Coaldale gets $550K policing-costs grant in a swipe at Ottawa
Alberta’s public safety and emergency services minister announced Friday a $550,000 annual grant from the province to the town of Coaldale to help with its policing costs, taking aim at the federal government as he did so.
Coaldale, a town of roughly 9,000 residents 20 kilometres east of Lethbridge, has been policed by the RCMP under a municipal policing agreement with Public Safety Canada since 2016.
“They are the only municipality in Canada that is required to pay 100 per cent of the cost of the RCMP contract, and this despite numerous outreach attempts by the provincial government, the Town of Coaldale,” Mike Ellis said during a news conference Friday morning in Coaldale.
As a result, Coaldale ratepayers have been saddled with more than $4 million in extra costs, he added.
“This is unacceptable and completely unfair,” said Ellis. “Albertans deserve to feel protected in their communities and deserve equal treatment when it comes to police service funding.”
In similar-sized towns across Canada, the federal government provides a 30 per cent subsidy to communities with municipal RCMP contracts, and the provincial grant was provided to Coaldale in response to the federal government’s refusal to do so, the province said in a Friday news release.
The province says the grant will be adjusted yearly as needed to keep it at 30 per cent of the town’s policing costs.
While Ellis said the province will continue to lobby Ottawa for Coaldale police funding, the minister suggested this refusal is an indication of the federal government’s lack of commitment to have the RCMP police Canadian communities in the future.
“As I have previously stated, this is also another signal check from Public Safety Canada that they may not wish to continue with contract policing services in Canada.”
In March, Alberta’s UCP government tabled the Public Safety Statutes Amendment Act 2024, which would update legislation to form “an independent agency police service” to perform some roles the Alberta Sheriffs have taken on in recent years. But Ellis said when the legislation was introduced that the new police service was not designed to replace the RCMP.
Coaldale Mayor Jack Van Rijn said Friday that efforts to engage the federal government on the issue of police funding have fallen on deaf ears.
When Coaldale entered into an RCMP contract with Public Safety Canada, the municipality was told that it would receive funding at the same rate as every other municipality its size across the country, Van Rijn said.
“Unfortunately, this never happened,” said Van Rijn, before he also took aim at the Liberals. “In 2015, a new government came to power in Ottawa, and since then Coaldale has been the only municipality … under 15,000 in all of Canada that has had to pay for RCMP policing at a 100 per cent of the cost.”
Coaldale was denied federal police funding after Public Safety Canada created in 1992 the New Entrants Guideline, which ended the federal subsidy for communities that had never been policed by the RCMP, says the province.
RCMP did previously police the town, from 1905-1916 and from 1932-1953, when the municipality was under the jurisdiction of a provincial police service.