The B.C. government has unveiled changes that will dramatically affect the way municipal police boards are structured.
Currently, under B.C.’s Police Act, municipal mayors automatically act as local police board chairs.
Under legislation proposed by the BC NDP government, that will change.
The new legislation would require municipal councils to appoint a representative to their local police board, either a councillor or the mayor. The board, which is primarily appointed by the province, would then elect its chair and vice-chair.
“When you have a mayor who’s chairing the board, and then they’re also chairing the city council…you can have to take off your mayor’s hat, put on your police board chair’s hat, and that can create conflicts themselves,” Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth told Global News. “This way, the board will choose the chair. And that’s a much more, I think, effective, way of police board governance.”
The police board changes stem from recommendations from a 2022 all-party committee into reforming the Police Act.
But they also come amid turmoil at the boards of B.C.’s two largest cities.
In Vancouver, there have been two high-profile resignations from the board in the last year, including one member who alleged political interference from the mayor’s office. In Surrey, the mayor’s role as police board chair has been criticized amid conflict over the city’s police transition, and in November the province stepped in to suspend all board members.
“These changes haven’t been brought about by events in Surrey. Many of these changes have been brought about by longstanding concerns about how police boards should operate,” Farnworth said. “Wherever there are police boards I think this will have a positive act.”
Along with the changes to police boards, the Police Act amendments will give new powers to the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner.
Farnworth said those changes stem from recommendations of both the 2022 all-party committee and another 2019 all-party committee focused on police oversight, along with recommendations from the OPCC and the Independent Investigations Office.
“They may see there are complaints coming in in a particular area, a number of them,” Farnworth said. “It would allow the police complaints commissioner to do an inquiry into particular issues earlier than they can now.”
The changes would also allow the police complaints commissioner to act earlier to call a public hearing in police misconduct investigations.
Other proposed changes to police oversight would adjust the definition of misconduct to include discriminatory jokes and gestures, bring oversight of detention guards in police lockups under the purview of the IIO, and ensure safety officers employed by local governments and First Nations who work as jail guards, in health-care facilities or in schools would have independent oversight.
“Up until now, the role a jail guard may have played in the serious harm or death of a person was investigated by police agencies,” IIO chief civilian director Ron Macdonald said in a statement. “Moving this responsibility to the IIO enhances the appearance of independence in these important investigations.”
The changes do not address recommendations from the 2022 committee that B.C. scrap the RCMP in favour of a provincial police force or that the province move to a regional policing model over the currently fragmented system of municipal police services and RCMP detachments.
The province says further Police Act changes are still in the works, including on training, provincial governance and Indigenous policing models.
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