Alberta will retain RCMP through 2032

Peter O’Neil, EdmontonJournal.comAugust 18, 2011
 OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government will announce Friday it has agreed to extend Alberta’s RCMP services to 2032.  There has been sporadic talk in political circles for years about the possibility that Alberta would cut the RCMP loose and join Ontario and Quebec as the only provinces with their own police forces.  The announcement of the 20-year extension beyond the 2012 expiry date of the last agreement — to be made in Edmonton by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and Alberta Solicitor General Frank Oberle — will formally put an end to that debate.  The deal will continue with the current cost-sharing arrangement in which Alberta covers 70 per cent of the force’s costs, while Ottawa picks up the rest.  Oberle said in March that he expected the final agreement would be consistent with the recommendations of a 2007 report by the KPMG auditing firm, which proposed mechanisms to make the force to be more accountable to the Alberta government. “Alberta did a pretty good job of negotiating what was in that KPMG report,” Oberle said at the time.  An official told The Journal Thursday that the province did negotiate greater accountability mechanisms to ensure that Alberta’s priorities and objectives are respected. “We believe it is a fair deal for both sides.”  The Alberta government, in a dire financial position during the Great Depression, accepted Ottawa’s offer to replace the provincial police force with the lower-cost RCMP in 1932.  There have been calls since then to re-create the Alberta provincial police, but a provincial government study in 2003 concluded that it would be too expensive.  Creating a provincial police force was part of the well-known “firewall” letter signed in 2001 by Harper and PC leadership candidate Ted Morton. Morton made getting rid of the RCMP a prominent plank of his 2006 leadership platform, but has not emphasized the issue so far in the current race.  Oberle noted in March that Ottawa’s contribution of 30-per-cent of RCMP costs was more than enough to justify sticking with the status quo.  “That, right there, effectively rules out fielding our own provincial police force,” he said.