Small-town Alberta inched another provincial bill closer yesterday to potentially replacing the RCMP with an upgraded sheriff service.
The UCP government used the first day of the spring sitting of the legislature to introduce Bill 15, the Public Safety and Emergency Services Statutes Amendment Act 2026.
If passed, the act would pave the way for a shift of staff to a fledgling Crown corporation called the Alberta Sheriffs Police Service, or ASPS, without a disruption of service.
A contingent of about 600 sheriffs already doing police-like work would get the training and qualifications they need to become police officers.
Sheriff service pitched as ‘choice’
Mike Ellis, the minister of public safety and emergency services, didn’t commit to outright replacement of the RCMP, telling a news conference that the amendments are about creating choice and complementing established services.
But he did say that policing costs are crippling the budgets of some small municipalities, adding that he looks forward to reaching memorandums of understanding with those among them that envision ASPS detachments on their soil.
“Right now I have a laundry list of complaints from municipalities throughout rural Alberta about the increased costs,” Ellis said. “These are not costs that I’m imposing on them. These are costs strictly (charged) by the RCMP.”
Until 2020, municipalities with populations under 5,000 didn’t pay for the RCMP out of their budgets. The province covered all 70 per cent of the total Alberta cost under its agreement with the RCMP.
But the government decided to phase-in a local share that would eventually see small municipalities pay 30 per cent of the provincial commitment, based on 2018 RCMP costs.
The current funding model between the municipalities and the provinces is set to expire March 2026, after a one-year extension of the 2020 schedule. The same formula with a new baseline would mean large increases to small communities.
Rising RCMP costs squeeze small municipalities
Effective April 1, 2020, they paid more than $23 million for the RCMP, according to the Rural Municipalities of Alberta. That number had increased to more than $67 million in 2024.
For some low-population municipalities, the RCMP is “becoming unsustainable and unaffordable,” Ellis said.
The province so far doesn’t know what the RCMP will charge after a current arrangement expires in 2032.
“As far as the absolute commitment (to replacing the RCMP), I don’t think that is something that we need to say right now, until I can actually get a definitive answer from the federal government as to what their actual funding model is going to look like,” he said.
Crime rates higher in rural Alberta, province says
According to Statistics Canada, the police-reported per-capita crime rate in rural Alberta was 54 per cent higher than it was in urban Alberta in 2023. Also 54 per cent higher was the Crime Severity Index, which aims to make overall, violent and non-violent crime more widely comparable by meshing seriousness with volume.
“Crime is getting more violent. It’s getting more organized and, quite frankly, it’s getting more complex now, whether it’s social disorder, drug activity in our downtowns or property crime in rural Alberta,” said Ellis.
In late 2024, Alberta RCMP said there were 1,772 police officer positions under the provincial contract. The vacancy rate was 17.3 per cent or 306 positions.
But nearly 60 per cent or 182 of the vacancies were from officers on leave of some kind, meaning that most of them would presumably return to service.
Albertans are “tired of feeling like the deck seems to be stacked against them” and hearing excuses for a lack of police protection, said Ellis, the member for Calgary-West.
“They don’t want excuses, and they certainly don’t want governments that just react after the damage is already done. They want us to stay ahead of the criminals and they want results.”