The Manitoba Government and the Association of Manitoba Municipalities(AMM) met Wednesday, to discuss proposed amendments to the Police Services Act.
The amendments would provide rural and urban municipalities with additional options to address their unique safety concerns. Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen says they know that rural crime is a concern across the province.
"There are unique challenges in rural Manitoba, particularly when it comes to the staffing of policing positions. Local municipalities need more options and more control to improve community safety," said Goertzen in a news release today. "Municipalities have long asked for the ability to have community safety officers enforce additional provincial laws."
Goertzen says they're making progress toward ensuring that municipalities will have the ability to address their specific safety needs.
"We've spoken to the federal government about doing more training and making sure we're getting our portion of RCMP officers, but there's still a significant vacancy rate, and that impacts on communities that have that contract policing arrangement with the RCMP."
Goertzen says the right programs can make it better for both the RCMP and the communities.
"So we've been working at how do we have layered policing options so that municipalities can find a way to have other type of enforcement, and then maybe relieve some of the pressure off the RCMP on more traditional forms of policing."
Goertzen also noted that he and municipal relations minister Andrew Smith have renewed calls to the federal government to fund the back pay it unilaterally negotiated for the RCMP. He says that unexpected additional cost could severely affect a lot of municipalities.
"Municipalities were not consulted nor were they involved in the negotiation of the back pay that the federal government negotiated in the RCMP contract. Simply handing the bill to municipalities isn’t good enough and will significantly impact local municipalities and their residents."
Goertzen says the AMM has mirrored that message to the federal government.
