The Saint John Board of Police Commissioners has lost its challenge to an arbitration award setting police wage increases for 2024 through 2026, with a New Brunswick judge upholding the arbitrators’ approach to statutory factors and wage comparisons.

Justice Kathryn A. Gregory dismissed the wage-only judicial review in Saint John Board of Police Commissioners v. Saint John Police Association, 2026 NBKB 153, released July 21, 2026, by the Court of King’s Bench of New Brunswick.

The ruling left the existing arbitration award in place: an 8.92-per-cent increase for 2024, comprising 7.72 per cent plus a 1.2-percentage-point differential, followed by 3.25 per cent in each of 2025 and 2026. The court was reviewing that award, not negotiating or issuing a new pay settlement.

The employer was ordered to pay the association $2,000 in costs, plus HST and reasonable disbursements.

Mandatory consideration, not a predetermined formula

The association represents Saint John officers holding the ranks of sergeant and constable. After bargaining failed to produce a replacement for the agreement that expired at the end of 2023, a three-member interest arbitration board issued its award on December 23, 2025.

The employer challenged only wages. It argued that the board mishandled the mandatory factors in section 80(6) of New Brunswick’s Industrial Relations Act, including comparisons with other police employers.

Both sides accepted that interest arbitration seeks to approximate the outcome of free collective bargaining. Their disagreement concerned how tightly the statutory factors constrained the arbitrators in doing so.

Gregory held that the legislation requires arbitrators to consider the listed factors and explain how they did so. It does not prescribe the weight each factor must receive, and it permits consideration of other relevant factors. That discretion did not eliminate the obligation to address the statutory list.

Wage trends and the Fredericton differential

For 2025 and 2026, the employer objected to the use of smaller New Brunswick police forces as external comparisons. Gregory read the award as recognizing that those municipalities were not perfect comparators, but finding their wage increases relevant as evidence of a broader municipal trend.

Although the presentation of that analysis could have been clearer, the judge found the board had considered the statutory comparison factor and permissibly relied on other relevant evidence. Treating the smaller forces’ trends as informative was not the same as declaring them direct equivalents to Saint John.

The employer also opposed the additional 1.2-percentage-point differential over the increase needed to reach parity with Fredericton in 2024. Gregory found an objective basis for it in the evidence of historically higher Saint John pay and service-call volumes.

The board had expressly cautioned that any future differential, and its size, would depend on the facts at that time. The ruling did not establish a permanent entitlement to higher pay than Fredericton.

Fire-department comparison did not affect the result

The employer’s final objection concerned an erroneous 2024 comparison with Saint John firefighters. Gregory found that it had no effect on the reasoning or outcome: both sides already agreed that the base increase should be 7.72 per cent, more than the 6.93 per cent mistakenly referenced in that comparison.

The court therefore dismissed the application, leaving the arbitration board’s three-year wage increases undisturbed.