A8 TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 THE TIMES
Opinion
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Life’s not always a gas
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Policing not VPD versus RCMP I
don’t think I understand the debate over a regional police force for Metro Vancouver. Well, I understand part of the debate. There are certainly trade-offs either way between having a big, integrated force for the entire urban area from West Van to Langley, or having local, municipal forces and RCMP detachments. What I don’t understand is Vancouver’s position. Vancouver has come out strong in favour of a regional force. So why is Vancouver interested in joining now when it hasn’t been in the past? Since 2003, almost every police unit in the Lower Mainland has sent some of its officers to the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team – IHIT. They’re murder specialists, some of the best investigators from Surrey and Langley, the North Shore, Burnaby, and Coquitlam. Civic forces like New Westminster and Abbotsford have joined as well. But not Vancouver. Vancouver investigates its own murders, and IHIT’s remit stops at Boundary Road. IHIT has had its successes and its failures, like any police unit. But its mission is easy to understand. In smaller communities like Langley, Maple Ridge, or Richmond, murders happen more rarely, if not necessarily at a lower rate per capita. Keeping a specialized homi-
MATTHEW CLAXTON
the painful truth cide squad on duty is not justifiable. So instead, every small and medium-sized community shares the costs of investigating murders. We also share a number of other policing costs across borders in the Lower Mainland. When people talk about local versus regional, do they know that the police helicopter service, or the police dog service, or various traffic and accident investigation services are already shared? There are good reasons to keep local forces, and preserve local knowledge. A police officer who works a small area gets to know people, to gain the trust of the locals and to identify the frequent lawbreakers on sight. One of the trends in the past two decades of policing has been towards neighbourhood policing, getting officers out of cars again and back among the citizens, in parks, on sidewalks and in schools. There’s been some speculation that the VPD was previously reluctant to join groups like IHIT because they would have been outnumbered by Mounties
– inter-service rivalries go back to when Alexander the Great’s cavalry and infantry had their first bar fight. I think Vancouver’s recent change of heart comes down to the idea that bigness itself is good, combined with Vancouver’s natural notion that it should be in charge of the Metro region that bears the city’s name. Hold up there, for a minute. Creating a single, regional police force would also put command squarely in the hands of RCMP officers, or ex-Mounties if an entirely new force was created from scratch. Vancouverites keep forgetting that they are not the dominant force in the Lower Mainland, and haven’t been for a decade or so now. The suburbs outnumber the centre to such a great extent that we’re creating new urban centres, like the Tri-Cities and Surrey, which in a few years will have as big a gravitational pull as Vancouver itself. Heck, parts of Langley are approaching the density of East Van; parts of Surrey and Richmond resemble population maps of the West End. If Vancouver is so interested in a regional force, why jump in all at once? Why not put on the training wheels, join IHIT, and see how that works out first? ■ Visit Matthew Claxton’s blog at tinyurl.com/7mwo2qj.
e don’t normally expect a lot from any throne speech that timing dictates must be a key piece of a pre-election gambit. Fortunately, it means we are rarely disappointed. And so we weren’t as disappointed as we might have been last Tuesday – almost exactly three months ahead of the next provincial election – by Premier Christy Clark’s rather optimistic missive whose central theme appeared to be that B.C.’s economy is solely dependent on natural gas. Certainly, the premier’s plan to create a new reserve fund – the British Columbia Prosperity Fund – sounds like a fine idea, particularly if the intent is to operate as the Alberta Heritage Fund was created in the 1970s by Premier Peter Lougheed to capitalize on revenues generated by his province’s oil reserves. But Premier Clark’s stated purpose for the B.C. fund sounds more like it’ll just be a separate bank account to collect anticipated natural gas revenues, and then used like any other government tax or royalty revenue to service the province’s prodigious debt and help pay for government operations and services. It leaves us scratching our heads, wondering why the fuss with fancy names. And while the premier’s projections of $100 billion in natural gas revenue and “tens of thousands” of jobs over the next 30 years have us all gasping in amazement, that needs to be tempered with a realization that 30 years is a long, long time, particularly in the light of an energy economy with a volatility that has been almost as amazing as the hopes for giant natural gas windfalls. There didn’t seem to be much else, other than a few vague promises about legislation to help children and abused seniors. Indeed, a promise for more realistic government advertising on that score would have been welcome.
■ To comment on this editorial, e-mail us at letters@abbotsfordtimes.com.
◗ Your view Last week’s question: Was B.C. Family Day a worthwhile addition? 75 % a.] Absolutely, any holiday is a good holiday.
10 % b.] Not really worth the hardship to some businesses.
15% c.] Will tell you next year when I’m better prepared.
This week’s question: To which current social/political/environmental movement are you most connected & supportive? a.] Idle No More. b.] One Billion Rising. c.] PIPE UP.
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