Alberta government plans to require all police officers wear body cameras
The directive will apply to all frontline officers in Alberta including municipal and Indigenous police services
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Alberta’s UCP government says it will require police officers around the province to wear body cameras in a bid to boost transparency in policing.
Public Safety and Emergency Services Minister Mike Ellis made the announcement Tuesday, but many details of the plan are yet to come. He said the cameras will build public trust in police, who often respond to complex calls that can raise concerns about whether appropriate force was used.
“The demand for transparency has never been more clear,” said Ellis, adding Alberta would be the first province to mandate body cameras in Canada.
The directive will apply to all frontline officers in Alberta including municipal and Indigenous police services.
The minister said he expects to see specific recommendations on costs, logistics, and standards for use within three to four months from a working group that will include the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police (AACP).
Promising an open procurement process for the purchase of the cameras, Ellis did not specify whether the province or municipalities will be shouldering the costs.
“This is why we’ve tasked the working group to take a look at how we can find the funds for that,” Ellis said.
The minister said footage will be stored for one year before being purged. When asked about oversight of public access to video footage in the case of a legitimate complaint, Ellis said that would fall to the Police Review Commission being created under Bill 6.
Cameras can speed up complaint process: police chiefs
Dean LaGrange, chief of the Camrose Police Service and vice-president of the AACP, said at the announcement the cameras can protect the public and the police officers wearing them.
“They can help de-escalate such situations and either reduce the number of complaints based on the video evidence or they can speed up the complaints process itself,” he said, adding with many agencies including his own already using in-car video cameras, body-worn cameras just go a step further.
The Calgary Police Service has been using body-worn cameras since 2019, and the RCMP, including K Division in Alberta, has been field testing similar equipment since 2022, with a nation-wide rollout expected in stages beginning this year.
Edmonton Police Chief Dale McFee said police aren’t afraid of being held accountable.
“This will actually bring another piece of transparency, legitimacy, but also of comfort to those officers that there is a piece of equipment in place that actually tells their version of the story,” he said.
McFee’s endorsement comes after he said in 2020 the cameras were not worth the expense. A 2015 report from the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) flagged high costs, technological snags, and a lack of significant evidence that the cameras reduced the use of police force or had any impact on citizen complaints.
McFee said since then, more research has been done, including in Calgary.
“The police discipline process, that complaints process — it does have an impact in relation to that that’s positive, and that evidence didn’t exist in the past,” he said, adding that there needs to be strong, consistent policy governing the public release of video footage.
“I don’t think we want to just look at this as we’re going to just start putting video in the mainstream media when there’s no reason to,” said McFee.
Curtis Hoople, president of the Alberta Federation of Police Associations, told Postmedia members are supportive of body-worn cameras but are waiting to see the details of the rollout.
“We don’t want our members to be (burdened) with the administrative tasks associated with downloads and storing information. We will work with the EPS on what this looks like,” he said.
Important details missing: NDP
Alberta NDP justice critic Irfan Sabir told reporters at the legislature Tuesday the Opposition is in support of increasing transparency to help maintain confidence in law enforcement, but the pre-election announcement showed the government hasn’t done its homework.
“There is no timeline of when it will be implemented, there is no discussion of costs — who will pay and when they will pay — and, these body cameras will generate a huge amount of data, and how that data will be managed, stored and used are important questions,” he said.
He added that if the UCP was serious about transparency in policing, it would clear the well-documented backlog of cases at the provincial police watchdog, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT).
Dunia Nur, president and CEO of the African Canadian Civic Engagement Council, said in a government release the council hopes to work with the government to “ensure that the implementation of police body cameras includes anti-racist policies and practices, and that gaps identified in other jurisdictions have been addressed to create a more just and equitable society.”
Ellis said the government will be working closely with the province’s privacy commissioner on the rollout.
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