Federal help is being sought to deal with an ongoing labour shortage at the Sunshine Coast RCMP Detachment, due in part to a lack of affordable housing.
Staffing was highlighted by Staff Sgt. Poppy Hallam as one of the top “organizational challenges” the Sunshine Coast detachment faces at the July 18 meeting of the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) policing committee.
“In the last two weeks I’ve had three officers with experience change their mind. They had signed to say they wanted to transfer here and they decided they couldn’t afford it,” said Hallam during her presentation of the detachment’s strategic plan for 2019-2020. “That would have filled our vacancies and we would have been done. So now, back to the drawing board.”
Following the presentation, Gibsons director Bill Beamish confirmed that RCMP staff do not receive subsidies for accommodations before asking whether there was anything local governments could do to “encourage the federal government to recognize the economic zone we’re now living in and look at subsidies for rental.”
Hallam said units that staff would have turned to are now being rented as short-term accommodations, forcing officers to find places in neighbourhoods that conflict with their work. “It’s not always comfortable for police officers to rent next to places where they have to go for calls for service regularly,” due to privacy and personal safety.
“We do get threatened, our children get threatened, it happens.”
But even some of those locations are no longer financially viable, according to Hallam. In addition, ferry travel poses a barrier. “It’s very hard for us,” she said.
In response, Beamish made a motion, which passed unanimously, that the SCRD write to the federal government to request a cost of living subsidy for housing and ferry transportation costs for RCMP staff members on the Sunshine Coast.
Directors also voted unanimously to request more RCMP staff members when speaking with ministers and staff at September’s Union of B.C. Municipalities convention.
