Questions raised about use of peace officers to patrol New Brunswick highways
CBC
Peace officers who work for the New Brunswick Department of Justice and Public Safety may be handling more of the non-commercial traffic enforcement on the province's highways, but it's not clear exactly how much they're doing or where it's happening.
"If you're going to give people who are not police officers more authority so that they are acting like police officers, shouldn't people know that?" said criminologist Michael Boudreau of St. Thomas University.
Boudreau's comments come after a meeting this fall between municipal officials in southwestern New Brunswick and Public Safety Minister Kris Austin.
At the meeting, Austin said, "some of the highways now are being done by Public Safety," Eastern Charlotte Coun. Darrell Tidd told Information Morning Saint John, during an interview about RCMP expansion plans.
CBC requested interviews with the Department of Justice and Public Safety and with the New Brunswick RCMP to find out more about how these peace officers are operating in collaboration with police.
No interviews were granted, but several communications officers provided prepared answers to some questions by email.
There are now 63 positions provincewide, said one email, from Sarah Bustard, a spokesperson for the Justice and Public Safety Department.
That's a big increase since 2018, when CBC first reported on commercial vehicle enforcement officers issuing speeding tickets to non-commercial motorists. At the time, there were 17 "patrol units," across the province, usually consisting of one officer.
"This is an important change in terms of how policing is conducted in the province," said Boudreau.
"From my perspective, what they're trying to do is create a provincial police force on the cheap," he said.
Since 2019, the budget for the departmental division that these officers fall under increased to $20 million from about $17 million, budget documents show.
"Government investments resulted in increased resources in this program," Bustard said by email.
"It's been creeping," Boudreau said.
Several years ago, conservation officers and other public safety officers received firearms training to deal with aggressive hunters, he said.
This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.
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