Toronto police defends $300K spent on podcast at budget deliberations

Toronto police board reviews budget increase The Toronto police board is reviewing what a planned budget increase would mean for the force and the city.

The Toronto Police Service defended spending more than $300,000 producing a podcast at Wednesday’s budget deliberations, arguing there is “a great amount of interest publicly” around their work.

The service was granted a $48.3 million budgetary increase for 2023, representing a 4.3 per cent jump over the operating budget from 2022.

When the proposal was first introduced, it was specified that it would be used to hire more community safety officers and bolster emergency response core staffing. This was reaffirmed by a spokesperson on Wednesday after councillors asked questions about whether the funding would be used for other purposes—specifically a podcast series called 24 Shades of Blue.

“Can you confirm, of the $48 million, whether or not any of the money will be used for podcasts and/or communications, and that the money will go to frontline police services?” Scarborough North Councillor Jamaal Myers asked.

“The vast majority of it, that’s is where it’s going,” a TPS spokesperson said, adding that their in-house communications team is not seeing a net budgetary increase.

TPS was also asked how they could justify such a large budget increase when they are spending $300,000 on a podcast. The request comes after media reports showed TPS spent more than $300,000 of taxpayer money on the project.

In response, the spokesperson said that 24 Shades of Blue was part of a "broader communications strategy."

“I think we can all agree that there's a great amount of interest publicly around our cases, around the work we do,” she said., adding that many of the podcasts get over 10,000 impression views cumulatively. Many of the videos on the podcast’s Youtube channel have under 1,000 views, although one has about 3,500.

The spokesperson also specified the cost of the podcast was split over four years, totaling less than $100,000 annually.

Ultimately, the police budget increase was approved without amendments.