FCM president to discuss policing
SUMMERSIDE — Infrastructure and policing are the main topics for discussion on a nationwide tour of the president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Berry Vrbanovic was in Summerside this week to meet with city officials, business leaders and police to discuss issues facing the city.
Vrbanovic said the top issue for the FCM remains the availability of federal infrastructure dollars.
“We’re working on a long-term infrastructure plan with the federal government,” he said. “They had originally committed to it in budget 2011, recommitted to it in budget 2012 to have something in place by the time the current programs end in March of 2014.”
He said Ottawa introduced new program funding of $150 million over the next two years to help municipalities upgrade existing facilities. The last report was in late 2007. It talked about $123 billion infrastructure deficit across the country with another $115 billion needed over the next 20 years.
Vrbanovic said some progress has been made with things like the gas tax and the infrastructure stimulus program that saw the three levels of government put $10 billion into work over two and-a-half construction seasons.
“That got a significant number of Canadians working but we know that a lot more needs to be done,” he said. “The federal government recognizes that and that’s why we’re focusing on a long-term plan with long-term funding attached to it. What municipalities need is to know they have sustainable, predictable funding so they can plan in terms of their own budgets and infrastructure work.”
The policing front is the next largest item in most municipal budgets.
“It’s something that we’re focusing on and have been on a nationwide tour with our members getting input from them as we develop a position paper that’s going to help inform a national dialogue,” he said.
Downloading by the federal government has become a major issue with policing.
“Back in 2008 we developed a report that talked about the fact that there was roughly $500 million in policing costs that have downloaded on municipalities by the federal government,” Vrbanovic said. “We’re hearing more of those kinds of concerns from people. Whether it’s certain parts of drug enforcement, border issues or counter terrorism issues or whatever depending on of the size of the municipality, these are all issues that municipal forces are being faced with dealing with and yet don’t get any financial compensation towards dealing with them.”
The other thing that’s an issue is the national police service that looks after the criminal database and things like DNA testing.
“It’s been chronically under funded over the years,” he said.
For smaller municipalities like Summerside, Vrbanovic said a lot of issues would have to do with items such as criminal databases, the kinds of infrastructure that police department’s need.
“If we can look at better sharing of resources, nationally it could certainly help the smaller departments in particular,” he said. “In many instances smaller communities end up abandoning maintaining their own department and going with contract policing. Often they do it out of frustration because they don’t have the resources to deal with it. They lose that community focus that comes with having your own police department.”