Ottawa’s ‘leadership gap’ fuels growing violence: Alberta minister

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OTTAWA — Alberta’s Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis said Friday that political paralysis in Ottawa is fuelling growing violence in communities in his province and beyond.

“There’s a leadership gap in the federal government we’re watching play out in real time,” said Ellis, also Alberta’s deputy premier, in a year-end interview with the National Post.

Ellis took aim at the Liberal minority government’s criminal justice policies, such as a 2019 law that made it easier for some suspects to be released from custody on bail. (Parts of the law were reversed in a late-2023 update.)

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All hopes for the passage of tougher federal criminal laws were dashed in September, when an impasse over documents related to a failed green technology fund effectively derailed the fall sitting of the House of Commons, which ended last week.

Ellis said that the federal filibustering has real-world consequences.

“What we have now is violent repeat offenders (who) are going into the streets and wreaking havoc within our communities,” said Ellis, an ex-police officer.

Ellis said the cold-blooded shooting death of 20-year-old Edmonton security guard Harshandeep Singh earlier this month, allegedly at the hands of a repeat violent offender granted a conditional release just last year, was a tragic reminder of the lawlessness created by federal inaction.

“This has been consistent with stories I often hear throughout Alberta and, quite frankly, throughout Canada,” said Ellis.

“We have violent repeat offenders that are being released onto the streets and these are the sort of things they do when you have these sorts of soft on crime policies in place. They just don’t work.”

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Ellis said that he hasn’t met with Singh’s family yet but would “welcome and look forward to the opportunity” to do so.

Ellis also said that he’s keeping an eye out to 2032, when the RCMP’s community policing contract with Alberta and 11 other provincial and territorial jurisdictions is set to expire.

“They’ve been doing signal check after signal check that they’re looking at stepping away from contract policing,” said Ellis, pointing to multiple statements that RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme has made about beefing up the agency’s national security-related powers.

Liberal MP David McGuinty, named federal public safety minister in Friday’s cabinet shakeup, has previously stated that the RCMP should consider ending contract policing so it can direct more resources to issues of national importance. Prior to his cabinet appointment, McGuinty led a parliamentary study of the RCMP’s federal policing mandate, which issued a report on the matter in late 2023.

In the meantime, Ellis says he is pursuing a two-track strategy of shoring up the province-led Alberta sheriffs and giving local communities the power to choose if the RCMP is right for their needs.

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“I’m trying to make sure that all options are on the table,” said Ellis.

“I have some communities that have indicated to me that they want to continue contracting with the RCMP (and) others indicate that they do not wish to continue… that’s a decision we need to respect either way.”

Ellis said that the question of a transition from the RCMP to a provincial police service was unlikely to be put to a province-wide referendum, which his government has promised for a changeover to a provincial pension plan.

Looking ahead to 2025, Ellis said that he was excited to continue building out self-administered policing services in Alberta’s First Nations communities.

“Time and time again, I keep hearing complaints about how unsafe people feel in our First Nations communities with the lack of police presence there,” said Ellis. “This is why I’m doing what I can to help create self-administered policing services.”

Ellis was on hand for an April 2023 signing ceremony that made southern Alberta’s Siksika Nation Canada’s first Indigenous community in more than a decade to transition to self-administered policing. He said that the Enoch Cree Nation, near Edmonton, has since expressed interest in following suit.

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Ellis said that self-administered policing has vast potential to create leadership opportunities for young people who live in Indigenous communities.

“Not everybody can be a chief or councillor,” said Ellis. “But as we continue to roll out self-administered policing, young people who want to give back can be constables, or serve their communities in any number of capacities.”

“That’s something that’s part of the paradigm shift that we’re doing here in Alberta.”

National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com

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