Owen Sound should match each situation with the right responder. Civic responders can help with municipal and civil matters. Grey County Paramedic Services provides the ambulances serving Owen Sound and should be the primary medical response for straightforward health emergencies requiring assessment, treatment, or transport. Trained civilian teams can handle screened lower-risk mental-health, addiction, homelessness, wellness, and service-navigation situations. Police can focus on crime, violence, investigations, emergencies, and situations requiring police authority.
Using existing dispatch and communications capacity, the City can route each call to the right trained responder, measure the police workload safely reduced, improve service, bring more paid work into the local community, and work toward better long-term control of policing costs.
Fire Services would remain a separate emergency capability for fires, rescues, dangerous conditions, hazardous scenes, technical rescue, and situations requiring fire-service equipment or expertise.
Community safety also grows through neighbourhood relationships. Local Representatives would give each small area a nearby person to listen, organize neighbours, carry recurring concerns through City Hall, and connect them with the appropriate response. Residents could organize voluntary neighbourhood watches for shared observation, neighbour connection, and early reporting. Together, these neighbourhood tools connect prevention, compassion, and civic follow-up with the response system.
A call is classified according to its primary need: civic, medical, civilian crisis, fire and rescue, police, or another defined category.
The current Owen Sound organization chart shows ten Police Dispatch positions in the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre. The plan uses this existing dispatch capacity to route calls according to clear response rules.
Grey County Paramedic Services operates the ambulances serving Owen Sound and uses its ambulance communications system for medical 911 dispatch.
Dispatchers should have clear authority, protocols, and training to send the appropriate service, vehicle, and number of personnel. The guiding rule is: match the situation to the right trained responder, use the smallest vehicle and team that safely meet the need, keep backup available, and publish the results.
Current police workload and enforcement
Owen Sound Police are already handling a substantial mental-health workload alongside active drug enforcement, investigations, patrol, and emergency response. These figures come from police presentations to Council and the Police Services Board.
Reported police activity in 2026 presentations
Area
Reported activity
What it shows
Mental-health-connected calls
1,840 calls, a 36% increase, with close to 10% of total call volume flagged as having a mental-health connection.
Police are currently carrying a large mental-health and crisis workload. The Police Service also reports a Mental Health Crisis Response Team and related provincial reporting.
Hospital waiting time
About 19 officer-hours per month waiting with mental-health patients at hospital. The time can double when two officers attend for safety.
This is a measurable opportunity to design health and civilian responses that release police time while keeping backup available for safety risks.
Downtown drug enforcement
Plainclothes detectives, a dedicated drug enforcement unit, and a bail compliance and apprehension team monitor the city. Police reported nine arrests for open drug use downtown in a recent project.
Current policing includes active enforcement and targeted downtown work.
March and April charges
Police reported 153 criminal charges in March and 145 Criminal Code and drug-related charges in April.
Officers are actively using police authority and spending substantial time on criminal and drug-related work.
In a June 15, 2026 Council discussion, police described a change in direction toward making arrests for controlled-substance possession and advancing charges to the federal Crown. The same discussion explained that possession arrests can help identify people dealing larger quantities, while evidence connecting a supplier to the trafficking event determines whether a case can advance.
These figures support two connected priorities: keep police focused on crime, violence, investigations, trafficking intelligence, arrests, and situations requiring police authority; and route suitable lower-risk mental-health, homelessness, addiction-support, and service-navigation calls to civilian, health, housing, or paramedic responders. The 12-week civilian-response pilot would measure police attendance avoided, officer-hours released, police backup, safety, outcomes, and cost.
A fuller public report should separate mental-health-connected calls, police mental-health-team activity, arrests, charges, Crown outcomes, officer-hours, hospital waiting time, and calls safely handled by other responders. That information would let residents see the scale of current demand and judge which changes improve service.
Four primary response streams match each situation with the right trained responder: civic, paramedic, civilian crisis, and police response. Fire and rescue remains a separate emergency capability within the overall response system.
Civic Response
For suitable civil and municipal matters such as by-law and property issues, neighbourhood disputes, voluntary mediation, service navigation, recurring nuisance concerns, municipal work orders, and other situations where emergency police powers are unnecessary.
Local Representatives could help with early resolution, neighbourhood follow-up, service navigation, and identifying recurring local issues. Formal enforcement, legal decisions, statutory decisions, and specialized work remain with qualified City staff. The guiding approach is de-escalation and helping everyone involved resolve problems with forgiveness, love, kindness, and compassion.
Paramedic Response
Grey County is the upper-tier municipality responsible for paramedic services, and Grey County ambulances serve Owen Sound. Paramedics provide medical assessment, treatment, CPR, crisis management, and transport.
A 911 medical call is handled through the ambulance communication system. The City does not directly control paramedic dispatch. The Mayor can work through Grey County Council to improve coordination, protocols, public reporting, and local outcomes. Straightforward health emergencies requiring assessment, treatment, or transport should receive a primary paramedic response.
Civilian crisis workers can support lower-risk non-medical situations and follow-up care, with paramedics handling medical assessment and treatment.
Civilian Crisis Response
For screened lower-risk situations such as mental-health distress, voluntary wellness checks, homelessness and service navigation, addiction-related support, business de-escalation, and recurring lower-risk crises.
Paid, trained civilian crisis workers could respond through a City agreement with a qualified provider, with clinical consultation available when needed. Police remain available as rapid backup if risk escalates. Where practical, suitable calls could be screened and dispatched through the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre.
This stream connects directly with the coordinated homelessness response. Residents, Local Representatives, voluntary neighbourhood watches, outreach workers, 211 callers, and other community participants could report an observed concern or request help through the appropriate channel. A civilian responder could engage, address immediate needs, and connect the person with 211, outreach, housing navigation, or other support. Where a person is experiencing homelessness and provides informed consent, an authorized provider could connect them with the Grey County By-Name List for coordinated follow-up.
Community participants would provide observations and referrals. Authorized providers would manage identifiable housing, health, addiction, and service-history information through role-based access, provider agreements, consent, and applicable privacy requirements. Residents could receive process updates such as received, referred, assigned, or completed where operationally appropriate.
Police Response
Police remain focused on violence and credible threats, weapons, crimes in progress, serious investigations, arrests, detention, search, forced entry, dangerous mental-health situations, and immediate threats to life or public safety.
Police should also provide backup to civic and civilian responders when needed. This strengthens policing by reserving expensive sworn resources for work that requires police authority or a higher-risk public-safety response.
Match the situation to the right trained responder, use the smallest vehicle and team that safely meet the need, keep police backup available, and publish the results.
Police accountability and body-worn cameras
The campaign supports a properly governed body-worn camera programme for Owen Sound Police. A contemporaneous record can protect officers from inaccurate allegations, protect residents, support fair use-of-force and complaint review, and improve training, supervision, and service quality.
The Mayor would bring this issue to the Police Service Board and Chief of Police, with the equipment, storage, training, staffing, and operating costs identified through the budget process. The Board and Chief would establish the operational policy, including activation expectations, documented exceptions, secure retention, access, privacy, disclosure, auditing, and use of footage in complaints and use-of-force reviews.
The City and Police Service Board should publish the implementation status, programme cost, activation compliance, footage availability for use-of-force and complaint reviews, review timelines, training findings, and privacy or technical incidents in aggregate. The Transparency Plan would connect those reports with police budgets, service results, and lawful disclosure rules.
Fire and rescue capability
Owen Sound Fire and Emergency Services should remain focused on fires, rescues, dangerous conditions, hazardous scenes, technical rescue, and situations requiring fire-service equipment or expertise. Routine medical calls should go to Grey County paramedics in an ambulance. Fire personnel should be dispatched when their specific rescue, hazard, lifesaving, or additional-personnel capability is required.
Fire and Paramedic Services can appropriately attend together when the incident requires both capabilities, including:
cardiac arrest where firefighters can begin CPR and use an AED before the ambulance arrives;
vehicle or industrial incidents requiring extrication or scene stabilization;
fires, carbon-monoxide incidents, hazardous materials, or other dangerous scenes involving injured people; and
technical rescues, structural rescues, water rescues, or multiple-casualty incidents.
The ambulance is the appropriate medical vehicle. Firefighters can use a smaller rapid-response vehicle when their medical assistance is genuinely required. Full-size fire apparatus should be reserved for fires, rescues, hazardous scenes, entrapments, and incidents requiring its pumps, water, hose, ladders, rescue equipment, or other specialized capability.
Separate emergency response from training and standby
Fire training exercises should be recorded as training, standby should be recorded as standby, and genuine emergency responses should be counted by their actual type. Training and standby should have separate reporting categories from medical calls, fires, rescues, and hazardous incidents.
Clear categories will show when crews and vehicles are responding to an emergency, practising a skill, remaining ready for a defined assignment, or supporting another service. Residents can then examine response demand, cost, and the effect on availability for fires and rescues.
Voluntary Neighbourhood Watches
Local Representatives can help residents organize voluntary neighbourhood watches where residents want them. Participants would receive basic safety, de-escalation, and reporting guidance. Each Local Representative would serve a small neighbourhood of roughly 150 households, creating a human-scale point of contact residents can know personally and approach directly about recurring local concerns.
Watches could help neighbours share safety information, identify recurring problem locations, report discarded needles and other biohazards, and coordinate neighbourhood stewardship. Participating residents and businesses could also voluntarily connect suitable exterior security cameras into a neighbourhood network, with clear privacy and access rules.
Welcoming watching-eye signage
Neighbourhood-watch areas could use highly visible, welcoming signs incorporating a large pair of directly watching eyes. The signs would reinforce the presence of an attentive neighbourhood, show that public spaces are cared for and observed, and encourage pro-social behaviour before an incident develops. The sign is a low-cost behavioural cue used alongside actual neighbour presence, voluntary exterior-camera networks, reporting, and professional response; it complements the wider watch system and does not replace residents, civic responders, civilian crisis responders, or police.
A Campbell systematic review of neighbourhood watch covered 19 studies and 43 evaluations; 12 studies covering 18 evaluations provided sufficient information for its meta-analysis, which associated neighbourhood-watch areas with approximately 16 to 26 per cent lower crime than comparison areas. Programme designs and comparison areas varied, so Owen Sound should measure its own local results.
Neighbours knowing neighbours → visible shared stewardship → increased observation and belonging → pro-social behaviour → earlier reporting and prevention → professional response where required.
The role is observation, reporting, neighbour connection, and documenting recurring concerns. Formal enforcement, legal decisions, emergency response, and crisis intervention remain with qualified professionals.
Watches connect with the response streams and the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre where appropriate. The City should publish the training, privacy, safety, and escalation boundaries before any watch begins.
What Owen Sound already learned
Owen Sound’s earlier Safe ’N Sound Neighbourhood Response Team pilot is the local precedent. Its first pilot was mainly street outreach: trained outreach workers provided de-escalation, wellness checks, referrals, harm reduction, and business support. The City’s launch notice describes social navigation, connections to essential services, and non-emergency support for businesses and people experiencing homelessness. Safe ’N Sound also describes the team’s harm-reduction and service-navigation role in its current outreach information.
The approximately five-month pilot cost about $160,000. In the public financial material reviewed for this plan, approximately $75,000 appears to have gone to frontline staffing and approximately $67,000 to administration. These are approximate figures requiring reconciliation against the complete pilot records.
Dispatch integration developed later. The NRT record therefore provides outreach metrics such as contacts, referrals, wellness checks, harm-reduction activity, and business support. It does not establish a verified number of police responses or officer-hours avoided. The proposed City pilot keeps the useful local precedent while testing a distinct dispatch-based model.
A lean 12-week follow-up pilot
The proposed City plan is a 12-week, dispatch-based civilian crisis-response pilot with an approximately $60,000 planning cap. It would test whether screened, lower-risk calls can receive an appropriate civilian response while producing reliable data. The pilot would run during scheduled peak daytime and evening periods, with a separate decision required for any 24-hour service.
Invest to save
The approximately $60,000 planning cap is an invest-to-save public-safety test. The current budget scenario places it within the central vacant-home-tax planning case of approximately $192,672 gross revenue and $144,504 after a 25% administration allowance, alongside $25,000 for the OSHaRE mobile-meal pilot and approximately $59,504 for other housing or safety priorities. These are planning figures subject to Council approval and actual programme design and collections. The long-term purpose is to demonstrate lower policing-cost pressure through measured reductions in suitable police demand. Expansion would follow documented safety, service, and financial results.
Proposed dispatch workflow
A call enters the existing dispatch system.
Emergency calls involving violence, weapons, credible threats, crimes in progress, or immediate danger receive police or emergency-service response.
Screened lower-risk calls may be assigned to a paid, trained civilian responder during scheduled pilot hours.
The civilian responder can request police backup if risk changes.
The City could explore a partnership with CMHA Grey Bruce’s Mobile Mental Health and Addiction Response Team. MMHART currently works with police or EMS. A different arrangement, with a mental-health worker attending alongside a trained civilian responder while police remain available as backup, would require agreement from CMHA Grey Bruce, the Police Services Board, and the Chief.
Provider and partner model
Responders would be paid, trained workers funded through a City agreement with a qualified provider. Possible partners include Safe ’N Sound, SOS, Grey County, and CMHA Grey Bruce. Each arrangement would be subject to negotiation, provider capacity, Police Services Board and Chief coordination, and a written safety protocol.
Police policy, police operations, and backup protocols remain under the authority of the Police Services Board and the Chief.
Planning budget and gate
The planning target is a hard cap of approximately $60,000 for 12 weeks. Staff should publish the final staffing, supervision, training, dispatch, insurance, equipment, and evaluation quotation before launch.
The pilot should proceed only with a written safety protocol, a clear dispatch screen, police backup, participant privacy protections, and a public evaluation plan.
Pilot workflow and public metrics
The dispatch-based pilot should publish:
eligible calls received;
civilian deployments;
response times;
police deployments;
police hours avoided;
requests for police backup;
referrals and follow-up outcomes;
repeat calls;
safety incidents;
cost per response; and
resident and business feedback.
Results should show the number and type of calls screened, the response provided, police capacity released, outcomes, costs, safety events, and any change needed before continuation.
Local policing, multi-level dispatch and future OPP evidence
Planned direction: Owen Sound should retain its local police service and improve the local system it already has. The most immediate opportunity is a multi-level response and dispatch model that sends each call to the right trained responder, gives police more time for work requiring police authority, and uses the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre more effectively.
Police are essential for violence, weapons, crimes in progress, serious investigations, arrests, detention, searches, forced entry, dangerous situations, and immediate threats to life or public safety. Housing services, civilian crisis teams, Grey County paramedics, and civic responders should lead homelessness, mental-health, medical, and routine service-navigation responses, with police backup available when risk rises.
The current organization chart shows ten Police Dispatch positions in the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre. The plan would build on that capacity by publishing call categories, responder assignment, dispatch costs, dispatch revenue, neighbouring service agreements, response times, police workload released, safety results, and service outcomes. Suitable civilian, civic, fire, and police calls would follow clear routing protocols, while medical 911 coordination would continue with Grey County’s ambulance communications system.
The September 14 Council update explains that Council directed staff to understand the steps, requirements, timelines, and considerations for an OPP costing process. The City has gathered process information, while a formal OPP costing request, policing-model analysis, and recommendation remain future decisions. A formal Ministry response may arrive in early 2027, with further discussion referred to the Resilient Community Advisory Committee.
The Ministry guidance also gives the current local model an important financial question to answer. The Solicitor General encouraged the City to understand the financial contribution of dispatch operations and review contractual service opportunities with neighbouring municipalities. The report records that those opportunities would be unavailable under an OPP model. This gives Owen Sound a practical reason to improve and measure multi-level dispatch now. The public record establishes the difference in available opportunities. A direct OPP position on using OSECC would require separate evidence, and dispatch compatibility belongs in any future comparison.
The campaign remains open to new evidence. If a future Council receives a formal OPP costing, the comparison should include dedicated Owen Sound coverage, response-time standards, staffing and detachment arrangements, dispatch integration, facilities, transition costs, local employment, police-board responsibilities, service levels, revenues, contracts, and total long-term cost. The decision should weigh safety, response, local accountability, service quality, workforce effects, financial sustainability, and resident input together.
The immediate work is clear: listen to the Police Services Board, Chief, dispatch staff, responders, residents, businesses, and service providers; follow through on the multi-level dispatch model police and community partners have been asking for; and publish the results. A better coordinated local system has a stronger chance of improving outcomes and lowering long-term cost pressure than asking police to carry every social and health response.
Police-directed controlled-substance operations and accountability
Public safety requires clear accountability for every police-directed person involved in controlled-substance operations. The Police Services Board should replace LE-015 Paid Informants and Agents with a comprehensive policy covering paid and unpaid directed persons.
The policy should require:
written identification of the statutory authority, investigative purpose, substances, permitted conduct and general location;
senior approval and a review date within 90 days for street-drug operations;
documented renewals and cumulative-duration tracking across connected investigations;
heightened safeguards for public-facing transactions in downtown and residential areas; and
after-action review of diversion, violence, overdoses, complaints, injuries, arrests and investigative outcomes.
90-day compliance review
At the first opportunity as a Police Services Board member, Andrii would introduce a motion directing the Chief to conduct a 90-day legal-compliance review of every current operation involving police-directed controlled-substance activity.
The Chief should certify to the Board that every active operation has:
a current statutory basis;
a genuine investigative purpose;
an identified supervising police member;
a written review or expiry date; and
documented public-safety safeguards.
The Board should receive detailed legal information in closed session where confidentiality is legally required. Residents should receive an aggregate report showing the number of operations reviewed, the statutory pathways used, the number that continued, the number concluded and the range of cumulative durations.
Quarterly ward-level reporting
The Police Services Board should require a quarterly public report showing, for each ward:
the number of active controlled-substance operations involving directed persons;
the number of directed persons involved;
operations that began, concluded, were renewed or remained active during the quarter;
the statutory pathway used, including SOR/97-234 sections 3–4 or 8–9;
review dates, renewal counts and cumulative-duration ranges;
substance categories and aggregate quantities;
significant incidents, including diversion, violence, overdoses, complaints and injuries; and
investigative outcomes, arrests, prosecutions or referrals where disclosure is lawful.
Each ward should remain a separate reporting unit. With roughly 2,000 or more residents per ward, ward-level reporting would give residents a geographically useful picture of police-directed controlled-substance activity in their own community.
Names, informer identities, targets and tactical methods would remain protected. The report would identify the scale, location, duration and results of these operations while preserving confidential investigative information.
This would answer a basic public question: how many police-directed controlled-substance operations were active in each ward during a given quarter?
The reports, Board motions and recorded votes should appear on a public Policing Accountability page linked to the City’s Transparency and Ward plans.
Federal reform would address the underlying regulatory framework by establishing cumulative time limits, judicial authorization for exceptional extensions and national aggregate reporting. Local Board policy can establish immediate review, documentation and ward-level public accountability while that federal work proceeds.
The City should publish a public scorecard at regular intervals. Measures should show both safer service and whether the model is releasing police capacity without shifting risk to residents or responders.
Proposed community safety and policing measures
Measure
What to publish
Response
Call type, responder dispatched, vehicle dispatched, number of personnel, arrival time, work performed, outcome, cost, and effect on availability for fires and rescues.
Response mix
Paramedic-only responses, fire and paramedic co-responses, civilian crisis responses and calls resolved, police responses, and police backup.
Safety
Police backup rate, responder safety incidents, resident satisfaction, and outcomes for people receiving support.
Fire readiness
Fire training exercises, fire standby assignments, genuine fire and rescue responses, and the effect of each category on availability.
Police capacity
Police attendance fully avoided, officer-hours released, two-officer responses avoided, police overtime, vacancies, and future staffing pressure avoided where documented.
Police accountability
Body-worn camera implementation status, programme cost, activation compliance, footage available for use-of-force and complaint reviews, review timelines, training findings, and aggregate privacy or technical incidents.
Demand
People newly entering homelessness, people prevented from losing housing, repeat crisis contacts by person or location, successful service connections, and patterns requiring prevention.
Housing and homelessness
Active homeless households, unsheltered homelessness, people or households moved into housing, time from identification or intake to housing, returns to homelessness, and housing retention after six and twelve months.
Recovery and care
Follow-up after housing placement, access to addiction treatment and mental-health care, voluntary recovery participation, and ongoing support connections.
Public order
Aggregate public-space and public-order indicators, police backup rates, responder safety, and outcomes for people receiving support.
Community feedback
Feedback from residents, visitors, and businesses.
Money
Civilian responder hours and cost, police overtime, actual cost per successfully diverted eligible call, recurring dollars saved, and future costs avoided.
Zero-based policing budget
The zero-based service-budgeting plan should treat a lower police workload as released service capacity first. It becomes a taxpayer saving only when the City can verify a recurring financial effect such as lower overtime, future hiring avoided, vacancies left unfilled through attrition, fewer two-officer attendances, lower future staffing requirements, reduced equipment or fleet expansion, or lower support costs.
Right responder → lower police workload → measured officer-hours released → public scorecard → zero-based budget review → verified savings
Publish these results separately:
Released capacity: police time available for other public-safety work.
Actual cash savings: spending that is genuinely reduced in the approved budget.
Future costs avoided: hiring, overtime, equipment, fleet, or support costs that the City can document as no longer required.
Freeing officer time does not automatically lower taxes. The Police Service Board, Chief of Police, Council, and the Mayor’s budget process must reconcile safety needs, service levels, staffing, contracts, and the actual financial effect.
Reducing demand over time
The long-term objective is to reduce the number of crises requiring emergency response. Housing stability, food access, voluntary recovery, neighbourhood connection, and compassionate conflict resolution can address pressure earlier while improving the safety and dignity of the wider community.
These policies may reduce desperation, repeat crises, and some petty crime over time, but the campaign makes no quantified crime-reduction claim without local evidence.
Read the connected platform
Community safety works alongside transparency, participation, compassionate housing and recovery policy, and responsible financial management.