St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron said she, along with municipalities across Alberta, are quite skeptical of how the province is going to achieve the “grand plans and visions” in its proposed deployment model for a provincial police force.
“Right now, you have one level of government driving [the provincial police force model] when the other two levels of government are opposed. That's not a good way to collaborate,” she said.
On Aug. 16, the province announced its proposed deployment model for a provincial police force.
During the news conference, Justice Minister Tyler Shandro said the benefits of the model include addressing the different needs of different communities and ensuring core policing needs are met.
“If that sounds appealing, let me take you back to the question of why Alberta is studying a provincial police service. To put it simply, the flexibility and the service-oriented qualities that are achievable under a provincial model are impossible to achieve in a federal model,” he said.
The proposal looked at what a hub-based deployment model might look like in the province, including five detachment prototypes: community detachments, detachments in Indigenous communities, provincial police service headquarters, service hubs, and regional hubs.
Shandro said 275 front-line police officers would be added to the smallest 42 detachments.
Heron is afraid of where the province intends to get these additional officers and is worried it might come at the detriment of urban centres such as St. Albert.
“Edmonton across our border has a hard time with recruitment. We're a little concerned, I'm a little concerned, about how they're going to get these extra officers to serve the rural areas,” she said.
In the proposed model, there would also be 20 to 30 service hub detachments with an estimated 48 to 192 police officers that would serve larger municipalities and provide support to smaller detachments when needed.
“If a community detachment needs more specialized mental health and addiction support during a service call, they could be referred to a service hub in a town not far away,” explained Shandro.
The northern, central, and southern urban hubs in the proposed model would serve the large communities and surrounding areas and act as regional headquarters with forensic services and investigative support functions performed by civilian specialists.
Heron said St. Albert only has a couple of options.
“It's either accept what the provincial government is offering or do something on our own,” she said.
If the province does transition away from the RCMP, Heron said she can see the 13 municipalities in the Edmonton metro region "having a good conversation about what regional policing could look like.”
Regional policing could give St. Albert a better say in resource and priority setting, oversight, and dealing with things like complaints.
“We don't have that much control under the current RCMP model, and I don't see a lot of control under the proposed provincial policing model. Regional policing is definitely an option — not sure how that would look, though,” she said.
Heron said she would not, however, want to just contract the Edmonton Police Service into St. Albert because that would not give her a seat at the table.
“I think the conversations have to be with Edmonton and the region about how we can maybe restructure the governance. And if Edmonton is not in favor of that, we could do maybe a regional police that surrounds Edmonton,” she said.
When it comes to downloading costs onto municipalities, Heron trusts the provincial government will look at what St. Albert is paying today and “that will be our bill for the next year.”
She is cautious, though, as if the province transitions to a provincial police force model, the province will automatically lose $180 million in federal government transfers.
Heron said St. Albert gets more than a “million bucks from the federal government to support RCMP” in the city, and the province is going to have to find the overall $180 million.
“If it's not coming from the municipalities, through property taxes, it's going to be coming from all of Albertans to their income tax,” she continued.
Shandro said concerns about costs are a “red herring.”
“We've made a commitment to municipalities that if there is a transition to provincial police that this will not result in costs being downloaded onto those municipalities,” he said.
Heron isn’t so confident.
“Whether you're being served by Alberta provincial police or not, by year two, three, four, and five, as they start to settle into a new system, I have zero confidence that those costs would not be eventually downloaded onto the municipalities,” she continued.
Heron’s biggest concern is the motivation for a provincial police force model comes from an anti-Ottawa stance and doesn’t address the issues that Alberta is facing by way of crime.
The issues, Heron continued, could be addressed with more support for mental health, drug addiction, homelessness, housing, and preventive crime measures.
“Investments in those areas would show a bigger and more significant improvement in the safety of Alberta than more boots on the street — that we still don't understand where they're coming from,” she said.
Heron also has concerns about the lack of municipal involvement in the proposed model.
“The way they've structured the proposed model — there is a local commission. I've asked 100 times who sits on the local commission, who appoints the local commission. I can't get any answers — they don't even know,” she said.
St. Albert-Edmonton MLA Marie Renaud said she thinks what St. Albert and other municipalities need is for the government to listen to them and their needs.
“The rural municipalities and the Municipalities Association, they've all been asking questions for months … they've asked really good questions about what the additional costs will be, the timelines, and they just did not receive the information that they need.
“That's incredibly alarming,” she said.
Heron agreed, she thinks all three levels of government need to have a wholesome conversation on policing and what that could look like in the province.
Morinville-St. Albert MLA, Dale Nally was not available for an interview in time for publication.
In response to how the change to a provincial police model could impact St. Albert Citizen’s Patrol, president Brian Anderson, said he couldn’t speak for everyone in their volunteer crime prevention group, but he has had exposure to all facets of policing, including municipal, provincial, and federal.
“Every police agency I have encountered has a commitment to community organizations like ours, so I don’t see any significant changes occurring if Alberta adopts a provincial policing model,” he said.
Andersen said the group currently has a great relationship with the RCMP.
“Re-establishing these relationships would likely be our biggest concern if the province was to adopt rural policing services,” he said.
Overall, Heron said this conversation has forced the RCMP to look at how they do contract policing in the provinces and that they are looking at ways to improve.
Heron said her experience with the RCMP has always been positive
“We’re judged one of the safest cities in Canada. So obviously, that partly has to do with who our contract police is — the RCMP.”
