Toronto police spent nearly $20 million to deploy officers to protests related to the Israel-Hamas war

A Toronto Police Service logo patch is shown in Toronto, on Sept. 5, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

Toronto police spent nearly $20 million to secure protests related to the Israel-Hamas war and to conduct community outreach within the city’s Jewish and Muslim communities last year, a new report shows.

“Maintaining public order is integral to core service delivery and adheres to provincial standards of adequate and effective policing,” the report, which will go before the Toronto Police Services Board next week, states.

The report says that in 2024, the service responded to over 2,000 “unplanned events” and that more than half of those were associated with Project Resolute, which was launched after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and saw police ramp up their presence throughout the city via command posts and community engagement.

As of Dec. 31, 2024, the report says that spending linked to the project that year totalled $19.5 million, including $8 million in direct “premium pay” costs, which includes overtime and call-back pay.

The total costs related to Project Resolute in 2023 are unclear, but Chief Myron Demkiw previously said the force spent $9.1 million on the initiative from Oct.7, 2023 to Feb. 9, 2024.

The report went on to say that the service has dedicated “substantial” on-duty resources to the project, which has resulted in premium pay expenses in units experiencing “cascading impacts” due to staffing shortages from this reallocation.

The report notes that Project Resolute is one of three factors that have contributed to the incurrence of premium pay by the force. The others include staffing levels versus demand for service and a high workload within investigative units.

“The redeployment of officers from the Community Response Units and the Priority Response Group in 2022 has reduced the capacity for the service to respond to unplanned events with on duty resources. This redeployment was operationally necessary to support priority response call volume and to support the Neighbourhood Community Officer Program,” the report noted.

Demkiw, who signed off on the report, said in the weeks following the Oct. 7 attack police saw a spike in antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes in the city -- with nearly half linked to the former -- a trend he called “alarming.”

“To combat these deeply concerning issues we have committed a significant number of resources to address these overall increases, as well as every category of hate,” Demkiw said at the time.