Alison Redford earned a rebuttal from the local MP when she requested the federal government renew the Police Officers Recruitment Fund.
The Edmonton Journal reported the Progressive Conservative leadership candidate commenting that she would like to see money being put into prisons to go to the province to work “more proactively” with police.
The decision to not renew the recruitment funding impacts the ability to fund more police officers on the ground, Redford reportedly said.
The federal government budgeted $400 million in 2008 for the recruitment fund in a national effort to recruit 2,500 police officers. Alberta received $42.4 million.
“I’m just saying that if there was the opportunity among some of the money that the feds are spending on the justice agenda to continue to fund innovative policing that that would be a good thing,” Redford told the St. Paul Journal, in a phone interview.
“Because of our government there’s more police officers on the streets than there ever has been in Canada,” responded Westlock – St. Paul MP Brian Storseth, an a phone interview from Ottawa with the St. Paul Journal.
“Even though the responsibility of our government isn’t to administer policing in the provinces, we’ve been able to work well with the provinces, particularly the province of Alberta, to make sure that funding has been made available.”
Storseth called the reported comments of Redford “puzzling.” “These are the same comments that have been used by the Liberal Party of Canada for the last six years.”
“It’s the justice system that needs to have some common sense implemented,” he said, calling Redford’s comments “shameless politicking from someone who’s trying to attack our government’s tough on crime policy.”
“My comments were meant to be constructive in trying to solve problems, so to turn this into some sort of a partisan debate I think takes this some place it doesn’t need to go,” Redford said.
Redford said she supports the federal Conservatives’ focus on Canadian concerns for a “vibrant justice system” and that “there are consequences to criminal actions.”
“The fact that the feds are identifying that issue as an important issue I think is great, but what I want to make sure is that as we go forward that we don’t lose sight of both parts of that agenda.”
Putting an offender in jail and releasing without rehabilitation does not accomplish as much as trying to “identify how we can stop people from making those bad choices of committing criminal acts in the first place, whether it’s supports for mental health programs or addictions programs or social work sorts of programs,” she said.
