Parking a ‘ hot-button issue’ for two RCMP detachments
Long battles in victoria, whistler end with labour board decision
“Parking is a hot-button issue .” So begin two labour decisions ending one- to three- year fights between RCMP members and management about changes to free parking rules in two different detachments in British Columbia.
In 2019, RCMP brass and the National Police Federation ( NPF), the police members’ brand new union, called upon the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Employment Board to settle a single question: were changes by management to free parking availability for detachments in Whistler and Victoria essentially anti-union pressure?
At the time of the changes, RCMP members across the country were in the process of unionizing. In Canada, as soon as a potential union applies for certification, a freeze period begins during which employers are prohibited from enacting changes to employees’ working conditions that wouldn’t be considered “business as usual.”
Ultimately, the board decided the changes in Victoria and Whistler did not fall under the freeze provisions and dismissed the two complaints.
But the panellist who heard the two complaints, David Orfald, explained in great detail how much of a time- and resource- consuming issue parking can be for the RCMP, particularly in Victoria.
“For those who must drive to work, the question of where one can park, and what one must pay to park there, can be of significant importance,” Orfald began in his two June decisions published online recently.
“That is clearly the case for some of the newly certified regular members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).”
At the RCMP’S Island District Headquarters ( IDHQ), headquartered in Victoria, employees have had to “scramble” for parking for years. Literally.
“As the IDHQ parking lot was not nearly large enough to accommodate every vehicle, individuals working at IDHQ had to compete for parking spots in the firstcome, first-parked system referred to locally as scramble parking,” the board member wrote.
Those who weren’t lucky enough to find a spot in the parking lot during the day were then forced to park in surrounding streets, where free parking was limited to two hours. If they didn’t move their car after that, they risked being ticketed by Victoria bylaw officers, the decision explains.
Employees were so frustrated that when a new Chief Superintendent Sean Sullivan began at IDHQ in 2017, he testified during a March 2020 hearing that he “quickly learned about the problems with the parking situation.”
In some cases, employees parked in the street would keep an eye out their windows to see if a parking lot spot freed up when a police car went out on patrol. When that happened, they would rush to their cars and go take the newly empty spot.
But that led to another issue for the RCMP, Sullivan testified back in March.
When the police cars would come back, there would sometimes be no more room left in the parking lot. So Mounties would park it in the streets, which would occasionally lead Victoria bylaw officers to ticket the taxpayer-funded vehicles if they sat dormant for more than two hours.
To address the growing number of parking issues in his detachment, Sullivan create the EPIC — also known as the IDHQ Employee Parking Integration Committee — in February 2018.
For seven months, the EPIC worked at finding parking solutions. For example, the committee surveyed employees, which “generated several pages of employee comments and concern.”
EPIC also looked at renting space in other parking lots, as well as improving bike, motorcycle and transit access to the building, or even getting an exemption from tickets with the City of Victoria.
All “to no avail”, Sullivan testified. The EPIC “hit a wall.”
Ultimately, RCMP brass devised a new parking plan in the spring on 2019 that ensured all police cars had a parking spot in the lot, but ultimately reducing the number of free spaces available to employees.
“Sullivan testified that there had been many negative reactions to the new plan and that as a result, a number of concessions were made,” the decision reads.
But though the changes represented a change to working conditions during a unionization process, Orfald decided that the process was business as usual.
“Employees did not enjoy a clear right to free parking in the IDHQ lot before the freeze took effect. This is underlined by the very name of the arrangement: scramble parking,” Orfald wrote.
“Before the freeze, employees had to jockey for limited parking spots in the morning and as the day proceeded. After the freeze, this situation persists, with only a few more constraints.”
At the Whistler RCMP detachment, parking issues began during the 2010 Olympics, when parking became an increasingly hot commodity for the growing resort town.
For years, Whistler Mounties were allowed to park for free in leftover spaces in municipal lots adjacent to their office building.
But after the Olympics, most of those lots became paid parking as the municipality was facing an growing crunch in public parking. But it took years for municipal authorities to realize that RCMP employees were still parking in some lots for free.
In 2017, expressing his “surprise” at the arrangement, Whistler’s general manager Norm Mcphail announced to local RCMP brass that the free ride was over and that Mounties would henceforth need to pay for parking.
After some attempts at pushback, the RCMP passed the message on to employees, who saw it as an anti-union tactic since the NPF has just applied for certification.
But since the decision wasn’t the employers’, but rather the municipality’s, that argument simply does not hold water, Orfald decided.
“It is clear that the members had developed an expectation that free parking was a part of their terms and conditions of employment. Was it therefore reasonable for them to expect that it would continue? I am not convinced it was,” Orfald explained in his second decision.
“The evidence is clear that the parking situation in Whistler became more and more challenging, starting with the Olympics and continuing as the Village grew. In short, parking was a hot-button issue not only for the members but also for the community.”