The New Westminster police board will be considering potential changes to the way it governs policing in the city.
According to the province, municipal police boards in British Columbia perform four main governance functions: employing all sworn and civilian members of the department; providing financial oversight for the department; establishing policies that set the direction for the department; and acting as the authority for policy and service complaints, with the chair being responsible for discipline matters related to the chief constable and deputy.
The New Westminster police board’s governance manual includes many topics, including: board member orientation; external and internal communications; submissions to city council; and procedures of meetings.
In June 2023, Chief Const. Dave Jansen told the police board that he believes there’s a need for “a much more thorough review and rewriting” of its governance manual. He said a review of the manual revealed “shortcomings” and identified the need for a comprehensive re-evaluation and update.
“It is essential to emphasize that relying solely on department staff or myself for the review and alteration of the manual may create potential conflicts of interest,” he told the board in June. “Therefore, engaging external experts in governance will ensure the integrity and credibility of the manual, fostering transparency, accountability and effective oversight.”
At the board’s first meeting of 2024, police board member Mary Trentadue said she’d like the board to have a discussion about governance at its February meeting. She said there are some items she would like the board to consider for 2024.
“I think that the board has a fair amount of work that we need to undertake in the next year, potentially two years it may take us. And so I just would like us to get going on it and just put some things on the table that we really need to discuss,” she said at the Jan. 16 meeting. “Obviously, the governance manual is important. I think an onboarding manual or a policy would be helpful; we potentially will have a new board member coming online soon.”
Trentadue said she’d also like the board to discuss the idea of a “forward calendar” so it can plan what work it wants to do over the next two years. She suggested other topics worth discussing could include the opportunity for having a vice-chair and an executive director for the police board.
“Those are some of the things that I'm really interested in pursuing,” she said. “But I would like us to kind of have a schedule for how we're going to actually take on that work.”
Trentadue also believes the board should have “a lot of involvement” in the update of the governance manual, as opposed to having staff doing the work and bringing it back to the board.
“I would like us to plan how we're going to and discuss how we're going to work on that for this year,” she said. “Because I think it's a big chunk of work.”
Vacancy to be filled
Mayor Patrick Johnstone, who chairs the police board, said one member is currently on a leave of absence and one seat on the board is vacant (Shirley Heafey resigned in May 2023) and is expected to soon be filled.
“We don't want to start the governance review conversation until we have a fully constituted board,” he said.
Anticipating that this is work the board wants to do in 2024, Johnstone said he asked the chief to begin the process of looking for a consultant who could help guide the board through some of the work related to the governance manual. He said all of the items mentioned by Trentadue, aside from the forward calendar, would fall under the governance review discussion.
In a recent interview with the Record, Johnstone stated that work on the police board’s governance model is something needing to be done in 2024. Once the city-appointed position on the board is filled, he said he expects governance work to get underway.
Having attended the Canadian Society for Police Governance conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland in August 2023, Johnstone said he learned that municipal police boards have different ways of doing things. He said some boards have subcommittees and executive directors, neither which are in place in New West.
“It's probably time for us to do better. But again, that's something for the board to discuss,” he told the Record in a Jan. 12 interview. “That will be something coming up this year.”
According to the B.C. Association of Police Boards, there are 13 municipal police departments in British Columbia serving the following communities: Abbotsford, Delta, Central Saanich, Nelson, New Westminster, Oak Bay, Port Moody, Saanich, Surrey, Transit – Metro Vancouver, Vancouver, Victoria-Esquimalt and West Vancouver.
Johnstone said the province now requires all police board members to go through a training program, which is a new thing.
“We call it Watson because that's the company that's provides it,” he said. “We've all gone through this training, and through that training, we've learned that there are other police boards that are operating differently than we are.”
Johnstone said New Westminster is in a “governance gap” between what’s done in smaller communities like Nelson and Port Moody and larger cities like Vancouver and Victoria.
“We don't quite have the sophisticated governance of those large ones. We're kind of more in how a small police board operates,” he said. “And it's time for us, I think, to transition.”
