British Columbia is dedicating $137 million in funding to tackle crime and public safety this year as a part of the 2023-2024 budget.
The money is part of a $462 million commitment over the three-year term of its fiscal plan.
The biggest batch of funding, $55 million this year and $230 million in total, will go to recruiting up to 256 new RCMP officers, including for rural and remote communities.
Another $33 million this year and $87 in total will go to bolstering core operations in provincial correctional facilities along with a program focusing on repeat violent offenders and the new Special Investigation & Targeted Enforcement Program.
“Together, the programs will help to provide coordinated response teams made up of police and dedicated prosecutors and probation officers to respond to public safety concerns and repeat, violent offenders,” the budget states.
“The programs aim to reduce crime rates attributable to repeat offending, improve criminal justice response and information sharing amongst justice partners, and provide better outcomes for individuals through improved connection to health, housing and social supports.”
The budget also includes $16 million this year and $44 million over three years to expand the use of Indigenous justice centres.
The first such centre, a partnership between he province and the BC First Nations Justice Council opened in Prince George in 2020, and is aimed at creating a culturally safe environment providing legal help, support services and representation for Indigenous people.
There are currently three physical and one virtual Indigenous justice centre, and the new funding is aimed at adding 10 additional locations in the next two years.
A further $25 million is earmarked over the course of the fiscal plan to modernize the B.C. Police Act, particularly around improving community-based mental health and addictions crisis response. Major updates to the act were recommended by an all-party committee last year.
In the wake of B.C.’s landmark three-year experiment with the decriminalization of certain hard drugs, the fiscal plan is dedicating $7 million this year and $19 million in total to manage the program.
The money will be used, in part, to provide training and additional resources to front-line workers.
Smaller funding allocations have also been earmarked to improve access to services at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, to improve cannabis licencing and enforcement, to improve access to virtual and after-hours bail and to support the Independent Investigations Office.
BC Liberal Finance Critic Peter Milobar praised efforts to hire more police officers, but questioned how the province would get the job done.
“When we hear things like 250 more police officers coming to British Columbia, we agree with that,” Milobar told the legislature, responding to Finance Minister Katrine Conroy’s budget speech.
“We’re not quite sure where the (solicitor general) is going to find those officers. By his own admission and I would agree with him … it’s pretty hard to find RCMP officers to bulk up complements, for just retirees.”
Milobar went on to say the NDP budget doesn’t go far enough towards recognizing rising rates of violent and hate crimes, and said while it does reference repeat offenders, it has nothing for victims of crime.
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