‘Political Hot Potato’: Policing Reform a Delicate Issue for Smith Ahead of Alberta Election

Stakeholders elaborate to what extent the reforms will solve problems or create new ones

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith gives an Alberta government update in Calgary on Jan. 10, 2023. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

A provincial police force was something previous Alberta premier Jason Kenney favoured right up to his final days in office, and Danielle Smith also touted it during her United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership campaign.

But with a mandated election coming up in May, the new premier has been taking the politically safer approach of tackling immediate policing problems, said Marco Navarro-Genie, president of Alberta-based think tank Haultain Research Institute.

“There is a significant amount of respect for the RCMP in some quarters, and at the same time there is a significant amount of desire to get them out in others,” Navarro-Genie told The Epoch Times.

“The politicians are kind of wedged in the middle, so it’s become a political hot potato,” he said. “If you ask an Albertan on the streets what they think of the RCMP—should the RCMP be kept or sent packing—the answer will give you an almost clear indication of how they’re going to vote in the next election.”

The Smith government’s Police Amendment Act attempts to address both Albertans’ dwindling trust in the police and rising crime rates, while leaving the issue of provincial police plan “bubbling,” Navarro-Genie said.

The act received royal assent in December 2022, a couple of months after Smith took office. It establishes civilian governance bodies in rural communities served by the RCMP, and mandates the creation of a Police Review Commission to investigate complaints against the police province-wide.

Rural Communities

Kara Westerlund, Brazeau County councillor and vice-president of Rural Municipalities of Alberta, said the changes are “a baby step in the right direction.”

RCMP officers respond to an incident near Cochrane, Alta., on March 11, 2016. The Canadian press/Mike Ridewood

Westerlund told The Epoch Times she’s had four attempted break-ins at her house in the past several years and a recent attempted break-in at her business.

She said people in her community are on edge and blame the RCMP for being unresponsive. Having people formally sitting at a table with RCMP officers might help ease tensions, she said.

Living in rural Alberta also means it may take police an hour to get to people’s home when they call, she said. That’s the reality when the property is some distance from a detachment.

Westerlund notes, however, that it’s not the police but the judicial system that’s at the heart of the problem—the “catch-and-release” system that has the same few people in each community committing the majority of the crimes.

Independent MLA Drew Barnes also blames the judicial system. “Quite often it’s the same small group of people, because of our catch-and-release system. These people just continue to offend, with very few consequences,” he said.

“Police lose the desire to consistently go arrest these people. We have to work with our Canadian partners to tighten up the penalties.”

Last September, Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro called on Ottawa to reform its parole and bail laws.

“Ultimately, those in power in Ottawa must answer for a soft-on-crime system that does not place the protection of the law-abiding public at the centre of all decisions," Shandro said in a statement.

Barnes said manpower has also been a problem for the RCMP. “There will be only one car servicing 200-by-300 miles, and of course no one can be in more than one place at a time.”

The civilian governance bodies established by the Police Amendment Act won’t solve this, he said, but “it will be good that citizens will have the opportunity to more directly get their ideas and their input heard.”

‘Jurisdictional Tussles’

As the government was formulating the Police Amendment Act, Temitope Oriola, associate professor of criminology and sociology at the University of Alberta, was one of the experts consulted. He was commissioned to analyze the use of civilian oversight bodies across Canada and the world and give his recommendations.

He had suggested a “one-stop-shop” for police oversight, he said, but instead the government went with these local bodies.

“It appears that we’ll have a fundamentally fragmented landscape,” Oriola said in an interview. “That fragmentation will come with jurisdictional tussles.”

However, he remains optimistic overall, he said. “I do believe a lot rests on the implementation, the resources that are put into it. I think it can be made to function.”

The RCMP, being federally funded, will have to work under some more local guidance, and that could create one kind of jurisdictional tussle, Oriola said.

It’s not clear yet how binding that local governance will be. When Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services Mike Ellis announced the legislation on Dec. 8, he said, “The RCMP are absolutely supportive of this and want to participate.”

With regard to the Police Review Commission, which would handle complaints against the police, Ellis said he was still in negotiations with the RCMP on that at the time. “We are going to continue to negotiate with the RCMP because we believe the independent body is the right approach,” he said.

Tyler Shandro, Alberta's minister of justice and solicitor general, in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Todd Korol

Civilian oversight bodies have often been formed to prevent police brutality, said Oriola. They have a long presence in the United States, while the first Canadian oversight body was established in the 1980s in Toronto.

Alberta already has a smaller-scale oversight body, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), which handles only the most serious investigations of police-involved incidents, such as those involving fatalities.

But it has been troubled in recent years, with its director stepping down in 2021, saying the organization was underfunded and overworked. Though it has been infused with new funds, Oriola questions whether a new, larger review commission will have similar problems.

Provincial Police Service

Public Safety and Emergency Services spokesperson Dylan Topal told The Epoch Times in an email that while no decision has yet been made to establish an Alberta police service, one of the government’s arguments in favour of a provincial force would be greater control over police funding.

For example, he said, Alberta “had absolutely no input when the federal government and the RCMP’s union negotiated a new collective agreement that increased Alberta’s policing costs over the life of the contract by approximately 20 percent.”

Cost has been the main sticking point for opponents, one of whom is Westerlund. Although the government has said it will cover the extra costs of switching to a provincial force, she said she’s worried about long-term costs. “What about two years from now, three years from now?” she said.

A group called Keep Alberta RCMP says in a statement on its website: “The Province’s latest deployment model shows that a provincial police service would cost Albertans $759 million in operating expenses each year—an increase of $164 million from the current provincial policing costs of $595 million—and would only add 56 net new police officers.”

Westerlund said her organization has been asked to sit on a transitional board, evidence the plan is still in the works.

Navarro-Genie is worried that a provincial force may not be any better than the RCMP. He said it depends, in part, on setting up an academy and training that will set the character of a provincial force. He gave the example of the Alberta sheriffs, who have been looked to as representative of what a provincial force might be like. Yet they’ve been at the centre of their own controversies at times, he said.

MLA Barnes said Alberta is in a good position financially to fund a better-quality force. He thinks the federal government will gradually decrease the RCMP’s budget to save money, and the policing cost savings to Alberta through that subsidizing will not remain as significant.

For him, as with many supporters of a provincial force, it’s also about more autonomy for Alberta.

“This is about starting to show Albertans and showing Ottawa that we can take care of our own affairs. And unless we get financial equity, unless we get Supreme Court and House of Commons equity, we’re going to continue to focus on Alberta first.”