Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Municipalities are concerned over the federal government鈥檚 recent decision not to absorb retroactive costs associated with the latest RCMP collective bargaining agreement.
These costs will be passed down to municipalities despite months of advocacy.
Alberta Municipalities and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) have argued that the feds should absorb the costs due to municipalities not being at the table during the negotiation of the collective bargaining agreement and having limited fiscal capacity to absorb these significant one-time costs.
While cost estimates were provided to some municipalities, these ended up being below the final agreement鈥檚 increase over six years, with retroactive pay going back to 2017.
鈥淭he federal government鈥檚 refusal to absorb these costs 鈥� which were essentially negotiated with municipal money but not with municipal input 鈥� is not acceptable,鈥� said FCM president Taneen Rudyk in a statement.
鈥淢unicipal councils will be forced to make incredibly tough decisions, such as making cuts to essential services or passing the bill along to residents, at a time when Canadians鈥� concerns about local safety and the cost of living are already rising.鈥�
In an April 6 news release, the Town of Hinton stated that the cost to the town associated with these retroactive payments is expected to be $536,508.25, which the town has two years to pay.
鈥淚 am disappointed in the federal government鈥檚 decision to pass these unbudgeted and unaccounted for costs on to municipalities,鈥� said Hinton Mayor Marcel Michaels in the release.
鈥淚 look forward to discussing this matter with Council to see what our options are to deal with this issue.鈥�
On April 11, Jasper鈥檚 council discussed the issue after receiving a practical toolkit from the FCM, which included a draft press release and a draft resolution.
While council did not have an estimate for how much this would cost the municipality, Coun. Ralph Melnyk noted this would affect the municipal budget both this year and next year.
Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland said the fact that the retroactive pay was negotiated with municipal money but not municipal input 鈥渉as caused no end of consternation.鈥�
鈥淚 think, in fairness, because our community only started paying RCMP policing costs recently, the exposure that we face is less than many of our neighbours, but we need to know the numbers, and I had made that request to our director of finance and administration at the end of March.鈥�
The committee of the whole directed administration to prepare a report outlining the impact of retroactive policing costs.
