Alberta 2023 Budget to Include Money for Municipalities to Form Own Police Force

A police vehicle looks out over an empty highway in Coutts, Alberta, on Feb. 15, 2022. (The Canadian Press)

The Alberta government is prepared to give the city of Grande Prairie $9.7 million over two years to create and fund its own community-led municipal police force in the upcoming budget, if the city decides to move forward with a local policing option.

In a Feb. 22 news release, the province said Budget 2023 would allow Grande Prairie, and other municipalities who are interested, to access money to offset start-up costs such as equipment, uniforms, vehicles, and information technology.

Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services Mike Ellis, who served 12 years with the Calgary Police Service as a constable and then patrol sergeant, posted on Twitter Feb. 22, that “community driven and focused policing can increase the number of frontline officers, reduce response times and allow the municipality to set the priorities for their regional service.”

Under the province’s Police Act, cities and towns with a population greater than 5,000 are responsible for their own policy. Grande Prairie has a population of roughly 68,000 people.

The Act allows municipalities a number of options for policing. They can form their own force, set up a regional policy arrangement, or contract for services—as Grande Prairie currently does with the RCMP, under a provincial police service agreement with Public Safety Canada.

The minister said he had been involved in discussions with “several municipalities” exploring options including municipal or regional police forces, due to erosion of trust in safety and poor response times.

“People are feeling that their local police services have not been responding to the community needs, especially in rural Alberta. I’ve heard many stories about people calling their local detachments during moments of crisis and being told that it'll be hours before an officer can respond,” said the minister.

Ellis said the province needed “new and innovative policing solutions” and that there was a “paradigm shift” occurring in Alberta.

“No longer will police services be seen and used as an arm of the state. Rather they must be an extension or rather a reflection of the communities that they serve,” Ellis said.

Grande Prairie Mayor Jackie Clayton spoke at a news conference on Feb. 22 when the potential funding was announced, and said that considering a municipal police force was “not a new exploration.” She said policing in the city was a significant departmental operating expense, and that a recently completed review identified concerns with the current policing arrangement.

Clayton said benefits of a municipal police force would include increased local oversight, more accountability and efficiency, local decision-making autonomy, and improved officer recruitment and community-based recruit training.

Under a new model, policing costs are estimated to be less than what is being spent under the current RCMP contract policing model, but the mayor emphasized the primary goal is a “safer community.”

City Council is scheduled to vote on the proposed switch on March 6. Clayton said that regional partners in the county of Grande Prairie and in Claremont also considering implementing local policing.

Ellis said other provinces, including B.C., Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, are exploring similar alternative policing options.

The province said there has been no decision made yet on a provincial police force.

In 2022, the province started a Community Policing Grant, which offers Indigenous communities and municipalities a one-time grant of up to $30,000 toward developing a business proposal for their own self-administered police service or regional equivalent. Applications opened on Sept. 6, 2022.