The union representing RCMP officers in B.C. is calling for the province to fund 300 new rural officers, saying the number of authorized positions in the provincial police force hasn’t changed since 2012, despite massive population growth.
That is the number of new officers needed just to keep the per capita ratio of officers equal to what it was 13 years ago, Chris Voller said in remarks to reporters at the B.C. legislature on Wednesday, Feb. 25. Voller is a Pacific and north region board member for the National Police Federation, the union representing RCMP officers.
“And that would be only if you’re satisfied with what you had for a policing standard at that time,” he said.
Another 300 officers would cost $250 million over three years, the union says.
Since 2012, the RCMP has had 2,602 authorized “provincial” positions. These officers serve communities with populations under 5,000, which don’t have their own municipal police forces. Tumbler Ridge, the site of a recent school shooting, is an example of one of these small communities.
While Voller said it is clear the responding officers did “an amazing job,” he said it was “very fortunate” they were just 800 metres from the scene of the shootings.
“The foundation of a plan should never be luck,” he said.
In 2023, the province provided a $230 million, three-year funding increase to pay for 256 provincial RCMP officers. But the union says this money only takes the force back up to full strength after successive budgets had left hundreds of spots unfunded.
“The provincial component of the Mounties has not added an extra police officer on the road, not one extra police officer, since 2012,” B.C. Conservative MLA Macklin McCall told reporters after bringing the issue up in question period on Wednesday.
This is not new information for the B.C. government — the police union had presented its funding request to a legislative committee last year, urging the province to pay for the extra officers in this year’s budget.
Asked about the need for more officers on Thursday, Public Safety Minister Nina Krieger called the $230 million a “historic” investment and said the province is filling vacancies “with a priority for rural and remote communities.”
Voller heard the minister say something similar to this in response to McCall’s question in the legislature.
“That’s false in my opinion,” he said. “They are positions that we already had in 2012, that were frozen, removed from us, and then given back to us.”
Ultimately, Voller simply wants the ratio of population to officers to return to what it was before 2012. This, he said, takes investment.
“I appreciate the competing priorities of this government, of the multiple ministries within it,” he said. “But I think we also need to look at the fact that public safety is crucial.”