While Canada’s national police force waits for several communities in British Columbia to approve a new 20-year contract, Premier Christy Clark is strongly suggesting…. they should get on with it.
More than 40 of the 62 communities policed by the RCMP have ratified the contract.
Prominent hold-outs include North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Richmond and Burnaby.
Clark says –financially– taxpayers in those communities are best represented by the mounties.
“They are going to lose ten per cent of the cost of the RCMP that’s picked up by the federal government and I’m not sure where else they would get it, except from an increase in property taxes. For example, in Burnaby, where they’ve seen a 25 per cent property tax increase over the last little while and where they have one of the lowest RCMP ratios in the country or at least in the province, neither of those options, I don’t think, are very palatable for the people of Burnaby.”
Recent controversies involving misconduct by several RCMP officers have critics calling for more municipal forces across BC.
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