Judge refuses to seal documents alleging RCMP bullying against BC police

(UPDATE: May 1 at 5:50 am): BC Supreme Court Justice Kevin Loo says court documents detailing alleged bullying and harassment of Surrey Police Service members by the RCMP shouldn’t be kept from the public.

Loo refused to seal the material, saying allegations that are "sometimes justified and sometimes spurious" are tendered every day in court.

His ruling came on the second day of a legal challenge by the City of Surrey against the BC Public Safety minister’s order to continue a transition from the RCMP to the municipal Surrey Police Service.

Lawyers for the ministry told Loo Monday that an affidavit filed by Surrey Police Union president Rick Stewart contains a "long list of bullying and harassment incidents" that if made public could cause "undue public concern about the state of affairs at the Surrey RCMP detachment."

Stewart’s affidavit says union members claim "the Surrey RCMP detachment is toxic and hostile, and that they have been subject to bullying, discrimination, harassment, and intimidation."

The affidavit refers to several attached "exhibits" that contain specific details of the Surrey Police Service members’ complaints.

The ministry’s lawyers sought to keep those details sealed, but the exhibits were not immediately available from the BC Supreme Court registry Tuesday.

Surrey RCMP spokesman Staff Sgt. Kris Clark said in a statement that the "RCMP is committed to providing a healthy, safe and respectful work place for all employees, free of harassment and discrimination."

The statement said the Mounties are not a party in the court case and don’t have a copy of the affidavit in question. "Surrey RCMP and SPS officers have worked together in the detachment for over two years and have done so with professionalism," Clark said.

In a separate dispute, Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke has filed a complaint to BC’s Police Complaints Commissioner alleging numerous Surrey Police Service officers withdrew their services in order to meet with their chief and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth, something the Surrey Police Board has denied.

Locke says in a letter obtained by Global News that the meeting happened last Wednesday at about 3 pm and that the incident has "huge implications for public safety."

The Surrey Police Board issued a statement in response saying it can confirm that a number of officers did attend the meeting with its chief and the solicitor general at its training centre.

However, the officers who were on shift were never ordered to attend nor withdrawn from service, the statement says, and on−duty officers had radios with them and were available for calls.

"Over the course of this policing transition, there have been a number of times when officers with SPS and the RCMP have needed to meet with their leadership team or their union to be briefed on significant developments," the statement says.

The board says to "suggest that our officers would jeopardize the safety of Surrey residents to attend a meeting is not only disrespectful but hurtful."

Deputy Police Complaint Commissioner Andrea Spindler said the office was aware of media reports about Locke’s complaint, but they have yet to receive a copy as of late Tuesday.

"We’re working to determine what the details of this complaint are so we can assess next steps," Spindler said.

Spindler said complaints involving "service or policy" matters such as staffing or resource allocation by municipal police departments are assessed by the office and then referred to police boards, which are then "responsible for determining next steps to address the complaint."

(Original story: April 30 at 6:15 am): A BC government lawyer says court documents in a policing dispute with the City of Surrey contain significant allegations of harassment and bullying by the RCMP that should be kept from public view because they could cause "undue public concern."

Trevor Bant was speaking at the start of a hearing on Surrey's petition challenging a direction by Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth that the city transition from the RCMP to the municipal Surrey Police Service.

Surrey claims the province overstepped its authority by ordering the transition, after a prolonged public dispute over the future of policing in the city.

Bant told Justice Kevin Loo on Monday that the material they want heavily redacted includes a list of "very specific incidents" alleged by the head of the Surrey Police Union in a letter outlining "some concerns about RCMP behaviour."

He said there were incidents that include detail about Surrey residents, police officers, locations and police file numbers related to "a series of descriptions of alleged occurrences on shift when SPS and RCMP officers started working together."

"It's just at a level of detail and specificity about specific police operations that … raise some public safety concern," Bant said.

Loo said "almost every case" before the courts involving police officers includes materials about policing, asking Bant why the materials are "special" and need to be left out of the public record.

"None of this has any relevance at all" to what the court would hear, Bant said.

He said there was a "long list of bullying and harassment incidents" they propose to redact from the publicly available court records.

"The allegation being made by the SPS is that RCMP officers have acted inappropriately," he said. "The concern with this really is one of, candidly, undue public alarm in the state of affairs in the Surrey RCMP detachment. The allegations here are really very critical of RCMP behaviour."

He said the RCMP was not a party to the case and could not respond.

"A member of the public reading these very detailed allegations of significant harassment and bullying by police officers without fuller context, without a response from the RCMP, there's a potential for some undue public concern about the state of affairs at the Surrey RCMP detachment," he said.

Public safety in Surrey relied on the two forces working together at the moment, he said, and allowing the allegations to become public would be "a risk of some alarm here."

Bant also said some filings contain police staffing and operational details that could be misused, such as specific numbers of police vehicles.

Surrey's lawyer, Craig Dennis, told the court the "city is not seeking to seal or withhold any information in this proceeding."

Dennis said the minister was also trying to withhold information that was before the minister when he decided to force the city to transition to a municipal force.

Loo said he'd rule on the redactions on Tuesday.

The city claims the provincial government lacks lawful authority to order the transition from the RCMP without providing adequate resources to complete it.

Dennis said the province essentially told the city to "figure it out" on its own when ordering the transition, initially committing to help with an injection of $150 million, which was later withdrawn.

"That $150 million is now zero," Dennis said.

Dennis told the court that Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke and Premier David Eby had agreed to "find a way through this."

Locke and other city officials attended the hearing, but she declined to comment.

"The city lived up to its end of the bargain, the minister pulled the rug out from under it," he said. "The minister had other ideas."

Dennis said the law is "crystal clear" that the city is in charge of policing decisions and that the community charter calls on leaders from different levels of government to resolve disputes through consultation and co-operation.

He said Locke ran on a platform of keeping the RCMP in Surrey and was voted in with a "sufficiently clear mandate" that the province took actions that nullify that mandate in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Loo asked Dennis if he was raising a "novel point of law" or seeking to expand the reach of the Charter in pursuit of his case, because there were no other cases that engage the section of the Charter "exactly" the same way.

Dennis said he wanted the Charter to be applied to a "new set of circumstances," and took Loo through a submission from a Surrey resident who had voted to keep the RCMP by supporting Locke in the 2022 election, equating the vote to an exercise of Charter-protected freedom of expression.

Later, the court heard from Brian Duong, another member of the city's legal team, who outlined the history of policing agreements in the city, and the bureaucratic steps that led up to the legal dispute with the province.

Duong said there's "never been an actual plan in place" to handle the transition to the Surrey Police Service, and reports and committees underestimated how long a transition would take and how much it would cost.

The city's financial plan from 2020 to 2024 contemplated escalating policing costs each year in Surrey, jumping from $175 million in 2020 to $217.5 million by 2024.

"It's some 35 to 40 per cent of the total operating budget for the city, and this is why it matters so much to the city that the SPS is projected to be $75 million more per year, more expensive than the RCMP, and why again it matters so much that whether any imposed transition has sufficient provincial funding support," Duong said.

The hearings are scheduled to conclude Friday.