PLUS: Council contemplating where to find $776,000 for serviced RCMP lot

The Municipality of Jasper could pay nearly $1.2 million annually for RCMP policing by 2030-31, according to preliminary estimates from provincial officials.

In December, the Government of Alberta (GOA) announced changes to the Police Funding Model formula, as well as significant increases to the overall amount of funds collected from municipalities. 

“Overall, municipalities will face higher costs, unclear benefits, and significant uncertainty,” the Rural Municipalities of Alberta explained after the new model was announced.

On Tuesday (Feb. 24), after learning how those changes could affect the Municipality of Jasper’s bottom line, councillors meeting as Committee of the Whole directed municipal staff to work with the provincial Police Funding Model team to identify modifiers and subsidies that might apply to Jasper, such as accounting for the shadow population of visitors and seasonal workers.

“It’s a pretty big shadow that we’re asking our detachment to cover,” said Coun. Danny Frechette, adding how the projected policing costs would become “exorbitant.”

“To go up to these numbers in the next five years is going to be a significant burden on our taxpayers in Jasper,” he said. “There’s no question.”

Prior to 2019, Jasper and other municipalities with populations under 5,000 residents did not have to pay for RCMP policing—but the new model has been gradually imposing costs. The new model redistributes a portion of frontline policing costs from the (GOA) to municipalities that receive policing services through the Provincial Police Service Agreement (PPSA).

The Municipality’s share of the cost has gone from $126,000 in 2021 to $380,000 in 2025. This will continue to increase to $512,000 for the 2026-27 fiscal year until reaching nearly $1.2 million in 2030-31, covering 30 per cent of total policing costs.

In 2022, Mayor Richard Ireland wrote a letter requesting the Province apply a shadow population modifier to reduce Jasper’s policing costs, but the justice minister replied that Jasper did not have an officially recognized shadow population.

“I take it that the shade of the mountains is so great that you can’t discern part of the population that lives here,” Ireland said in jest.

CAO Bill Given said the Province had gone from using a regulation that determined population to in-house estimates in 2020. Municipal staff plan to discuss this methodology with provincial officials.

Given emphasized how this downloading of costs onto smaller municipalities was a choice of the Alberta government and RCMP costs were independent of that choice.

New detachment servicing

The Municipality may also be on the hook for $776,000 after servicing land for interim housing that will eventually be used for the new RCMP detachment.

Committee of the Whole directed administration to bring forward a borrowing bylaw to cover the cost and identify approaches to recoup it.

The detachment is set to be built on the land adjacent to the Forest Park Hotel on Connaught Drive. Construction likely won’t begin for the foreseeable future, since interim housing currently occupies the site. The lot was also subdivided so housing could be placed behind the detachment.

The Municipality spent $1.2 million servicing the parcels. While this allowed interim housing to be ready for occupancy sooner, the Municipality was unable to initiate the notice and petition process needed to impose a local improvement levy on the landowners.

The RCMP will cover a third of the servicing cost, but without the levy, the Municipality may have to borrow money to cover the remaining two-thirds.

Coun. Ralph Melnyk spoke in favour of incurring debt rather than using municipal reserves, since debt provided certainty with its payment schedule.

Provincial police force

The Alberta government recently took another step toward giving communities an alternative to RCMP policing.

Mike Ellis, minister of public safety and emergency services, tabled legislation last week that would help transition the Alberta Sheriffs to the Alberta Sheriffs Police Service.

During a Feb. 24 news conference, Ellis said the Province was still evaluating whether to move completely away from the RCMP and wanted to see what the federal government’s new funding model would look like. On Feb 26, the GOA’s 2026 budget directed $36.9 million toward the new Alberta Sheriffs Police Service.

The National Police Federation, which represents 20,000 RCMP members across Canada, has strongly opposed the idea of Alberta abandoning the Mounties.

Kevin Halwa, an NPF board director for the prairie region, cited their commissioned polling that shows Albertans continue to support the RCMP.

“There seems to be very, very little appetite to moving to a new, unproven, untested provincial service,” Halwa said. “But yet the provincial government continues to kind of trudge down or blaze down a trail towards that anyway, which is concerning and potentially very risky to public safety, and everyone agrees the costs would be exorbitant.”

According to a 2021 report, a provincial police service would cost between $734 million and $759 million annually compared to $783 million collectively for RCMP and sheriffs, and the transition alone would cost $366 million.

Halwa noted Alberta would also lose its 30 per cent subsidy from the federal government. As for public safety, he said the RCMP’s Crime Reduction Units have helped address rural crime.

Some communities have already moved away from the RCMP. Grande Prairie has been transitioning to a local service in order to have more local control, but Halwa argued that police service agreements already allow municipalities to set strategic priorities and objectives through their policing committee.

“If anybody suggests that either the local municipality doesn’t have control or the Province doesn’t have control, they just haven’t read the documents,” he said.

The Province did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while the Municipality declined to comment as council had not yet discussed the new legislation.

Peter Shokeir, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter // info@thejasperlocal.com