Crime, public safety dominate spicy question period at B.C. legislature

Simmering tensions over crime and public safety in British Columbia boiled over at the provincial legislature Tuesday, where question period was dominated by fiery exchanges over the province’s approach to recent high profile violence.

The newly-renamed BC United opposition zeroed in on mounting public concerns about the issue, and accused the governing NDP of doing little to address it.

“The reality is this government’s soft on crime policies go beyond the courtroom, it’s your abject failure to deal with the root causes of crime, your failure to deal with mental health and addictions, social issues. and adding more police to the problem is like putting a band-aid on a cancer,” said BC United mental health and addictions critic Elenore Sturko in one testy exchange with the province’s public safety minister.

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“On this side of the house we know it is about the root causes of crime, which is why we have been taking actions to undo the neglect, the negligence of that side of the house,” Mike Farnworth fired back.

While overall crime in British Columbia is down, violent crime has increased — along with public attention to the issue.

That focus is only growing in the wake of a string of high profile random attacks, including recent incidents on transit like the fatal stabbing of a 17-year-old on a Surrey bus.

Farnworth defended the province’s approach, saying B.C. continues to work with the federal government to try and address problems with the bail system under the Criminal Code of Canada.

The minister wants to see the “reverse onus” principle, which requires an accused person to show why they should be granted bail, expanded to cover offences involving knives, bear spray and other weapons and to cover suspects with a history of violence.

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The province is also looking to expand the number of officers on the street — while the opposition points to a disproportionate shortage of RCMP officers in the province.

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About eight per cent of RCMP positions in the province remain unfilled, compared to 4.4 per cent elsewhere in the country.

“One of the ways in which the police here are forced to make up for the failure to adequately fund them is they are not able to fill provincial positions,” Sturko said following the question period debate.

“It’s all well and good to say Depot (the RCMP federal training facility) does not send enough, but they only send what you request. If you are not requesting officers to fill vacancies, they don’t just send people hoping you are going to fill a position — so its an absolute excuse, a smokescreen that they aren’t able to fill these positions.”

Farnworth, for his part, maintained that his government had committed funding to fill all estimated 277 vacancies in RCMP policing at the provincial level.

But he said the RCMP only turns out about 900 officers from Depot every year, with detachments across the country competing for those Mounties.

“It’s the largest investment in policing in the history of this province,” he said.

“The recruitment challenge is something that has been a problem for the RCMP across this country for a very long time.”

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Brian Sauvé, president of the National Police Federation which represents RCMP officers, said he was optimistic that B.C.’s NDP government had invested heavily in “unfreezing” funding for positions that have been frozen for the past decade, but that officers on the ground were still trying to do too much without enough resources.

“Premier (David) Eby has invested money to unlock a number of jobs, so that is a definite positive,” he said.

“I’m always worried about our members that are working with fewer resources than they should have available to them — it puts their safety at risk. But no, I know they do it really well and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for them.”

Sauvé also pointed to encouraging changes within the RCMP aimed at boosting recruiting and deployment — including new agreements that would allow applicants from B.C. to return to the province to work once they complete training — along with a boost in RCMP pay that brings it closer to municipal forces.

With knife and gun violence making fresh headlines Tuesday and no quick fix on the horizon, however, the issue of crime and public safety appears set to remain at centre stage in Victoria — and likely to dominate debate again when the legislature sits on Wednesday.