On this One, Our Regional Councillors Should Get Right in the Face of Ontario’s Ford Government and say NO!
A News Commentary by Niagara At Larger reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted February 14th, 2024 on Niagara At Large
Niagara, Ontario – Forget about all the years of rhetoric we’ve been hearing from our regional politicians about Niagara being a ‘great place to live, play and do business’.
Here is the type of military-style weapon Niagara’s police board is now moving to arm our police with.
Apparently we live in a war zone!
Why else would Niagara’s Regional Police be in the process of spending more than $1.9 million of our hard-earned tax dollars on arming our police with C8 semi-automatic, military-style rifles that are normally being used by the Canadian military and NATO forces in Europe?
It is crazy enough (as in way over the top crazy) that five years ago the board of the Niagara Regional Police Service with the blessing of a majority on Niagara’s Regional Council blew $300,000 of our money on an armoured vehicle that looks like something you would see driving through the streets of Baghdad during the war in Iraq.
In 2019, our Niagara Regional Police Service spent about $300,000 of our municipal tax dollars to purchase one of these.
Now, in a Canada where the number of gun-related deaths per capita and the ownership of guns outside of those used for hunting , is a world away from the alarming statistics south of the border in the United States, the Niagara Regional Police Service’s board members, voted earlier this February to approve the costs of purchasing military-style weapons and training officers to use them.
It is true that other police forces in Ontario, including forces in Hamilton, Toronto and Halton, already have these weapons on hand. And it is also true that Ontario’s Ford government passed legislation authorizing the purchase and use of these weapons by police forces across the province.
Niagara taxpayers have been told time and time again that our regional council representatives have no choice but to follow the dictates of whatever provincial government is in power when it comes to policing. Yet, at the same time, it is municipal taxpayers and not the provincial government that is burdened with paying the rising cost of policing.
Canada’s military forces and NATO forces are using the same type of weapon our Niagara regional police may soon have in their arsenal.
It is one more example of the provincial government downloading the cost of services to residents and businesses that are already struggling to pay municipal taxes that over the past couple of years, at the regional level of government, have jumped higher than the rate of inflation and any increase most of us have seen in our income.
And now here we are facing the cost of buying and training Niagara’s police officers to use these military weapons
According to a recent report in The St. Catharines Standard, Niagara’s police board members reason that a current ‘surplus’ left over from the 2023 police budget will be more than enough to cover the costs around the purchase and potential deployment of these weapons, to which this news reporter says; “So What. We Don’t Live In A Military State.”
This is the same police service board that recently came to Niagara Regional Council with an annual budget increase of six per cent which is pretty damn high compared to most of the budget increases it has tabled over the past 40 or 50 years.
Instead of going military in a region that may have some problems but is far from a war zone, why not use more of that budget surplus to beat that budget hike down?
Or here’s an idea that might make some fiscal sense. Keep the money in reserve for any unexpected emergency that may arise.
This military weapons business has yet to go before Niagara’s Regional Council for final approval. Let’s see how much blowback there is from our regional councillors.
Let’s seen if this one has our regional councillors spending even half the time they did debating the budget for Niagara’s public transit system – a service we actually need to see grow – late last year?
Here are some related links –
Niagara Police to spend $300k on armoured vehicle (iheartradio.ca)
Hamilton police want military-style C8 rifles for front-line officers | CBC News
Gun Deaths by Country 2024 (worldpopulationreview.com)
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Niagara At Large 
These are standard emergency-services firearms needed for potential or known armed encounters. These are what many of the bad guys are increasingly armed with. A regular police pistol is inadequate against these as Hamilton Police recently found out. There really is no alternative to these firearms in defence of public and officer safety.
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Always interesting to observe keyboarders opine from the safety of their homes/offices what resources are needed by those on the front lines who increasingly face well armed, ill intentioned individuals. It wasn’t that long ago when the same mindset railed against replacing revolvers with pistols.
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This is very scary! If the Conservatives win the next federal election Poilievre has already declared that these assault type weapons will be available here and that there should be no buy-back programmes for those who already have these assault weapons.
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