The NDP opposition is among those criticizing the move to restructure a number of Victim Services units across the province.
David Shepherd, the Shadow Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Services, says this is another case of the UCP government making changes to “serve their own political interests.”
“Victim Services is a service that has been provided in communities for decades. Folks in communities who knew their communities working alongside the RCMP to help people who had been the victims of violent crime and who had experienced trauma. It was built by Albertans, served Albertans and was working, the UCP now has collapsed all of these 62 organizations into four regional bodies.”
Here in our region, the centralization means the Victim Services units that were previously in communities such as Peace River and High Level, are now being run out of Grande Prairie.
Shepherd says many people in rural communities will now have difficulties getting support from Victim Services.
“That’s on top of other changes that the UCP made. They passed legislation to change the time when somebody could apply for the benefits from these services from two years to 45 days. They’ve cut the amount of funding that was available because they passed legislation saying they could take dollars out of victim services to pay for crown prosecuters and other policing initiatives that they wanted to put forward.”
Many rural municipalities have spoken against the changes with some saying that this could lead to the government following through on creating a provincial police force.
You can listen to the full interview below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
