The Lower Mainland’s Transit Police (Hi Chief! Hope your “monitoring” is going well!) have taken to publishing their Freedom of Information responses online. There are four up there now—all from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The latest was on Transit Police legal fees. Transit Police legal fees by year:
That’s more than 1 per cent of the Transit Police budget—just in fees paid to lawyers. Interestingly, the force has spent nearly $175,000 on lawyers related to Police Act investigations in the past 18 months and more than a quarter million dollars on “indemnification advice” in that year and a half.
This is the fallout from having an expensive police force. If we had Transit Security handling day-to-day operations on SkyTrain, taxpayers would have save the $175,000 in Police Act legal fees, and the indemnification advice category would have been slashed as well.
It also leads to some valid questions:
Is Canada Off Track?
Canada has problems. You see them at gas station. You see them at the grocery store. You see them on your taxes.
Is anyone listening to you to find out where you think Canada’s off track and what you think we could do to make things better?
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Franco Terrazzano
Federal Director
Hey, it’s Franco.
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