While Surrey still intends to keep the RCMP, a final decision on the hotly-contested police transition has been stalled by what Mayor Brenda Locke is calling an “untenable” non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
In order to receive the full, unredacted provincial report recommending the municipality bring back the Surrey Police Service (SPS) as its police force of jurisdiction, anyone who wants to read it must sign an NDA. The municipality, however, has rejected the wording of the document provided by the B.C. government’s legal team.
“The original non-disclosure agreement was absolutely untenable for the city and was something we would not consider,” Locke explained in a Tuesday interview.
“We want this process to be transparent. That is trumping a lot of what we’re doing and saying, and I’m sure that the provincial government also wants to see a transparent process, so that’s one of the challenges.”
According to Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth, the unredacted report — more than 500 pages long — contains sensitive information on RCMP staffing levels in “literally every community around the province.”
“That’s confidential information that cannot get into the hands of criminals, for example,” he said in an interview. “If they sign the disclosure agreement today they’d get the report today.”
Both Farnworth and Locke said their legal teams are working on the wording of a new NDA. Farnworth said he doesn’t know why the process is taking so long or what the city’s particular concerns were with the NDA as written.
“All we need really is the names of the people who would receive it and their signatures. We were ready to give it to them a week ago, today.”
On April 28, Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth released the government’s much-anticipated take on Surrey’s policing debacle. Citing a lack of RCMP officers and recruiting challenges throughout the province, he recommended Surrey’s mayor and council return to their predecessor’s plan and complete the transition to a municipal police force.
Farnworth said B.C. would support the costs of the SPS transition, estimated to be roughly $235 million, plus $30 million more per year than the RCMP would cost.
Locke has previously dismissed that offer, claiming there’s no paper evidence it exists, such as Treasury Board approval or a detailed outline of the finances. Farnworth has disputed her claim and said the province has been “very upfront” about its intentions.
The City of Surrey, meanwhile, has retained lawyer and former RCMP deputy commissioner Peter German to help it navigate the path forward.
“I think it’s absolutely the RCMP are staying in the City of Surrey, there’s no doubt about that,” Locke said Tuesday.
City staff is currently reviewing the redacted provincial report and completing an operational and financial feasibility study. The mayor has said that process could take a month or more.
A recommendation on the police transition from B.C.’s director of police services said the SPS would need to hire at least 400 more officers to meet Surrey’s policing needs. The province’s Policing and Security Branch also estimated it could take three years for the SPS to hire enough officers to act as a “standalone” police force, without destabilizing policing services in the city.
By contrast, the recommendation states that the RCMP needs a minimum of 734 officers to meet Surrey’s needs, and if it remains the police of jurisdiction, will need to hire at least 161 additional officers. Surrey RCMP has lost about 140 members since the SPS kicked off.
In its submissions to the provincial government, the recommendation said the municipality failed to include sufficient detail on how the SPS would be dissolved and what the human resources impact would be, leading the director of police services to conclude that it likely underestimated the costs of a complete reversal to keep the RCMP.
The report to Farnworth also found that the City of Surrey did not identify strategies to make sure the SPS remained intact as it completed its transition back to the RCMP, meaning that if SPS officers quit or took leave, it could leave a problematic void in policing services in Surrey.
- Alberta to overhaul municipal rules to include sweeping new powers, municipal political parties
- Grocery code: How Ottawa has tried to get Loblaw, Walmart on board
- Military judges don’t have divided loyalties, Canada’s top court rules
- Canada, U.S., U.K. lay additional sanctions on Iran over attack on Israel
Comments