Public Security Minister Farnworth calls Mayor’s assessment disingenuous

THE City of Surrey said on Wednesday that a provincial report, hidden from public view for a year, has confirmed Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke’s concerns that Surrey Police Service (SPS) costs will skyrocket over the coming years. The report, commissioned by the Province and developed by Deloitte, reveals new details that confirm the SPS will cost Surrey taxpayers a whopping $750 million more than the RCMP over just a 10-year period.

Locke said: “This report confirms that the Province has been hiding titanic level costs from Surrey taxpayers. The Premier and Solicitor General said they had no idea where the City of Surrey was getting our cost estimates from, when they were sitting on a report that showed the true cost to be hundreds of millions more than we had even imagined.”

The report, which the City received as part of upcoming legal proceedings, has been filed with the court and is publicly available. The City said it requested a copy of the report when its existence was first made public a year ago, but that request was denied by the Province.

The City said that as recently as November 2023, the Solicitor General told media that the report confirmed the Province’s cost estimates. However, submissions from the SPS clearly show plans for an anticipated staffing level of 958 officers shortly after becoming police of jurisdiction, and to move to a two-person vehicle deployment model. This alone would result in an estimated $45 million annual incremental cost over the RCMP, and does not include other transition costs previously estimated by the City.

Locke said: “It is clear that the Province did not want this information to be made public. I don’t know how to look at this other than a complete betrayal of trust. They have known that the cost of this transition would be hundreds of millions more than the City’s own estimates, and they hid that information from the public for a year. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were required to finally disclose the report as part of the City’s legal efforts, taxpayers would have found out when it was already too late.”

The City of Surrey had previously estimated that the incremental cost of transitioning from the RCMP to the SPS would be $464 million over a 10-year period, however, the City was clear its estimates did not include items like the two officer per car model or capital costs.

Locke said: “The Province is making it up as they go, forcing the City into an unnecessary and expensive transition, and they don’t care that Surrey taxpayers will be left with a three quarters of a billion dollar bill over the next 10 years.”

HOWEVER, Public Security Minister Mike Farnworth hit back at Locke, calling her take on it disingenuous, pointing out that you can’t compare thee cost of 734 RCMP officers to 900 SPS officers.

He added: “To suggest this is the model and that is the basis for cost, is simply, completely, utterly false.”

Farnworth added: “I’m not surprised by this. It’s just another effort by the city to try and muddy the waters and a refusal on their part to accept that this transition is going ahead, that the Surrey Police Service, the RCMP, the province and the federal government are all working to make sure that happens.”

One media report noted that Deloitte said it used the 900-officer figure because that’s the authorized strength for the Surrey detachment. However, the report’s 734-to-734 officer comparison shows a $30-million difference.