Plans for new Surrey, B.C., police force on hold until next year

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The city council in Surrey, B.C., had worked the past four years to set up a municipal police force that would allow it to ditch the RCMP and replace it with a department that would be under the city’s control. But the future of policing in the province’s second-largest city is now uncertain, as a new city council, the RCMP and the newly formed Surrey Police Service all battle for control while they await a decision from the provincial government next year.

Observers say that, whether the province orders the city next year to keep moving forward with an independent police force or allows the new council to reverse direction and stay with the RCMP, Surrey’s unique situation will affect both the RCMP nationally and many jurisdictions across the country.

“The Surrey situation is unique – I don’t know of any city anywhere else doing anything like this,” said Simon Fraser University professor Curt Griffiths, the co-ordinator of the police studies program in the criminology school there, and an early consultant in the Surrey police transition process. “This is unprecedented and it could set a bad precedent for Canada. If this is undone, it sets a dangerous precedent. To me, it’s the politicization of policing.”

Council voted 6-3 last week to formally ask the province to let the city keep the RCMP – a key campaign pledge from Mayor Brenda Locke, who was elected in October. The previous mayor, Doug McCallum, initiated a process to create the replacement force, which already has a police board and a chief, and has hired 375 people who would be out of job if the force is dissolved.

Councillors also approved a report from Surrey city staff outlining the costs of that move, which concluded the city would save $235-million over five years by reverting back to the RCMP. Part of that is because the federal government provides a subsidy that covers 10 per cent of the costs for municipalities that use the RCMP. Council sent that report to B.C. Solicitor-General Mike Farnworth.

In the meantime, both the Surrey RCMP and the Surrey Police Service have been asked to submit reports to Mr. Farnworth by Dec. 22. On top of that, a collection of residents and community groups has been writing letters to the ministry for and against the move to stop the transition.

The RCMP and the Surrey Police Service are also making their arguments to the public that their respective force is better for policing as they debate the costs of switching or keeping the status quo.

Dr. Griffiths said the level of outspokenness by both groups is surprising, given the tradition of police maintaining a non-political stance in any local dispute.

The Surrey Police Service has been aggressive in challenging the city’s report, saying the additional costs for the new force would only be an extra $18.3-million a year, less than half of what the city estimates. They explain the difference by saying many of the assumptions about costs for everything from training to civilian salaries to future wage costs in the city report are “incorrect.”

The police service also says that halting the transition would mean accepting a loss of $200-million, between sunk costs of things such as IT and equipment, along with the approximately $80-million in severance payouts.

The board for the new service also suggested that Ms. Locke should not be its chair, a position that all mayors are legally required by provincial law to hold, because of her known opposition to the force.

Ms. Locke said the previous council’s efforts to push through a municipal force was “ham-fisted” and “absolutely incompetent.”

Ms. Locke said the city will save huge amounts of money by staying with the federal force, which exempts the city from having to cover HST and WorkSafe BC payments and provides all the training.

But Surrey Police Service media spokesperson Ian MacDonald said reversing course will kill Surrey’s chance to develop a new, invigorated police force that is rooted in and responsive to the community, is equipped with the latest technical tools, and has developed a “wellness” approach to staffing that means officers are far less likely to be on sick leave than in the RCMP.

He agreed that the Surrey plan is being watched carefully across the country.

“Communities are interested. Absolutely, they’re looking on and taking notes.”

Surrey is the largest city in Canada policed by the RCMP, which has served as the municipal force since 1951. The RCMP mostly operates in other provinces as the force that is deployed to smaller cities or rural areas through policing contracts.

Two other Western cities have recently considered dropping the RCMP and moving to independent police forces – Richmond, B.C., in 2016 and Red Deer, Alta., in 2021. Both concluded it would be too expensive and brought no clear benefit.

Alberta is also considering replacing the RCMP with a provincial force. A report last year concluded that an Alberta police force could be operated at a lower overall cost than the RCMP, but at the same time the province would lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies. The report also said it would cost $366-million to make the switch.

A special provincial committee in B.C. that is looking at reforming current police legislation has also recommended that the province set up its own force.

But back in Surrey, the top RCMP officer there, Assistant Commissioner Brian Edwards, said the force wants to stay in the city because they’ve been there for 71 years and “it’s in our hearts and in our souls.”

He said that Surrey RCMP have worked closely with the community to create innovative programs, like the 16-member police mental-health teams that the city wants, and he pointed to crime in Surrey steadily declining to bolster his case.

The National Police Federation, the union that represents RCMP officers, has also been pushing back against the switch to the Surrey Police Service. The federation provided about $100,000 to the efforts of a citizens’ group to get the province to hold a referendum on the issue, though that effort failed.

The Surrey situation doesn’t just affect Surrey. Because RCMP administration costs are shared among every city in B.C., other local governments would need to absorb Surrey’s share.

Lower Mainland mayors with RCMP divisions such as Coquitlam, Richmond, Burnaby, and North Vancouver have expressed alarm at not just those potential costs, but also how a new Surrey force could affect their own efforts to recruit and retain police officers.

A group of mayors from the Lower Mainland, which covers Whistler to Hope, wrote a joint letter in late November saying they continue to support having the RCMP stay in Surrey when there is so much uncertainty about the implications of the change.

Dr. Griffiths at SFU noted that community consultations showed that almost everyone in Surrey – residents, non-profits, businesses – were originally on board with the change four years ago, feeling the RCMP force was too transitory and that crime issues hadn’t been handled well.

But he said that mood appears to have shifted. “There wasn’t good messaging after that,” he said.

He said Mr. McCallum and his council did little to communicate with the public about the benefit, assuming they had been elected to make the change and didn’t need to ask again.

As well, Surrey city staff also allowed the RCMP to “slow walk” the whole process, with the result that the transition is now not as advanced as was laid out in the original plan, said Dr. Griffiths.

It’s not clear when the province will make its final decision.

In the past few years, the B.C. NDP government has signalled many times that it is willing to give what it thinks Surrey residents and civic politicians want. They are a huge, important group key to winning provincial elections.

But Dr. Griffiths said the plan’s approval complicates that calculation.

“The thing here is that the minister approved this transition every step of the way, And so how do you walk that back?”