I am attaching in it's entirety the response I received yesterday from Minister Farnworth. MORE TO COME after this post, but I am only able to update every 24 hours. Once you have been informed, I will then post on FB and share those posts Widely. I appreciate your participation and hope that you will continue to garner support. MORE SURPRISES IN THE WORKS and if you'd like to be involved, please reach out to me at the earliest. Without further adieu, the entire letter to myself. Copy and pasted. I also believe the TWO positions should be held by two different elected officials. 

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PSSG Correspondence PSSG:EX <PSSG.Correspondence@gov.bc.ca> 
 
Tue, Sep 10, 4:05 PM (2 days ago)
 
 
Thank you for your email.  As the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General in British Columbia, I am pleased to respond about work Premier David Eby and I are doing to make sure that everyone feels safe in their community.

We are taking action to fight crime and keep people safe and communities strong.  We are focused on attacking root causes and supporting law enforcement in their work.  We are committed to addressing concerns about public safety we hear from members of the public and the business community, by monitoring and stopping repeat violent offenders, assisting people struggling with mental health and addictions on our streets, and making sure police have the resources they need.  We are listening to police leadership, unions and individual officers while also working with key partners in health care and the non-profit sector to implement solutions.  

In your email, you ask for us to ensure the BC has a comprehensive public safety plan.  Our Safer Communities Action Plan contains 31 concrete actions to make people and communities safer under two tracks: enforcement and intervention services.  These actions are improving coordination between law enforcement, community service organizations, the justice system, and health providers, and they are helping create a collaborative, coordinated approach to address the issues people are seeing in their communities.  To read more and see what we are doing, please visit the following website:   https://strongerbc.gov.bc.ca/safer-communities 

We know that to keep our communities safe we must have properly resourced police.  As part of our Action Plan, we have made a record investment of $230 million to hire 250 new RCMP officers across the province.  These positions are in priority units like Major Crime, BC Highway Patrol and in rural and remote detachments.  This investment in the BC RCMP addresses existing vacancies and gaps in staffing and will reach the full authorized strength of 2,602 members.  I am pleased to let you know that so far, we have hired 123 officers, and the BC RCMP are projecting that we will have the full complement of officers hired ahead of schedule. 

As the Minister of Public Safety, I am aware that police agencies across the country, including the RCMP, are experiencing recruitment challenges.  I have directed staff in my Ministry to work with the BC RCMP to monitor and address recruitment and vacancy issues in the communities they serve.  Premier Eby and I have consistently raised our concerns about recruitment and retention challenges in the RCMP to my counterpart, the federal Minister of Public Safety and to the Prime Minister, and asked the federal government to take steps to address it.  While we have seen some initial changes like increased capacity at the RCMP Depot in Regina, these efforts are only a first step in the long-term sustainable solutions to police recruitment and retention. 

Another key action of our Plan is to go after the small number of individuals who are repeatedly committing crimes against others on our streets.  The Repeat Violent Offending Intervention Initiative (ReVOII) was created just over a year ago provide repeat offenders with a higher intensity of supervision and surveillance, a case management plan to address their health or other issues, and connect them with government services and community agencies to help them break the cycle of offending.  As a result, individuals identified for the program experience a higher intensity of community supervision, a case management plan to address their complex needs and connect them with other government services and community agencies, an increase in monitoring and surveillance by police, and the involvement of dedicated Crown counsel. 

We have also invested in a new Special Investigation and Targeted Enforcement program that provides municipal and RCMP police detachments with operational funding that enhances their capacity for investigating repeat offender cases.  This program is helping to ensure that we give the police the tools and resources they need to keep us safe. 

Our government is also going after gangs and organized crime that are hurting people and our communities and fuelling the toxic drug crisis.  Every year, we are investing $100 million in intelligence programs targeting guns, gangs and illicit drug activities and we continue to join in advocacy to the federal government that more needs to be done to tackle transnational organized crime at federally regulated ports in our province.  We are also making changes that help law enforcement seize criminals’ fast cars, luxury goods, and real estate holdings to send the message that a life of crime does not pay.

Premier Eby and I continue to call on the federal government to increase funding, enforcement, and investigations at Canadian ports, because we are seeing first-hand the devastating impacts of organized crime who are using gaps in enforcement and federal legislation to enable precursor drugs and auto theft to proliferate through our ports.  To tackle this problem, we need a multi-pronged national approach, which must include port policing, enhanced port security measures and interagency information sharing and collaboration between national, provincial and local police agencies. 

I appreciate you writing to me and look forward to continuing my work with Premier Eby to make sure that people face consequences for breaking the law.  We are going to keep taking action to ensure people face consequences for violent acts and that there are strong intervention services to tackle root causes and help people break the cycle. 

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

Sincerely,

Mike Farnworth

Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General 

  and Deputy Premier

pc:       The Honourable David Eby, KC, Premier