
She used an analogy of adding more doctors to the health system to reduce wait times.
“But should we fund those additional doctors by cutting doctors? That doesn’t seem like it would be a smart investment.”
