Burnaby Coun. Nick Volkow has had enough of RCMP management in Ottawa and the new 20-year policing contract the Province of B.C. recently signed.
While municipalities have until the end of April to sign off on the deal - Surrey, with the largest RCMP detachment in Canada, signed off on their deal on April 2 - Burnaby councillors like Volkow won't be voting on the deal until later this month.
Volkow doesn't mince any words with how he's leaning.
"I'm not inclined to support a 20year deal," said Volkow. "It's probably too late to do anything right now, but I'm more inclined to give our two years' notice now that we want out of the deal."
Volkow said the last straw for him was learning last week that Ottawa has planned for seven separate pay increases for RCMP members over the next three years.
The decision was made by the Treasury Board, without consultation with municipalities, and included in last month's federal budget.
Municipalities were told about the raises on April 4 - two weeks after B.C. signed a 20-year deal to keep the RCMP, after threatening earlier to pull out and create its own force.
"I mean no disrespect to the local RCMP members who work here and who I believe do a great job," said Volkow. "But I have a big problem with the RCMP management types in Ottawa, 40 million miles away, who are showing us such disrespect.
"Speaking for myself, I think the RCMP doesn't want to be in municipal policing, and they just don't have the balls or the cojones to get out by themselves. - They want to force people to force them out. This is a matter of disrespect."
Volkow was also critical of Langley City Mayor Peter Fassbender, who has been on the negotiating team for an RCMP contract for the past four years.
"I don't know if Peter Fassbender and his team had their eyes open because it looks like they got suckered," said Volkow.
Fassbender has sent a letter, on behalf of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, to federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, asking the federal government to provide all the cost impacts - both increases and decreases - of the pay raises for the next three years as soon as possible to clarify the situation.
The letter argues the move could have a "major impact on all local government elected officials."
"This development, I can assure you, will create a significant backlash from local governments and their citizens," Fassbender wrote. "As you know, we have all worked hard, particularly in the later stages of the negotiations, to build a climate of true partnership and cooperation. - We now face the prospect of going to our municipal councils to request additional funding to cover these new costs."
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts told The Vancouver Sun that the pay raises could potentially cost her city $6 million to $8 million more in extra costs.
"This is not an issue as to whether the RCMP get a raise or not," Watts said. "The piece here is there was no consultation, no input. All of a sudden it was passed by Treasury Board, and here's your bill. Whether there's offsetting or other additional costs, we don't know. Everyone was blindsided by this."
SFU criminologist Robert Gordon said he thinks Volkow's comments are indicative of the level of posturing going on at the municipal level as cities decide when and how to ratify the 20-year deal.
"It's very peculiar that this has all come up now," said Gordon. "This is the stuff that you would have thought would have been all settled before the province signed the deal. - Now we're hearing about how the province may have misled the municipalities, the municipalities may have been misled by the feds, or the municipal representatives have faulty recollections about what happened during negotiations. - There may be some posturing going on."
Gordon said he's intrigued by Volkow's comments, but in reality, even if Burnaby took the extreme step of giving two years' notice of opting out of the deal, that's not enough time to get a new police force set up.
"It would take three years minimum to set up a separate Burnaby police force," said Gordon.
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