Sam Cooper (Vancouver Province) – Citizens have flooded the B.C. government with calls to boot the RCMP in favour of an in-house force, according to documents obtained by The Province under the Freedom of Information Act.
The government and the RCMP are negotiating the provincial policing contract, which is due to expire in 2012. In 2009 and 2010, citizens vented their rage against the Mounties with several hundred pages worth of letters to former Solicitor General Kash Heed.
In Dec. 2009, one man wrote: “At the present time the B.C. government has no control over RCMP members . . . As a retired member of the RCMP . . . it is my opinion that B.C. should go back to their original BC Provincial Police Service . . . personnel matters could be dealt with swiftly and the bad actors discharged.”
In January 2010, another former officer wrote: “I implore you to not renew this contract and move toward the development of a provincial police force as in Ontario and other provinces.
“The taser event at Vancouver airport, and the scandalous affair of a senior Mountie with a witness in the case of the Surrey Six, are the last straws for me. The RCMP must be gone.”
Another person wrote: “As a taxpayer I’m . . . demanding that you . . . discharge the RCMP and begin now to reform the BC Provincial Police.”
Dr. Robert Gordon, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University and advocate of police reform in B.C., told The Province there is “widespread dissatisfaction” across B.C. with “the shenanigans that have come with the RCMP over the last three years.”
Gordon has worked closely with Heed on pressing for police reform in B.C., and says the pair will meet this week with another reform advocate, former Vancouver police chief Robert Stewart, to strategize.
The three will push for disclosure of the RCMP’s use of taxpayer dollars in B.C., ask for a high-level government inquiry into the current “malaise in provincial policing” and pressure for the inclusion of short-term escape clauses in the expected contract with the RCMP.
Gordon said it now appears all but certain that the government will renew the RCMP’s services — but it could have been different.
Heed commissioned an audit trying to pin down how much the RCMP actually receives from B.C. and how they spend the money, and what it would cost to roll out a B.C. force, Gordon said. But Gordon says he understands the work in the report “was not followed up on,” after Heed resigned from his office in April 2010 while under an RCMP investigation into alleged election act violations.
A freedom of information request to access the RCMP services audit was turned down by government officials, citing the ongoing contract negotiations.
New Solicitor-General Mike de Jong is expected to review a draft version for a new RCMP contract this fall, with a final draft hoped to be signed by December, Gordon says.
“Everything de Jong is saying indicates that [the government] is not even considering a B.C. police force,” Gordon said.
Gordon criticized the “backroom dealing” in the current contract renewal process. Requests for interviews with Heed and de Jong were not granted.
In response to dozens of letters begging the government to axe the RCMP the Solicitor General’s office replied with form responses, including the point that “British Columbia would lose the 30 per cent contribution that the federal government pays toward the overall cost of the existing provincial police force.”
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