A Police Chief in Brampton Earns Almost as Much as the Prime Minister and the Premier of Ontario. Combined.

Here are three numbers. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney earns $419,600 per year. Ontario Premier Doug Ford earns $269,567. The Chief of Police for Brampton and Mississauga — Nishan Duraiappah — earned $611,678 in salary and benefits in 2025. That is 89 cents for every dollar the prime minister and the premier earn combined.¹

Duraiappah is not the head of a national police force. He does not lead the RCMP or the OPP. He leads the regional police service for two suburban cities west of Toronto. His salary is higher than OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique ($468,524), higher than Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw ($445,367) — who commands double the number of sworn officers — and higher than any police official in Canada.²

Five years ago, Duraiappah’s salary was $299,196. It is now $604,449 before benefits — a 102% increase. He was hired in late 2019 with no previous experience as a police chief, after the 2018 election of his close friend Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, who immediately joined the police board that approved the hire.³

His deputy chiefs have followed the same trajectory. Nick Milinovich earned $499,579 in salary and benefits in 2025 — more than most police chiefs across Ontario. Anthony Odoardi’s compensation hit $423,263, an 11% increase in a single year. Deputy Chief Mark Dapat received a 24% raise. The executive director of the Peel Police Services Board, Robert Serpe, earned $390,223 — nearly $100,000 more than the same position at the Toronto Police Services Board and more than double his compensation when he started in 2016.⁴

The salary explosion mirrors a budget explosion. The Peel Police budget has increased 81% in just six years under Duraiappah. In 2024, the board approved a 14% operating budget increase — at that time, one of the largest in Canadian policing history. The next year, Duraiappah returned with a 23.3% hike. When Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish resigned from the police board in protest, the budget was approved anyway. In 2025, Duraiappah’s salary jumped 26%.⁵

His 2025 budget request alone — $144 million in a single year — nearly matched the total budget increase Peel Police recorded during the entire decade between 2012 and 2022. That decade saw spending rise 23.6%. Duraiappah exceeded it in one ask.

For comparison: Toronto, Canada’s largest municipal police force, recorded a 15.5% budget increase over the same five-year period. Durham Regional Police recorded 29.7%. Peel recorded 77%.

James Yarema / Unsplash — Peel Police’s budget has increased 81% in six years under Duraiappah. A judge ruled last year that ‘racial profiling is systemic and intractable within Peel Police.’

The money has not bought results. Peel Police’s own data shows that its ability to solve crime has worsened alongside the budget increases. A Western Law report tallied Charter violations across Ontario’s major police forces between 2015 and 2025 and found more than 1,000 cases. Peel Police was the worst offender for serious Charter violations per one million residents.⁶

In 2025, a judge tossed out evidence against a Black man whose vehicle was illegally searched by Peel officers, declaring that “racial profiling is systemic and intractable within Peel Police.” A 2021 Ontario Human Rights Commission survey found that half of Peel residents who responded believed systemic racism in policing was a problem. Nearly 60% supported the commission’s plans to reform the force’s discriminatory culture. Those reforms have been glacial or invisible under Duraiappah.⁷

Peel’s large Sikh community has accused the force and its chief of ignoring violent crime specifically targeting them, including home shootings and extortion threats linked to Indian-backed criminal groups.

“This is highway robbery with complicity — the complicity of the mayors and regional council and board members who collude with the police leaders,” said Alok Mukherjee, who chaired the Toronto Police Services Board for a decade. He called Duraiappah’s increases an “utter failure of governance” and said the battle to control police costs in Peel has been lost.⁸

David Bosveld, who has sat on a Peel Police community advisory committee and advocated for accountability for nearly a decade, was more direct. “Police chiefs are not rock stars or professional athletes. They are public servants in a time where the public purse is stretched to the limit.”

The police board that approved every increase is chaired by Peel Regional Chair Nando Iannicca. Its elected members include Mayor Brown — the close friend who recruited Duraiappah — and Mississauga Councillor Matt Mahoney, who replaced Parrish after she resigned. Residents who appeared before the board to protest the budget increases were, according to The Pointer, largely ignored.

Nishan Duraiappah earned $611,678 last year to lead a suburban police force. The Prime Minister of Canada earns $419,600. The Premier of Ontario earns $269,567. Combined, they make $689,167 — just $77,489 more than Duraiappah. His salary has doubled in five years. His budget has grown 81% in six. His force has the worst rate of serious Charter violations per capita in Ontario. A judge declared racial profiling “systemic and intractable” under his command. A former police board chair called it “highway robbery with complicity.” And every year, the board approved every increase, while the residents who showed up to object were told, in effect, to sit down.