City of Surrey refuses to pay wages of new police recruits

The City of Surrey is refusing to pay owed wages to 10 new recruits with the Surrey Police Service.

Surrey said it has good reason for withholding the wages, but the Surrey Police Union isn’t buying it.

“We’re shocked and we’re disappointed,” said Ryan Buhrig, a spokesperson for the union.

He explained that in an unprecedented move, the union ended up writing cheques Thursday to cover what’s owed to the officers.

In a letter dated Dec. 19, the city informed the SPS of its decision.

“Days before Christmas, the Surrey Police Union was told that the City of Surrey refused to add these new recruits into their payroll system. As a result, there was no way to pay these recruits or provide them with medical benefits,” Buhrig explained.

But the city said the SPS was grossly over its budget and had been advised not to incur additional costs.

“The Surrey Police Service had a budget of $48.7 million for 2023 and they’ve exceeded it by about $23 million, and it’s now in the area of $75 million,” said Peter German, an advisor to the city.

“My understanding from the reporting is that they have now gone ahead and hired up to 10 more officers despite being advised by the City they are well over budget,” he explained.

But Buhrig said the recruits had already been offered jobs before the city sent its letter. He called it nothing more than a tactic by Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke to try to delay the transition away from the RCMP.

“We understand the mayor is frustrated with the policing transition, but to put brand new police recruits, who quit their jobs, who have families and who just want to serve their community, to put them in the crossfires is unacceptable,” he said.

When asked, Premier David Eby weighed in on the controversy, and called the situation “incredibly frustrating.”

“I understand the desire of the mayor to spend taxpayer money on advertising, on leaflets, on billboards, on lawyers to fight this (transition),” the premier said.

“The challenge obviously is these are folks who are willing to go out and do the difficult work of policing in our communities, and they need to get paid … for Pete’s sake, those police officers need to get paid and the city should be paying them,” he said.

Eby said he would not allow public safety to be compromised for a political campaign.

CTV News requested to speak to Locke, but was told German would be responding to media inquiries. He said this is a budget issue.

“Any homemaker and citizen realizes you can’t spend money you don’t have. And when you talk about $23 million over budget, that is huge,” he said.

The SPS would not comment on the matter.

Meanwhile, the union said it's now working with the SPS and the province to figure out how the new recruits, who are currently in training at the Justice Institute, will get paid again in two weeks.