An NDP clouded by its big-city perspective fails rural Albertans went it opposes a provincial police agency, Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland MLA Shane Getson said recently.
In the aftermath of the spring sitting, Getson said opposition MLAs unfairly conflate police agency legislation with separatism. Comments from the NDP were “just dripping with condescension” during the Bill 49 debate, he said.
Crime and RCMP shortages in rural Alberta result in long response times, continual property loss and an erosion of families’ sense of security, said Getson.
The NDP is “talking down to anybody out in rural Alberta who would have concerns, basically saying they're pro-sovereignty, firewall, Free Alberta wingnuts, simply because they want to have somebody there to help them out when a call is taken.”
But Getson is misrepresenting the NDP, one target of this anger said in a statement emailed to The Gazette. Samir Kayande called rural crime “a heartbreaking problem in Alberta, a problem for which this UCP government has no solution.”
Kayande, the member for Calgary-Elbow, said that the UCP “will say anything to try and distract from the fact that they’re not listening to Albertans. Albertans have been clear: they don’t want a provincial police force. They want proven solutions to make communities safer.
“They want access to health care. They want help with the rising cost of living. They want real investment in education.”
Continued Kayande, the NDP’s chair of analytics: “But instead of tackling the issues people are facing, the UCP spent the spring session peddling separatism, cutting essential services and cramming through anti-democratic legislation.”
At least three surveys in recent years found that Albertans are mostly against a provincial police agency, especially as a replacement for the RCMP. One survey indicated that support of a new agency was just nine per cent.
Another, this one skewed towards rural Albertans, found that 23 per cent of online respondents in February 2023 favoured a provincial service. Sponsored by the Rural Municipalities of Alberta and the University of Lethbridge’s Prentice Institute, the survey also found that 54 per cent of respondents outright disagreed with the idea.
Margins of error are typically not provided for online surveys. A release from the university said the survey intentionally oversampled rural Alberta and that participants numbered 1,470.
Bill 49, the Public Safety and Emergency Services Statutes Amendment Act 2025, is one of a series of bills introduced in the current session that paves the way for a new police agency. The idea builds upon existing Alberta Sheriffs, whose roles have continued to expand to complement the RCMP and other policing organizations.
The province wants rural communities to be able to choose the new agency over the RCMP, but there’s been no push to make the option mandatory.
A new Police Act regulation is needed to create an agency. A police review commission is expected to come into being in December.
The act amends four pieces of legislation, including the Police Act. It specifies that the agency be a Crown corporation operationally independent from the Alberta government, which would not be allowed to give the corporation specific orders.
Police in Canada with mostly rural jurisdictions reported disproportionately higher crime rates than urban police in 2021, according to Statistics Canada. Although the jurisdictions served 15 per cent of the provinces’ populations, they reported 24 per cent of violent crimes, 18 per cent of property crimes, 30 per cent of Criminal Code traffic offences and 23 per cent of other Criminal Code violations.
The rural-urban gap is more pronounced using another StatsCan measure, the Crime Severity Index. The CSI meshes seriousness with volume — the bigger the number, the worse the problem. The overall CSI number in rural areas was 91.9 in 2021, compared with 69.3 in urban areas.
For violent crime, virtually no rural-urban gap existed in 2011 — 84.8 rural, 84.9 urban. But by 2021 the CSI for violent crime was 124.1 rural, 85.2 urban.
Said Getson: “A lot of the folks in my constituency have these issues; it's not the first time they've been broken into or had property stolen. It's upwards of that, five or six times. So that's why I'm speaking on this.”
The RCMP said in published reports in September that it had 1,772 police officer positions in Alberta under contract with the province. Of those, 306 or 17 per cent were vacant, and 124 of the vacancies were for leave or sickness.
Getson said that the RCMP vacancy rate can be upwards of 20 to 30 per cent, depending on the detachment.
“Everybody loves the RCMP. There's no question,” he said. “They work as hard as they can, they do what they can.”
But the province has a responsibility to get rural residents out of harm’s way, regardless of RCMP recruitment issues. And a provincial agency will be an attractive choice for potential recruits, he maintained.
Calling a provincial agency “the lever that’s available to us,” Getson said recruits would get similar training to the RCMP but face no potential cross-country transfers and less bureaucracy. “That’s pretty appealing, I should say.”
Getson named drug addiction as a root cause of rural crime, along with what the UCP calls a “catch-and release” judicial system at the federal level. Criminals reasonably gravitate to rural Alberta.
“They go fishing where the fish are at. There's no question there. And for folks in rural Alberta, this isn't new. They're getting pretty tired of this. It's been ongoing for the last five, six years at least, that I've been around, where it's just getting worse and worse,” he said.
“So we're trying to take steps and measures because of what we've heard from folks. And then to be pointed out with a bony finger and criticized for doing that — it was just a little egregious.”
But the NDP won’t be changing its approach anytime soon, comments from Kayande suggest.
"Alberta’s New Democrats will keep showing up, keep speaking out and keep fighting for everyday Albertans — no matter how much it gets under the UCP’s skin,” he said in his emailed statement.
