As we near the end of March deadline to sign off on a new RCMP contract for BC, Mayors have yet to even see the document.
Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore said “No we haven’t. We had a briefing in the beginning of January but we haven’t actually seen the contract yet.”
He is echoed by John Ruttan, Mayor of Nanaimo when asked if he had seen the contract doument “I have not.”
And Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts “We haven’t seen the total document no.”
Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart says signing off on the RCMP contract at the civic level will take longer than the few weeks left in March.
He said “I imagine a month or two as we go through that I can’t imagine the province actually insisting on a unanimous sign off prior to any agreement being in force.”
Nanaimo Mayor John Ruttan “it is going to be a very lengthly document and probably very very complicated I would suggest 60 days would be a realistic figure.”
Greg Moore also said civic governments need a lot longer to sign off as he indicated there was confusion over whether civic governments were included in the end of March deadline, or not.
He said “More than the next three weeks thats for sure it is hard to say right now because we haven’t seen the document but we understand it is a complex piece of contract that we need to be able to go through as local government.”
But Dianne Watts thinks the civic sign off will come after March
She said “I would expect so, first and foremost the sign off has to come with the province and then the cities will sign off.”
Richard Stewart thinks mayors might finally have the RCMP contract document in hand by next week, two weeks before the deadline.
Justice Minister Shirley Bond has said the contract is in the final sign off stage to meet the end of March deadline set by the federal government
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