The justice minister said its deployment model \u0027shows how an Alberta police service\u0027 could make the province safer and bring officers closer to communities
The government has pitched the idea of a provincial police force as a cost-savings initiative, a strategy to tackle high rates of rural crime and a way to gain some more independence from Ottawa.The proposal has been contentious: The opposition New Democrats have panned the idea; the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, an association representing 69 districts and municipalities, have formally opposed the idea, saying it will increase costs to local governments.
“The recommended deployment model depends on rebalancing resources from larger centres and reallocating them to rural, remote, and Indigenous Communities,” the report says.Article content Three urban hubs would “function as regional headquarters,” and would house forensic services and other investigative jobs performed by civilian staff. It amounts to, the government says, a decentralization of resources away from major urban centres and to more sparsely populated parts of the province.
Since they formed government in 2019, the United Conservatives have been studying the feasibility of an Alberta Provincial Police Service , similar to the Ontario Provincial Police or the Sûreté du Québec. It’s an idea that’s being studied elsewhere, too: Saskatchewan and British Columbia have both considered the idea of replacing the RCMP; in B.C., an all-party committee suggested the province create its own police force.
Were the province to ditch the RCMP — a proposal that the National Police Federation, the union representing Mounties, is strongly fighting — there would be a number of tangible changes to frontline policing, largely in small communities and rural areas, as major cities such as Edmonton, Calgary and Lethbridge are served by municipal police forces.Article content
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