The visible budget
Every figure on this page traces to a verified source dossier. Nothing is invented, ranges are labelled, and the anchor is named up front. EPS has no single budget number. It depends on framing. The tax-supported net operating figure is $475M approved for 2026. The gross figure, grant-funded and cost-recovered spend included, was $560M in 2024. We headline the smaller net figure on purpose, so every comparison that follows errs conservative.[src]
2015–2018 are back-cast estimates (~5%/yr, anchored to the documented $356.3M in 2019), drawn dimmed to mark LOW confidence. 2019 onward is source-backed. The exception is 2025, interpolated between the 2024 actual and the 2026 approved figure.
EPS is 15.4% of the entire City of Edmonton budget, the single largest line item (2022).[src]
The growth isn't decided line-by-line each year. A council-approved funding formula (Aug 23 2023, for the 2023–26 cycle) puts it on autopilot: prior year + population growth + inflation (Police Price Index) − efficiency factor + salary settlements. The number climbs on its own, whether or not anyone re-litigates it. That is the visible half.
The black box
The headline number isn't the whole bill. Underneath it runs money that never gets its own line: overruns nobody budgeted for, grants that skip the ballot, settlements the city pays out quietly. Each bar below is one of those exits, and they un-redact as you scroll. Every one carries its confidence level, and none is presented as a precise sum.
On top of the $475M taxpayers pay, roughly $56–60M/yr in external, non-tax-levy money reaches EPS: grants, a traffic-fine share, episodic flows. Real spending that never shows up as "the budget."[src]
Shown as a reconstructed range with confidence levels rather than a false-precision total. The black-box layer is a floor, not a ceiling.
Then there is the gear whose dollar value EPS simply won't disclose: facial recognition (two separate episodes, Clearview 2019–20 and an Axon body-cam proof-of-concept in 2025)[src], automated licence-plate readers[src], a cell-site simulator admitted and then walked back[src], a roughly ten-drone fleet[src]. Clean FOIP targets, every one. The surveillance-capital floor we can document is ~$42–48M. The true figure is unknowable from the outside, by design.
The contrast
Half a billion dollars a year doesn't mean much until you set it beside something. So here it is next to the entire military of a sovereign country. Each bar is that country's total defence spending. The red bar is EPS. The multiple is $475M net ÷ their defence budget, the conservative comparison, since SIPRI figures are gross and EPS gross ($560M) would push every multiple ~18% higher.
Total budgets put microstates on the list. Switch to spending per person, EPS per Edmonton resident against military spending per citizen, and the household names show up. At $432 per resident (net; $509 at gross, on a population of about 1.1 million), Edmonton's police outspend the per-citizen military budgets of some of the largest nations on earth.[src]
Military figures are per-citizen defence spending (SIPRI 2025, USD→CAD @1.37). EPS is shown at the conservative net $432/resident anchor. Left out of the headline on purpose: Ukraine ($4,015, wartime and aid-inflated) and Nigeria ($13, underfunded amid insurgency). China, India and Brazil are the clean comparisons.
Edmonton spends more per resident on police than China, Brazil, Mexico, India, or Indonesia spends per citizen on its military.
One city's police force. Dozens of nations' armies. And a black box the public is not permitted to open.
Conservative anchor throughout: $475M net operating, the figure taxpayers fund. Gross spend ($560M) only widens every gap.