Ontario NDP Leader Howard Hampton is promising to free up enough municipal cash to hire 3,000 city police officers by transferring some municipal policing costs to the province.

Hampton addressed the Police Association of Ontario's annual general meeting Monday afternoon, hours after Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory unveiled his law-and-order platform in front of the same crowd.

The NDP leader said if he is elected in October, the province will save municipal police budgets $250 million a year by uploading court security costs.

Conservatives would add 200 OPP officers

That would provide enough money for fifteen times more police officers than the number promised Monday morning by Tory.

The Conservative leader said he would add officers to provincial, not municipal forces.

He said a Conservative government would:

• add 200 police officers to the provincial force.
• push for mandatory minimum sentences for those operating marijuana grow operations.
• lobby to toughen the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

"It has been a long time since the OPP has seen a significant increase to their uniform strength," Tory said in a press release. "Dalton McGuinty ignored the 2005 auditor general's report that stated that most OPP detachments are understaffed for their responsibilities."

Tory also said a national registry of sex offenders should always be available to police. He also criticized the Liberal government for what he called a "catch and release" justice system that allows charges to be thrown out or plea bargained away.

On Thursday, Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty is scheduled to be the last of the three major political party leaders to address delegates at the meeting in Richmond Hill in attempts to woo the law-and-order vote in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 10 election.

The association, representing over 31,000 front-line police personnel in Ontario, has gathered for the week to discuss how to better keep Ontario communities safe.

With files from the Canadian Press