What follows is a slightly edited version of an oral presentation that I made to St. Albert City Council on May 1, 2017.
What follows is a slightly edited version of an oral presentation that I made to St. Albert City Council on May 1, 2017.
“Firstly, I wish to make it perfectly clear that any references to the RCMP contained herein are in no way to be taken as being critical of their performance as the municipal police force for St. Albert. My concerns lie with the current organizational structure that governs the policing of our community. The fact (as provided in legislation) that the liaison between the RCMP and the City of St. Albert rests primarily if not solely between the detachment commander and the mayor is in my opinion, unsatisfactory. Hopefully, the reinstatement of a Policing Committee will go some distance in remediating this. It is understood that unlike municipalities having their own municipal police forces, this is not a police commission which if it were would exercise much more extensive powers of oversight. At this point, I will leave more detailed observations and recommendations to those who have both expertise and experience in law enforcement and community policing.
What I do wish to discuss however, is a brief examination of the democratic principles which underlie the creation of bodies such as the policing committee by referring to the following Wikipedia definitions:
Democratic practice is commonly understood as an adversarial process characterized by competition, conflict, and power struggles among elected representatives. The form of representative democracy is often connected to a notion of citizen political participation that primarily includes voting in elections.
Participatory democracy is a process of collective decision-making that combines elements from both direct and representative democracy: Citizens have the power to decide on policy proposals and politicians assume the role of policy implementation.
Examples of the latter are extremely limited, with the governance of St. Albert being no exception. AA recent example is despite having the power and ability city council, by virtue of the customary 4 to 3 vote, refused to accommodate a group of citizens intending to petition the current ‘hot button’ issue of a borrowing bylaw to fund and subsequently construct a branch library in St. Albert Ironically, should the Policing Committee Bylaw eventually be approved council will be facilitating participatory democratic ideals in one instance while in direct contradiction depriving others from receiving a like privilege. In reviewing the archival video of the April 24, 2017 council meeting the arguments put forth by the members of council who succeeded in defeating the motion were as always not surprising but most definitely disappointing. It is in this regard that I can only conclude by stating that some things never change.”
Murray Lambert, St. Albert
