Thank you, committee Chair.
My comments on this subject today ironically are against a background of prosperity. The situation in Alberta includes healthy immigration, a growing economy, low taxes, rising housing costs, and a low rate of unemployment. I ask that you further consider this context. Over the past 40 years, I've had many experiences in policing, including rural, municipal, aboriginal, and international environments. The past 15 years have been from the desk of the chief. What I've concluded is that the police work is still the easy part. With some exception, it is what we collectively and consistently do very well, despite the challenges and escalating complexities presented by more sophisticated crime trends and technology. There's always been one constant, and that is this. To protect society, the police will always be required, and they must be willing and able to jump over the boards and go into the corners. This is how the core function gets done, and this cannot be forgotten in efforts to control costs or increase efficiencies. I would encourage any decision-making to take that into account and not lose sight of this core function.
Considerable time has been spent in Alberta in producing a framework to guide policing into the future. A consultative process resulted in nine comprehensive strategies for management, operations, and finances. As an example, the framework is responsible for guiding the rollout of a single-source records management system for all policing agencies in Alberta to strengthen and support another pillar of the framework, and that is taking a truly intelligence-led approach to law enforcement and community safety. The framework guided the formation and operation of a number of specialty enforcement and support units, all intended to be working in an efficient and integrated structure. All of this is then funded through the Province of Alberta, while being administered and operated by the various police and enforcement agencies which host them.
The final strategy in the framework was to devise a fair and equitable cost-sharing formula for all Albertans. This was done through a consultative process, as I pointed out. A recommendation there would be that we implement a distributed model of sharing costs among all the residents of Alberta.
We just completed a negotiation with the Taber Police Association. The process in Alberta was guided by the Police Officers Collective Bargaining Act. After two negotiations for this agency, and observing the process across the province over the past years, I believe it is fair characterization to say that this particular act ultimately and brutally forces municipalities to give in to associations, and provide them with the demands that they are asking for. This occurred during mediation with a mediator.
With a 34% increase since 2006, little if any regard has been held for extending the slightest consideration about what's fair to the municipality and its ratepayers, and I'm speaking from the perspective of a smaller community. As a result, wages account for 80% of police budgets here and across the country. It's unreasonable to think that any manipulation of our already-stressed operational funds will result in altering the course of police economics. I think a strategy here might serve us well in Alberta, which is that we collaboratively negotiate, and we may include provincially sponsored assistance in that process.
In Taber, we are experiencing robust immigration to our area from Mexico, as the Mennonites of the Mexican colonies flee drug violence. Some 15,000 to 20,000 have arrived over the past 15 years, the majority arriving in the past four years. Unfortunately, some of these people are themselves involved in the drug trade and have imported their criminal behaviour with them. Operating out of our small-town community, an hour north of the international border, a robust trafficking operation was flourishing. A joint project resulted in numerous large seizures of cocaine and conspiracy charges.
My point here is that there are cutbacks to the RCMP and a realignment of their federal services, which will have a diminishing effect on the capacity of those critical partners in fighting this problem. While savings can be realized by the federal organization in this realignment, border integrity and the activities of the international drug cartels must remain a priority.
When I began policing in Alberta in 1971, there were fewer than one million people, and we had 3,000 mental health beds. Our population today exceeds three million, and we have approximately 300 mental health beds.
We are continually pressured by this gap in mental health services as we deal with the social determinants of crime: addiction, mental illness, homelessness, broken families, poverty, illiteracy, and general issues of moral decay that are becoming commonplace. The job description of a police officer has had to evolve, requiring increased and specific training from the recruit training syllabus through to ongoing professional development. I'm wondering where these savings from these other ministries have gone and wonder if some of those savings cannot be realized by the policing authorities as these areas of responsibility have been transferred onto the streets for the police to deal with.
Those, gentlemen, are my five points. Thank you.