Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke holds a redacted police transition report from the provincial government during a news conference, in Surrey, B.C., on April 28. The B.C. government is recommending the City of Surrey continue its transition to the Surrey Police Service, despite the wishes of the new council to revert to the RCMP.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The mayor of Surrey and B.C.’s Solicitor-General sharply attacked each other Monday, each accusing the other of obstructionist behaviour as the two levels of government brawl over how the city will be policed.
Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor-General Mike Farnworth issued a statement Monday morning saying Surrey had not yet sent in the 400-page report that was its justification for voting to stay with the RCMP, instead of continuing with a transition to a municipal police force.
“It is critical that I receive this report. Now is not the time to play games. The safety of people in Surrey is too important.’’
Hours later, Mayor Brenda Locke held a news conference where she accused the minister of bullying, fear-mongering, and treating negotiations with her differently because she is a woman.
“I’ve worked in politics for a long time, I’ve worked in the liquor industry for a long time. I have never ever used the gender card. But in this case, I absolutely think there is misogyny going on,” said Ms. Locke, who also said the protracted battle between her city and Mr. Farnworth is “embarrassing” and said it was “fear-mongering” to suggest there were public safety issues in the city.
Surrey’s unprecedented mess, which is being closely watched by cities and provinces across the country considering a similar transition, started 4½ years ago when Doug McCallum was elected mayor on a promise to move to a municipal police force.
Ms. Locke won the mayor’s job in a five-way race last October with the clearest position among the candidates to transition away from the Surrey Police Service, which has hired about 350 people in the past two years, and back to the RCMP.
B.C. urges Surrey to proceed with local police force and end city’s relationship with RCMP
On Monday, Ms. Locke insisted her staff has been working hard to get its internal report on the shift to the ministry, but were waiting for provincial officials to sign the needed non-disclosure agreements. She also said the Solicitor-General and Premier have both refused to speak with her since her council voted in a private meeting last Thursday to stay with the RCMP, in spite of her efforts to contact them.
“It’s embarrassing,” said Ms. Locke, who was an MLA from 2001 to 2005 with the BC Liberals.
“It is also clear to me that the Solicitor-General has an option on the police force that he wants to see and until he gets his way, he will continue to put up roadblocks and change the goalposts every step of that way and that’s what he did again today,” she said.
She said that, contrary to what Mr. Farnworth has been saying, keeping the RCMP won’t destabilize other RCMP police forces in the province by hiring people away from them.
Ms. Locke claimed the RCMP will only need to hire about 160 new officers to get back up to full force, which can be easily done by getting its usual annual complement of 75 new officers a year from the country’s training facility in Regina. The Surrey Police Service, on the other hand, still needs to hire 550 or 600 new officers and they’ll have to poach from many other cities around B.C. to get that.
Her numbers contradicted numbers that Mr. Farnworth gave in his news conference last week, indicating that each force now has about 350 officers.
In response to repeated questions from reporters, Ms. Locke said the city has no plan about what to do if the province orders it to continue the transition to the Surrey Police Service. She frequently insisted the city has the absolute right to choose its own service. However, all cities in Canada are governed by provincial legislation and they only have the powers that provinces choose to give them.
The province has overridden council policing decisions in the past, most recently in Vancouver two years ago, when the city was ordered to provide another $5-million to the police department, after council had voted to freeze its budget.
Ms. Locke said her city’s legal department is looking at various possibilities but she didn’t say whether it would be willing to go to court against the province.
Despite the fracas, Ms. Locke insisted a couple of times in the news conference that there is no problem with public safety in Surrey.
Frances Bula