Back when the NDP were still in control of the government, they had allocated $10 million towards hiring 39 more RCMP officers and creating 40 civilian positions within a policing support centre, along with $2 million for more Crown prosecutors.
In turn, the United Conservative Party (UCP) had originally voted against this expenditure, ostensibly for the reason that they wanted to prevent “over-spending.”
When the UCP released its crime platform in early 2019, it promised $10 million for 50 new prosecutors and support staff, an additional $50 million for Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT) and a number of legislative changes meant to toughen the bail process and to allow police to inform women of their partner’s history of violent acts.
Many of these promises were quite sensible. But on the subject of more resources for rural RCMP, the UCP only promised “additional policing resources” without going into further detail.
Well, it’s now becoming clear why the UCP was opposed to additional spending for rural police officers, and why their platform was so vague on the subject — they intended to foist the cost of policing on to the backs of rural communities.
Last week, the County of Barrhead council received notice of a proposed funding model where municipalities with fewer than 5,000 residents will have to contribute between 15 to 70 per cent of their policing costs. Before, the province had subsidized that cost.
While this proposed funding model will save the province between $34.9 to 162.8 million every year, it would also cost the county small municipality between $161,305 to $771,109 annually.
Unfortunately, judging by the “survey” sent out by the province to gather feedback from the affected municipalities, it seems as though the UCP has already made up its mind on the subject. County CAO Debbie Oyarzun characterized the questions in that survey as designed to elicit one response — how much are small municipalities willing to pay for policing?
One could argue that small municipalities pay for policing anyway through the taxes paid to the province, but there’s a big difference between the impact felt on provincial coffers and the impact on a small town’s coffers. A hundred million dollars is relatively small in the context of a provincial budget measured in the tens of billions, while $100,000 to $700,000 is a huge expense for our rural community to shoulder.
We all knew that the next provincial budget was going to feature deep cuts, but did the UCP specifically have to target the rural municipalities that helped elect them by handing us a huge policing bill? This just doesn’t seem fair.
