Slow progress in B.C. police modernization with no plans for provincial or regional forces

One year since an all-party committee presented the B.C. government with a report recommending the formation of a provincial police force among other significant changes, progress has been slow on what has been widely described a monumental change in addressing public safety. 

Members of the New Democrats, then-Liberal Party, and a BC Green MLAs, heard from hundreds of individuals and agencies advocating for improvements to governance, accountability, training, and police culture in order to improve consistency, address systemic racism, and mental health-driven calls for service – but nothing has been implemented or even announced since then.

“There will be legislation coming this fall” said Solicitor General and Public Safety Minister, Mike Farnworth. “It will be a phased approach so the initial phase will be dealing with governance and oversight, for example, which is one of the key areas that local governments and municipal police forces, were particularly concerned about.”

The “Transforming Policing and Community Safety in British Columbia” report emphasized the broad-based support for a provincial police force to replace the RCMP, which handles policing for nearly all towns and unincorporated areas and many cities in the province, but Farnworth reiterated that it’s not on the table and neither is amalgamating Metro Vancouver or the Capital Region. 

“There are no plans at this point to do regionalization,” he said. “It's certainly not going to be in this fall's legislation.” https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-spending-nearly-500m-on-public-safety-1.6293186

INSIGHT FROM A FORMER JUDGE AND CABINET MINISTER

Former Attorney General and B.C. Supreme Court justice, Wally Oppal, has been a long-time advocate for a provincial police force since there’s little input and influence municipal governments have on RCMP detachments providing public safety for their communities. He also acknowledged how difficult it is to modernize policing and implement consistent standards and policies across the province, even without a complete overhaul of the badge.

“It’s a complex area, so I’m prepared to give the province a lot of slack in what they’re doing, because in a way they’re correcting some of the things that haven’t been done in the past 30 or 40 years,” he said in a one-on-one interview with CTV News.

“This is very complex, and that’s why I think that any changes on reform have to include local communities.”

He added that addressing systemic racism, involving Indigenous communities, and seriously addressing accountability and governance issues have to go hand-in-hand with improvements to front-line training.

“We need police officers who are familiar with mental illness so that if you have a volatile situation a police officer will engage in a dialogue with a person and see if they can deescalate the situation,” said Oppal, who’s written numerous reports on policing, as well as presiding over high-profile inquests.

“Focusing more on training police officers who understand mental illness, who understand poverty, who understand disenfranchised people. That’s what we dealt with when we did the Pickton inquiry.”

BC MUNICIPALITIES WEIGH IN

The Union of BC Municipalities, which represents 188 cities, towns, hamlets and other communities in the province, had significant input into last year’s report and agrees with Oppal that there’s considerable work going on behind the scenes. 

“We appreciate the province is moving forward with what they see as doable and that which isn't, let's put it aside and do what we can do,” said UBCM president and Whistler city councillor, Jen Ford. “There is things moving along but things move slowly and I think it's a constantly moving goal as well.”

She pointed out public safety concerns aren’t just an urban issue and that the crises of mental health and toxic drugs are affecting all corners of the province, so there has been “a tremendous amount of work” done already, with more in the works.

“This is something our members have been asking for for a long time,” said Ford. “The reform to the policing act is something that's been desperately needed due to the nature of policing having changed dramatically.”