Cape Breton regional police looking for more money to attract new recruits

Police in Cape Breton Regional Municipality are looking for more money this year to enter the highly competitive field of officer recruitment and to cover the cost of lost revenue from cancelling a deal with the RCMP.

Chief Robert Walsh says the force's normal complement is 200 officers, but it is currently short 24 and it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract replacements, even those coming right out of school.

"We are working closely with the Atlantic Police Academy to recruit candidates from the CBRM and we are marketing directly to experienced officers, but to stay competitive, we need to do more," he said.

On Wednesday, CBRM's police commission approved a draft budget with $2.5 million more in wages and benefits.

Most of that is due to increases in the police union's collective agreement, but the amount includes $122,000 for recruitment, Walsh said.

"We know other agencies are offering incentives like paid on-the-job training and signing bonuses, both of which we believe would be extremely effective to recruit candidates here from the police academy."

Minimum wage for training

Cadets have to take work placements as part of their training at the academy, but until now, that has been at the students' expense.

Walsh said the Cape Breton Regional Police Service is proposing to pay students minimum wage — $15 an hour — while training in CBRM.

It could also offer $5,000 signing bonuses, he said.

"This is a practice that we're seeing right across the country and in fact other communities in Ontario are paying for people to come there with travel allowances and/or hiring bonuses," Walsh said.

"We've seen some upwards of almost $30,000 in Ontario."

Police in Hamilton, Ont., recently said recruiting has become increasingly difficult due to working conditions, negative public perceptions of policing and headhunting from other provinces such as British Columbia.

Walsh said the Cape Breton service could also use some of the incentive money to attract trained officers looking to relocate.

The budget also includes nearly $350,000 in wages and benefits for two officers seconded to the RCMP for traffic duty on 100-series provincial highways, which are the federal agency's jurisdiction.

Cape Breton police have a memorandum of understanding with RCMP that pays the service to put two of its officers in RCMP vehicles, but the deal ends April 1.

Walsh said he is letting that lapse because it no longer covers the cost and it takes two officers away from CBRM priorities.

"This MOU was considered a bit of a moneymaker when we had the capacity, but we no longer have the extra capacity," he said.

"Further, the positions have been underfunded for several years."

"It's a much better allocation of our resources at this time to bring these officers back into our own organization to assist with our own traffic enforcement, specialized services and frontline resources, helping with our overtime and our revenue from fines."

The budget also includes an extra $95,000 to cover the rising cost of gasoline and diesel and another $70,000 for in-person training that had been curtailed during the pandemic.

The draft budget presented to the police commission did not include up to $75,000 in new revenue from proposed higher fees for providing criminal record checks and collision reports for civil litigation or insurance purposes.

Fee increases proposed

Police had been doing criminal record checks for free for members of volunteer organizations, providing collision reports for free or for as little as $23 and had been doing peace bond applications and delivering them for free while other agencies charge fees for those services.

Last year, the police commission voted to increase those fees, but they were never implemented. 

On Wednesday, after debating four options for charging volunteers for record checks, the commission settled on a $5 fee that Walsh said would nominally cover administrative costs.

Other proposed fee changes include:

• Peace bonds go from $0 to $75.
• General collision reports go from $23 to $30.
• Investigative collision reports go from $0 to $345.
• Collision reconstruction reports go from $0 to $1,500.
• Electronic statements go from $0 to $25.
• Photos (group of four) go from $0 to $50.

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