Mike Smyth: Surrey reality check — local police for just 10 per cent more is a pipe dream

Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum said a local police force would cost another $15 million. Not on this planet.

Doug McCallum won the Surrey mayor’s job on a promise to replace the RCMP with a new municipal police force at a minimal cost to taxpayers.

Surrey’s annual policing budget stands at around $150 million, and McCallum said he could bring in the new force for a 10-per-cent budget increase.

“It might not even be that much,” McCallum said.

But if anybody thinks a new municipal police force will cost just another $15 million a year, they better think again. For one thing, municipal police officers make about 15-per-cent more than Mounties. Surrey will face a significant cost pressure just to pay their new municipal cops’ salaries.

And now a long list of other looming cost pressures are outlined in a memo detailing the city’s policing plan. Officially known as the Surrey Policing Transition Project, the plan must be approved by the B.C. government, with a report going to Solicitor-General Mike Farnworth by the end of April.

Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum. Jason Payne / PNG

CKNW reporter Janet Brown got hold of the confidential terms-of-reference for the report. The document is a major wake-up call for Surrey taxpayers. It outlines a two-year transition period to a municipal force that would include a one-year overlapping period in 2020, when the city would operate the existing RCMP detachment and the new force at the same time.

It says the new municipal force would operate with about the same number of Surrey RCMP officers — currently 835 officers — but then expand to a larger unidentified number. Surrey municipal officers will not only make more money, there will also be more of them. And the city will actually have two police departments for at least a year.

LISTEN: This week on In The House, Mike Smyth and Rob Shaw dig into new legislation that bans ticket bots. Will the changes help you get a better price on your favourite concert tickets? They also delve into the politics around B.C.’s money-laundering scandal, parties flip-flopping over gas taxes and criticism of the carbon tax, and the Speaker’s attempt to clean up heckling at the legislature.

How is this supposed to cost $15 million again? McCallum’s math seems totally out of whack.

The document says additional civilian employees will be needed to help run the new department, which will require a new information technology system. New IT systems are notorious for going over-budget, and this one looks like a potential money pit.

“It would be incredibly complex, time-consuming and expensive,” current Surrey RCMP commanding officer Dwayne McDonald told me. “Of course we have electronic file-management systems, but we also have an old paper-filing system.”

And it wouldn’t be like upgrading the operating system on your PC. Extra security protocols would be required to protect sensitive information from confidential informers and undercover operations.

“You would need a painstaking transition process around access to data,” McDonald said.

But wait, there’s more. There would also be additional costs for buying RCMP equipment, contracting-out specialized police services and transferring pension benefits for RCMP officers who switch over to the new force.

Where is all this money supposed to come from? McCallum has suggested the feds or the province might pony up, but I’d say Surrey taxpayers should prepare for some major sticker-shock for their new police force.



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