The Alberta legislature will debate changes to the Police Act which, if passed, would allow those in police-adjacent roles with the government to make a full transition to an independent provincial police service. Bill 15, the Public Safety and Emergency Services Statutes Amendment Act, was tabled by public safety minister Mike Ellis on Tuesday afternoon during the first spring legislature sitting of the year. If passed, the new legislation would make it easier for unionized and non-unionized sheriffs who already perform police-like jobs, such as peace officers, to become full members of the Alberta Sheriffs Police Service (ASPS), the province’s independent police service first proposed in July 2025. It would also create a formal transition process for civilian staff who would like to join the ASPS. Alberta sheriffs and management are currently government workers, the province said, and would become members of an independent Crown corporation in becoming ASPS officers. In a Tuesday press conference, Ellis said he found a gap of about six weeks worth of training between around 600 of some 1,200 sheriffs in the province and becoming a fully established police officer. “For decades, our sheriffs have been part of the landscape of community safety, doing everything from high-speed traffic enforcement to specialized surveillance,” he said. “They’re highly skilled, they’re dedicated, and quite frankly, they’ve been doing the police-like functions of this work for a long time.” Around 600 sheriffs performing highway patrol services, neighbourhood patrols, fugitive apprehension and surveillance and more would be eligible to undergo training to become a full-fledged ASPS officer. “Those police officers will be able to act without having their hands held by the local police of jurisdiction,” Ellis said. RCMP, cost implications Ellis said the move was still aimed at “augmenting and supporting” police entities like the RCMP. He maintained that the ASPS was meant to create another option for Alberta municipalities, as costs for the federally contracted RCMP – and the share of what Alberta’s communities are paying to maintain those contracts – increase. “Right now, I have a laundry list of complaints from municipalities all throughout rural Alberta complaining about the increased cost,” Ellis said on Tuesday. Rural towns across the province, like Mayerthorpe, have expressed concern as to how an increase in policing costs may fit into their budget. Funding models from 2020 require communities with populations less than 5,000 to contribute up to 30 per cent of front-line policing costs, but the Alberta government has said new RCMP collective agreements and inflation led to those communities paying less than their intended share. “It’s not about just committing to the RCMP at, quite frankly, a rate that is becoming unaffordable for folks in rural Alberta right now. I have to be able to provide them options,” he said, pointing to memorandums of understanding in Coaldale and Hardisty committing to ASPS detachments in the near future. Those municipalities had previously shouldered 100 per cent of their policing costs. Ellis further said that funding to get the ASPS off the ground would come from an already existing budget for the service. That, he said, would become more apparent when the province’s 2026 budget is tabled on Thursday. “We have the Alberta sheriffs’ branch that has a budget. This bill … lifts the money that is within the Alberta sheriffs branch and moves it into the Crown corporation that we built during the last session,” he explained. Brian Sauvé, president and CEO of the National Police Federation, told CTV News ahead of the bill’s tabling that he was foreseeing issues with a full transition to an independent provincial police service, both financially and in regards to the new duties of potential ASPS officers coming from sheriff roles. “The Alberta sheriffs already do work alongside our (RCMP) membership, and they do provide a valuable service to Albertans,” he said, noting that on highways, for example, people prepare for traffic stops whether a Mountie, a municipal officer or a sheriff pulls them over. “So are we looking at something different? … As it sits today, the sheriffs and the RCMP do work really well together.” He also pointed to areas like Grande Prairie or Surrey, B.C., in saying that there are only so many police training academy seats to support the transition. “If you’re looking at bolstering recruitment, you also have to start thinking downstream. The RCMP Academy is almost operating at record levels right now … They have, at the end of next month, an all-Alberta troop from all across Canada that’s going to be graduating and heading to Alberta,” he said. Bobby-Joe Borodey, the vice president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, said the sheriffs and civilian staff that fall under the union have not been apprised of any potential changes to their employment opportunities. “We just want to make sure that worker rights are protected … that’s always our main priority. It’s just difficult at this time, because this government has announced big, sweeping changes,” she told CTV News on Tuesday. “We don’t know who, we don’t know what and we don’t know when all of this is to take place … if we could get some more details sooner rather than later, it would be very much appreciated.” To that end, she said she didn’t have a concrete idea of how many union members working in that sector – which range from courthouse sheriffs, to highway patrol to conservation officers and supporting civilian staff – would be willing to make the transition to an independent provincial force. “Some are interested, others are hesitant. They’re just unaware of what the details are, so it’s difficult to make that decision,” she said. “Others are just not interested in becoming police officers. They went into the line of work that they’re doing because that’s the line of work they wanted to do.” An Alberta Provincial Police Service Transition Study from 2021 estimated annual operating costs of a provincial police force to fall between $734 million and $758 million plus a projected one-time transition cost of about $366 million over six years. Alberta currently pays 70 per cent of funding for police with the federal government covering 30 per cent. In 2024-25, the province contributed about $332.3 million With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nicole Weisberg
