The Alberta Police Base Victim Services Association addressed St. Albert city council last week over funding concerns for Victims Service Units.
On June 7, Brian Turpin and Shelly de Tremaudan of St. Albert Victims Unit spoke to council about the impact Bill 16 — a bill that will give the province the ability to take money from the victims of crime fund — has had on the fund and concerns they have about potential regionalization and how that would impact units such as St. Albert's which are currently community- and volunteer-driven.
Turpin said Victims Service Units (VSUs) are currently financed through grants, “Which is another contention we have. We do the same work that we did last year [and] the year before, but yet we're forced into this cut-and-paste grant process,” he said.
Turpin said municipalities such as St. Albert are capped off at $150,000 no matter the population or geographical area they serve. Most VSUs must fundraise or depend on money from municipalities.
“Folks like Shelly are forced to fundraise for probably more than 50 per cent of their budget or to rely on the generosity of municipality councils like yourself,” he told city council.
Last year, said de Tremaudan, the St. Albert VSU received $66,850 of funding from the city. This year, through fundraising, the VSU made around $5,000, and they hope to make $5,000 more.
“I'm not complaining about fundraising. You know, I've been in the non-profit world for years. I understand it's part of the business. But at the end of the day, it's taking away from our operational resources. And that becomes so challenging,” she said.
Turpin said he recently met with Justice Minister Tyler Shandro about his concerns, as the province is looking at changing the programs they have in place with regard to victims of crimes.
“Our ask is to [the province is to] please carefully look at the change that you're going to implement. Is it in the best interest of victims?” he said
Turpin said he is going across the province to educate various rural and municipalities to keep an eye on announcements and whether these will be in their best interest.
“One of the things that concern us is our Premier [Jason] Kenney, in the comments on the throne speech, mentioned regionalization. Our question is: How big is that going to be? What's proposed in regionalization? Right now, they're community driven. Your St. Albert VSU is made up of volunteers,” he said.
Turpin said the bottom line is the association is asking the province to look at sustainably funding victim services in Alberta and to look at the damage that has been done to the financial benefits program from Bill 16.
“Victims are receiving little to nothing as compared to the past,” he said.
Bill 16, which came into force on June 26, 2020, amended the Victims of Crime Act to expand the scope of the victims of crime fund to include public safety initiatives, drug treatment courts, and to hire more Crown prosecutors.
Turpin said what the bill did was remove the firewall that protected the fund from being used in general revenue.
“It's not protected anymore. Basically, government can delegate it to wherever they want to,” said Turpin.
Mayor Cathy Heron asked Turpin if the province was using the funding for the intended purpose of hiring more police officers, Crown prosecutors, and putting in a cash injection into the drug courts in Alberta.
“I don't see evidence of it across this province,” he said.
The victims of crime fund was created in the 1990s. The revenue stream for the fund comes from surcharges on fines, with 85 per cent of that revenue from traffic surcharges.
“I'm guessing there's a few people sitting around on Zoom or in this room today that have contributed to that fund over the years,” said Turpin.
The victims of crime fund does two things, stated Turpin.
“It offers a program to victims of crime called financial benefits, which is an allotment of financial resources to help a victim rebuild their life,” he said.
The other portion of the fund finances VSUs such as the unit that is run out of St. Albert.
Turpin said the auditor general released a report in 2016 stating the fund had a $56-million surplus and criticized the government for not properly funding victims of crime. Before Bill 16 was introduced, the fund had reached $74 million.
“Seventy-four million is gone,” Turpin said.
Coun. Ken MacKay asked de Tremaudan if St. Albert is getting the same number of volunteers for the city’s VSU.
St. Albert’s VSU has struggled to get new advocates, said de Tremaudan. She said the unit has brought on three new people, but there’s a cost to advertising and time spent marketing, and by the time they’ve got new people in, they’ve spent a lot of money obtaining them.
“Remember, this isn't the same type of volunteerism in which you go out into your community and do something wonderful. You can’t just show up at your volunteer job and there's people there to guide you. There's training involved in this. There's security clearances involved in this. It's very intimidating for the average person to come in,” she told council.
Because of reduced funding, de Tremaudan said there is only $1,000 worth of training funds the unit can apply for.
The types of calls the VSU has seen an upswing in over the last two years are domestic violence, mental health, and sexual assault.
Turpin said it costs money to properly train people and the $1,000 grant doesn’t cover the cost.
“You cannot send these people out to these high-trauma calls to a violent sexual assault at 2 a.m. in the morning in the hospital without proper training … The government has cut us to the bone and continues to cut even though the money is there in a separate stream [of] funding. That's a disheartening part about it, is that that fund was for victims,” he said.
Turpin said his association did a survey and discovered it would cost less than $5 million to properly fund VSUs across the province.
"I think over the next coming weeks, it'll be vitally important to monitor that announcement and look at the details of what's enclosed inside of it," he said.
Council discussed putting VSUs on a special resolution and said they would keep an eye out for the announcement.
