The Ottawa Police Service is looking for a new location to house its main training facility after Algonquin College issued a notice of termination on a lease that will force relocation by the end of 2025.
Located in the college’s Building P, known as the Police & Public Safety Institute, the professional development centre has been relied on by the OPS to train recruits and officers for more than 20 years.
The site was built in the early 2000s and maintains a rustic, red-brick, early elementary school look today. The facility has provided students in the college’s Police Foundations program valuable learning opportunities through its partnership with OPS.
The facility features traditional classrooms and offices, along with study areas, a simulation lab, a defensive tactics studio and a firing range.
The decision comes as the college finalizes its Master Campus Development Plan, which will “guide the evolution” of the campus over the next decade.
The decision has also come at “the most challenging fiscal times in the college’s history,” Algonquin president Claude Brulé said in a memo released in early January.
The college — hit hard like other postsecondary institutions in Canada by new federal restrictions on the number of international students — projects a $32-million revenue loss in the fiscal year 2024-25 and an anticipated $60 million loss for 2025-26 without mitigation measures.
As a result, the college is ending a large number of its programs and closing its Perth campus in a dramatic cost-cutting effort.
The non-renewable notice on the lease of the training facility will not only affect the OPS, but will also limit valuable, hands-on learning experiences that the program’s partnership with OPS has offered students over the years — including Elise Nizio, who is in the Police Foundations program.
“I’ve been able to see the new officers train and use it as motivation,” Nizio recently told the Algonquin Times. “The idea that I would be in their shoes eventually almost felt like motivation.”
The OPS is looking for a new location to train recruits while negotiating with the college to retain access to the building’s firing facility for five years.
Another possibility for the relocated training facility is to use the police headquarters being built in Barrhaven, according to OPS Deputy Chief Steve Bell.
It was time the OPS developed a training facility independent of the college anyway, Bell told the CBC.
