Ian Mulgrew: BC continues to deny police work

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While Alberta has a discussion about creating a provincial police force, BC keeps its head under the covers, ignoring the dysfunction of its chessboard of agencies and detachments.

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Cooperation, communication, jurisdiction, lines of command, priorities, accountability, and other concerns have plagued effective, efficient, and responsible policing on the West Coast for more than half a century.

There have been numerous calls over the decades to fix structural problems that are attributed to hampering faster and better responses to things like the horrific rampage of serial killer Clifford Olson in the 1980s and the more recent avalanche of dirty money. in casinos.

Wally Oppal, a former BC judge and attorney general, led a commission in the 1990s. He recommended fundamental changes, most of which were ignored.

During his year in cabinet, Kash Heed, then a liberal attorney general, was the last provincial minister to openly lobbied for a provincial force.

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“Alberta is doing its due diligence, and we should have done it many, many years ago due to the Balkanized system that we have in this particular province,” Heed said.

Now a consultant and professor, Heed said he became involved in politics after a career in the municipal police with a desire to institute reform.

“My intention to get to the government and become attorney general was to bring not only a more responsible and effective police service, but that it would be under a BC provincial police service and that the municipalities could hire that service,” he said. explained.

“The RCMP would remain in British Columbia only in a federal role. And then I’d look at three metro-style police centers: one in Metro Vancouver, one in the capital region, and one in downtown Okanagan. That model made absolute sense and that’s what we were working for. “

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The initial cost of the transition in 2009 was set at $ 135 million, but with assets already owned by the province and municipalities, as well as economies of scale taken into account, Heed said it made financial sense.

“We were going to recoup the costs of that in the long run. “

Still, he ran into a political hurdle in an administration plagued by former Mounties who opposed his plans, and in 2012, the province signed a 20-year contract with the RCMP.

In 2019, 65 municipalities in British Columbia were receiving RCMP services from 3,969 officers, while 2,461 officers worked for municipal departments. Another 775 officers were assigned to police areas outside the municipalities, such as highway patrols, and to regional and provincial agencies such as the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team.

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Alberta’s report, released Friday prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC, was a response to one of the Fair Deal Panel’s May 2020 recommendations on the province’s place within the Confederacy.

The consulting firm found that the expected six-year transition to a new police system would cost approximately $ 366 million.

RCMP services in Alberta last year cost $ 672 million – $ 318 million from the province, $ 176 million from municipalities, $ 170 million from federals – but recent RCMP salary increases will take it to $ 742 million . A provincial force to replace the RCMP would cost at least $ 735 million annually for 4,189 full-time employees in 113 detachments.

“At the end of the day, I’m sure it would be the same amount or less than what we currently spend on RCMP, but as a province, we have a responsibility beyond the monetary implications to defend and pursue the best of our province. interests, ”Alberta Justice Minister Kaycee Madu told reporters.

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The PwC report said savings and other benefits would accrue by integrating with other provincial services and using existing infrastructure for financial services, human resources and other common services.

An integrated and collaborative response was a more effective way to address the root causes of crime and disorder and reduce the significant economic, social and legal impacts, the authors said.

The proposed model adds value, characteristics, characteristics and responsibility that are different from the traditional model under the RCMP.

This includes incorporating improvements tailored to Alberta, according to the report, such as providing specific cultural sensitivity training for the communities that officers will be serving, restorative justice for victims, and diversion for less serious offenders. It would also focus on Alberta-centric solutions to challenges in rural surveillance, mental health, opioid responses, and in indigenous communities.

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The PwC report does not recommend an option, but was intended to stimulate discussion.

Heed had no hope that BC will address its identical problems anytime soon given the controversy over Surrey’s new force.

“The province is constitutionally responsible for policing,” Heed emphasized. “The province must make the decisions: the decision with which we were moving forward, the model I described, was a model that worked for BC

“What you don’t want is to spend all that money and all you do is change the color of the uniforms. That is what you want to avoid and that is my fear in Surrey: you are going to spend over a quarter of a billion dollars for the transition and all you are going to have on the streets of Surrey is a different colored uniform. : The service model will remain the same. “

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