Edmonton police funding debate dominated by conflict of interest concerns
CBC
City council has begun debating how police should be funded in the coming years, but a potential conflict of interest involving the Edmonton police chief dominated Monday's discussion.
The Edmonton Police Commission hired a group called the Community Safety and Knowledge Alliance, Inc. to prepare a report on police budgeting with data from several jurisdictions.
The findings lean in favour of a funding formula, which would give police a consistent budget with annual increases.
Chief Dale McFee is president and chair of the non-profit group and several councillors, including Coun. Aaron Paquette, flagged that as a potential conflict of interest.
"Perception is everything, especially when you're talking about the ultimate law enforcement authority in Edmonton," Paquette said.
"What people would want to see is everything to be beyond reproach, passing the sniff test, to not even be on the borders of being perceived as a conflict of interest."
McFee was not present at the council meeting Monday.
Matthew Barker, the commission's executive director, said they chose the CSKA through a sole-sourced, non-competitive contract process.
The non-profit was chosen for its subject expertise and access to data in different jurisdictions, Barker said.
He said McFee had no involvement in the report, which included participation from the Peel Regional Police Board.
"[He] has no fiscal interest or benefit from CSKA engaging in this work," Barker told council. "In order to maintain the integrity of the report, the police chiefs did not write, direct or otherwise influence its contents."
Cal Corley, chief executive officer of the CSKA, said the group also employed the expertise of Bill Hughes, a senior fellow with the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, as well as two lawyers from an independent firm.
Coun. Erin Rutherford suggested council remove the report entirely from the package of documents to send a message.
"From my role, accepting this information is potentially perceived as condoning the perceived conflict of interest that does or does not exist with this report," Rutherford said. "I do also think that there is some inherent biases in the document that I did read."
