LAC LA BICHE - Lac La Biche County councillors have voted to allocate a million dollars to pursue the expansion of the municipality's popular Law Enforcement Training Program.
The program offers a full,11-week class that graduates Community Peace Officers, as well as individual courses that have been offered to peace officers and other branches of law enforcement from across the province. The fast-growing interest in the program is the main reason for the needed expansion.
Lac La Biche County's Manager of Enforcement Services, and a primary instructor at the course, Chris Clark, said approximately 350 individual participants — including 32 graduating peace officers — went through some aspect of the training programs in 2022. The 2023 registration numbers look slightly lower — about 300 — due to restricted space for classrooms and outdoor training, he said.
"We have had to limit the sizes of some courses because we just don't have the space," said Clark, who was instrumental in bringing the programming to the municipality.
The million dollar funding infusion will be used to explore and secure additional space required to meet the growing demands for program that has been running for the last two years. In-class training takes place at the Protective Services Building, located on Beaverhill Road and at classrooms in Portage College. Both of those locations, in recent months, have been at capacity-levels, however. Some of that needed space will be larger classrooms, and some will be for land to operate an emergency vehicle driving course on a year-round basis, as well as a gun range where officers can train for a wide range of scenarios.
The program began as a training course for Community Peace Officers, through a first-of-its-kind partnership between the municipality, Alberta Justice and Portage College. The program provided a full,11-week Level 1 Community Peace Officers program. As the months went by, however, the demand for individualized training became apparent. Fish and Wildlife officers, Conservation Officers, Sheriffs and other branches of law enforcement from communities across the province now make up a large part of the registrations.
What started as something Clark calls "an off the side of the desk" project that operated within the County's Enforcement Services department, has become a stand-alone service that has drawn interest from across the province — and needs more resources to meet the growing demands.
Invest now
"For this program to survive, we need to invest," said Clark, speaking to Lac La Biche County councillors in the public part of Tuesday's meeting, before the decision was made.
That investment, say councillors is easier to make knowing that training brings in revenues to the municipality and economic spin-off to the community.
A recent training module will see 50 Fish and Wildlife recruits and 10 instructors in the community for a five-month training session. Clark said the economic impact of that class will be about $1.5 million in registration fees and economic benefits to the community. If funding can be secured to expand the program, bring in more instructors, create larger classrooms and offer year-round training, it could be have an annual community economic impact exceeding $2 million.
Even a small training session taking place this week, that has eight RCMP officers from detachments outside the community taking training sessions for three days can bring new dollars to the community.
"We have eight RCMP at hotels for three nights, with food," said Clark, adding that feedback from groups who have taken the training has been very good. "It's something that is definitely in need.. we need to build on what we have and make it bigger and better."
Lac La Biche County councillor Lorin Tkachuk said the training program is a locally-provided service that can pay for itself, unlike many other much-needed municipal services that are not revenue-makers.
"We are spending many millions of dollars on a new pool that we will never make money on. This (training centre) is a revenue-maker," he said, fully supporting the million-dollar spend to "keep this ball rolling" and to keep the community's strategic advantage in a competitive marketplace where roadblocks could provide challenges.
Urgent and emergent
One of those new roadblocks is Beaumont.
In recent days, elected officials from the Town of Beaumont — with support from their MLA, as well as law enforcement officials — sent an unsolicited request to Alberta Justice and other provincial departments to build their own peace officer training centre. While no funding figures or specific plans were identified, provincial officials have sent out a province-wide news release about the request.
Lac La Biche County officials are aware of Beaumont's request and know they have to act quickly on behalf of their own residents.
Lac La Biche County councillor John Modal listed off several advantages to the Lac La Biche County training program, including current agreements with communities like the Siksika First Nation and the City of Lethbridge for peace officer training,as well as the continuing requests from provincial departments for training sessions, and the unique partnership with Alberta Justice.
"The capital we are investing will be coming back to us," he said.
Lac La Biche County Mayor Paul Reutov full supports the spend. He says it highlights the municipality's continuing plans to attract new business and new dollars to the community.
"It falls right in line with what we have been preaching for economic development," he said.
The million dollars will be coming from the municipality's Stabilization Reserve Fund.
The office of Fort McMurray - Lac La Biche MLA Brian Jean, who is also Alberta's minister of Jobs, Economy and Northern Development, was contacted by the Lac La Biche POST newsroom on Saturday for a comment on law enforcement training programs, but he has yet to respond.
More details on Lac La Biche County's plans and a timeline are expected in the coming weeks.
