Rural crime on rise across Canada, worried residents tell Ottawa
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$19 $0 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*No charge for 4 weeks then billed as $19 every four weeks (new subscribers and qualified returning subscribers only). Cancel anytime.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/10/2018 (2010 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
OTTAWA — Alicia Bedford can’t forget the sound of her two daughters screaming, as a stranger pushed through the doorway of her bedroom at 2 a.m. The Thompson resident pushed the invader back into her backyard, locked the door and phoned the police.
It took four minutes 29 seconds to connect with the RCMP, according official records of the August incident.
“Imagine how long that feels to have someone breaking on your windows, breaking on your doors, with your children screaming,” Alicia Bedford told Parliament on Thursday.
“I know the RCMP are stretched thin in our town.”
Meth may send urban criminal to countryside
OTTAWA — Conservative MP Glen Motz, who was an Alberta policeman for 35 years, said around 2010, criminals from cities such as Calgary and Red Deer started encroaching on rural areas in his province. He believes they’re lured by spread-out communities and short-staffed police.
OTTAWA — Conservative MP Glen Motz, who was an Alberta policeman for 35 years, said around 2010, criminals from cities such as Calgary and Red Deer started encroaching on rural areas in his province. He believes they’re lured by spread-out communities and short-staffed police.
“Most of those guys that they’re catching… are not from the country; they’re dopers and addicts from in the bigger urban centre, going out to take advantage,” Motz told the Free Press, recalling rap sheets where suspects had urban addresses.
Motz recently visited Winnipeg to discuss gang and gun issues, said the city’s meth problem is likely leading to issues elsewhere.
There’s some anecdotal evidence for such a trend, with residents of Powerview-Pine Falls telling the Free Press a rash of break-ins seems to be caused by meth addicts, both local and from out of town.
During the summer 2017 wildfire evacuation of Island Lake, residents of remote Manitoba reserves say meth dealers entered Winnipeg shelters, offering young people free samples, and getting them hooked.
— Dylan Robertson
Rural crime is on the rise across Canada, which experts attribute to a complex mix of drugs such as methamphetamines, understaffed RCMP detachments and provincial belt-tightening.
National data show rural Canada is disproportionately represented in reported crime, especially of a violent nature.
In Manitoba, the crime rate outside of the Winnipeg area is 42 per cent higher than in the city itself, according to Statistics Canada data released this spring.
The issue hit the national radar after the 2016 shooting death of Colten Boushie, a First Nations man who was killed while apparently trying to steal a Saskatchewan farmer’s vehicle.
This fall, the House public safety committee began hearings on rural crime, after a Conservative motion to do so garnered all-party support.
The committee heard Thursday about Thompson residents needing to phone a 10-digit number because a lack of 911 connectivity, only to wait as long as 20 minutes to report a crime to an RCMP operator in Winnipeg.
Bedford’s mother, Geri Dixon, said she was frustrated there’s no local Thompson dispatcher, despite the city’s high crime rate. Instead, people in emergencies have to figure out the precise address of a location.
“I’ve lived in Thompson for 45 years; I don’t know the address of the post office,” she said. “You’re wasting (that) time when you’re trying to answer these questions.”
The committee also heard from Edouard Maurice, a rural Alberta resident who was charged after firing his gun during a robbery at his property. Police took two hours to respond.
The alleged thief, who had reportedly taken meth, sustained a bullet wound, prompting the Mounties to charge Maurice, who was acquitted this summer.
Calls to boost RCMP funding
OTTAWA — Some MPs suggest Ottawa may need to ask municipalities to pony up cash for local RCMP detachments, because most are only funded by provincial and federal coffers, unlike city police.
OTTAWA — Some MPs suggest Ottawa may need to ask municipalities to pony up cash for local RCMP detachments, because most are only funded by provincial and federal coffers, unlike city police.
Aside from its high-profile units, the Mounties police rural areas on a contract basis, with whatever funding each province sets aside, subsidized by Ottawa at a 70-30 ratio.
A provincial spokeswoman noted Manitoba is boosting RCMP funding by $5 million this year — but a Liberal MP said this mostly keeps the force in track with inflation.
Thompson-area MP Niki Ashton said the province ought to look at ramping up its RCMP funding, but Ottawa should also consider helping out cash-strapped provinces. “The federal government needs to be at the table,” she said.
Neepawa-area MP Robert Sopuck echoed her viewpoint. In Manitoba, “it’s largely a resource issue,” he said.
RCMP assistant commissioner Byron Boucher, who leads all contract policing, wouldn’t say if he feels provinces are giving enough cash.
“The RCMP is a service provider,” he told the committee Tuesday. “The level of policing services… rests ultimately with the provincial and territorial governments, as do the objectives, priorities and goals for policing.”
In an email, the Manitoba government outlined its funding for crime reduction.
In July, the Pallister government allocated a half-million dollars for such programs, while distributing more than $1.4 million this year from forfeited property obtained by crime, roughly half of which goes to rural forces.
The province also noted $250,000 in this sping’s budget for at-risk teens, including in Dauphin and Selkirk, as well as $372,000 for 31 rural Lighthouse sites, which provide locally crafted weeknight and weekday activities.
Manitoba accounts for seven per cent of Canada’s rural population, but 12 per cent of its rural crime.
— Dylan Robertson
“People are basically saying they’re just going to shoot, shovel, and shut up from now on,” said Maurice, whose case rallied support from across the Prairies.
His wife, Jessica, described Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley, who was charged but acquitted in Boushie’s death, as one of the “victims” of slow police-response times, causing some MPs to bristle.
The two called for looser laws around self-defence instead of existing legislation to further restrict firearms.
On Tuesday, senior Alberta RCMP officials told MPs about their programming to identify offenders linked to multiple crimes, and connect them with either social programming or closer investigative scrutiny.
That effort was bolstered by the province putting up $10 million for police and prosecutors to prevent crime, instead of just dealing with it. Statistics show crime is starting to decline in rural Alberta, reversing a trend in recent years.
Previously, senior RCMP officials have told Parliament they’re trying to speed up officer training without cutting corners. They say officers from municipal forces are often paid better, and reluctant to move to rural areas.
Neepawa-area MP Robert Sopuck criticized the RCMP consolidating detachments, so officers cover multiple towns they have to visit from a central office that can be a 45-minute drive away.
The Tory MP said the late-August shooting of a Mountie near Onanole (250 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg) put rural crime on his riding’s radar — and many believe a rash of break-ins may have been tied to the four suspects in that case.
Sopuck told the Free Press he doesn’t know how he’d react to a robbery, given slow response times. “In my case, my family comes first.”
NDP MP Georgina Jolibois, an Indigenous woman representing northern Saskatchewan, told the committee she believed the hearings only came about as a result of the Boushie case.
“I’m not interested in having discussions where the lives of First Nations, Métis and Inuit are further at risk,” she said.
Sopuck said Indigenous communities reached out immediately after the August shooting to offer support and sympathy.
“I think it’s critically important we get beyond any kind of racial issues, and realize that we’re all in this together.”
dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
