The only real surprise in RCMP budget cuts in British Columbia was that they didn’t threaten to chop the musical ride.
The provincial government has reduced its contribution to the RCMP for policing in the province by $4.2 million.
RCMP management has decided to make all the cuts in the budgets of the special enforcement unit, including the squad investigating biker gangs, and the major crimes section, responsible for the missing women file, among other things.
Nowhere else left to cut, says Deputy Commissioner Craig Callens, the top RCMP manager in B.C.
Come on. The $4.2-million cut is less than one per cent of the RCMP budget for the province. The notion that the only areas to cut are two high-profile investigative units is laughable.
A family with a $60,000 income facing the equivalent cut would have $540 less to spend. I’m betting they could find relatively painless ways to handle the shortfall.
Not the RCMP managers.
It’s a standard ploy to resist budget cuts, in any organization. Find the most visible, valued service and say it will be hurt. Claim cuts in admin, or travel, or overtime, are impossible.
And it’s a reminder that B.C. still has no real ability to set priorities or policies for the RCMP, even though its officers police about 70 per cent of the province.
"RCMP management has decided to make all the cuts in the budgets of the special enforcement unit, including the squad investigating biker gangs, and the major crimes section, responsible for the missing women file, among other things." - Paul Willcocks
ReplyDelete"The RCMP has said itself in its study, the vast majority of these cases are addressed, and they're solved through police investigations. We'll leave it in their hands." - Prime Minister Stephen Harper
I think cuts to military-type raids on mom&pop herb gardens and medical marijuana compassion clubs would take priority over more important files like missing Aboriginal women. But I can see the difference: for attacking a natural, easily grown medicine, probably soon to be legalized, police get sophisticated weapons and chopper time. For taking on a huge file of missing women, police get hours, days and years of tedious forensic spadework and frostbitten fingers from shuffling through reams of cold-case files concerning the unexplained disappearances of racially prejudiced women.
ReplyDeleteRCMP rationale and target for cuts is despicable.