What’s growing in rural Alberta? ‘Rampant’ crime, residents say

Mabel Hamilton used to talk to her neighbours about the weather. Now, conversations are all about local crime.

Her Innisfail-area home has been robbed twice over the past year, and two trucks stolen. Her dogs were able to thwart another pair of attempted robberies, scaring off the culprits as they tried to break in.

Hamilton and her husband are ranchers. They’ve been home each time.

“To be that bold — that’s the part that amazes me. We’re in the barn and they’re trying to get into our house,” Hamilton said Monday.

She was one of more than 100 rural Albertans who descended on the legislature to raise their concerns about what Hamilton called “rampant” crime in their communities.

Allan Erickson was another. He and his wife live just outside Spruce View, around 50 km southwest of Red Deer.

Their home was robbed twice within three days this summer.

Like Hamilton, Erickson said the constant topic of conversation in the coffee shop and at work these days is crime — who was broken into, whose vehicle was stolen.

“We’re having a hard time understanding what’s being done about it. It’s just not working. It’s epidemic proportions,” Erickson said.

With the legislature gallery packed with folks like Hamilton and Erickson, United Conservative Party members rose one after another in the House to lob questions about rural crime at acting justice minister Marlin Schmidt (Kathleen Ganley is on maternity leave).

His government takes the issue seriously, Schmidt replied, and sinks $500 million each year into frontline policing services.

But Erickson and Hamilton are both frustrated — a seemingly shared emotion among crime victims in the gallery Monday, who often shook their heads, brows furrowed, as questions were answered.

They want to see solutions — more effective policing, a stronger justice system, better co-operation between provincial, federal and county governments.

“You can’t just say, ‘We threw money at it and that’s going to fix it.’ You have to follow through and truly understand what’s going through with the system,” Hamilton said.

The UCP pushed for an emergency debate Monday, saying crime rates in some rural Alberta communities have jumped by more than 250 per cent since 2011.

Speaker Robert Wanner overruled the motion, saying the topic, though important, didn’t fit the criteria for an emergency debate.