Doug Firby: Why Alberta should cut its ties with the RCMP

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This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday - Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on April 28, 2023.

On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra spoke with Doug Firby, freelance writer and former editor for the Calgary Herald, about the idea of dropping the RCMP and creating an Alberta police, much like Ontario and Quebec have their own police services. 

Ezra said that one of his criticisms of the RCMP is that the police force is increasingly running political errands. He asked Doug why he thinks that Alberta should opt out of its contract with the RCMP. 

Two reasons. Number one, the political reason, Alberta is trying to assert its rights in the constitution and this is a relatively easy way for the province to cut one of its apron strings to the federal government. This is something that we could have complete control over. The people of Alberta could hold this police force accountable, set the priorities and so on. That's reason number one. Reason number two, as we've seen, is the RCMP are not doing as good a job as they might have in the past. If you know, if we're to believe the historical records, I talked to people in rural communities around Alberta. And there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the level of crime in the rural areas in particular, and the RCMP's seeming inability to respond to that crime or, worse in some cases, kind of a ‘no’ attitude.

Ezra questioned why the RCMP is still running its police force in Alberta. 

I understand that's a contract actually, like a business contract signed between Alberta and the RCMP, so it's not that it's a constiutional natural state. It is not natural for Ottawa to run a police force in Stetler, Alberta or Cards Alberta. It's just, that's not the default state. That's something that was chosen decades ago. And it was sort of like, you know, when you auto renew a subscription to something you just sort of forget about it and just rolls over and over.

Doug explained why Alberta originally signed a contract with the RCMP.

It used to be cheaper to have the RCMP because the federal government was subsidizing the cost of providing the service over the years, and the amount of subsidy has been cut back. And the federal government is constantly making noises that they would like to eliminate the subsidy altogether. And so it's no longer going to be cheaper for in any province to use the RCMP.