Treaty Three Police fate not decided

The Treaty Three Police Service board executive has announced that it does not intend to close down the police service.
“It is not nor ever will be the desire of the board of directors, executive or our member-representative communities to close our police service,” said the executive in a July 10 press release. “In addition, we want to make it equally clear that our deficit was not attributed to financial mismanagement or irresponsible spending of funds, as clearly stated in a recent financial audit.”
The executive also said the board of directors and the police management team have not laid any blame on the officers, their union or any of the police employees for causing the deficit.
“We do not disagree with the officers that our officers and civilian employees alike should be paid equivalent to the Ontario Provincial Police,” said the executive in the press release. “However, under the First Nation policing model which funds Treaty Three Police Service, our service is funded quite differently than the way other police services are funded.”
While the federal government funds 52 per cent of the police service’s budget and the provincial government funds the other 48 per cent, the executive said the finance line objects are not funded equally in comparison.
“For example, our police service is funded for 75 First Nation constables,” the executive said. “This funding is to cover sergeants, staff sergeants, deputies and the chief of police salaries and benefits at constable salary, where other main stream police services are funded per rank allocation.”
The executive said a federal arbitrator ordered the police service to pay OPP salary rates and benefits to the Treaty Three Police officers effective Jan. 1, 2013 even though the police service had made it clear in the arbitration process that a decision other than a nominal increase in officer’s salary would put the police service in financial duress.
“Given that this was a federal arbitrator’s decision, that decision was provided to our federal and provincial negotiators and we believed that the increases in salary and benefits were going to be covered,” the executive said. “During this time it was also believed that the Police Officer Recruitment Fund (PORF) was going to be renewed.”
But the PORF ended on March 31 and the federal government’s First Nation Policing Program was renewed, beginning on April 1, for five years with no increases to the Treaty Three Police budget.
“With a 2012/2013 fiscal year-end deficit of $640,000, and although our service initially paid the arbitrator’s imposed OPP salary rates Jan. 1 to March 31, with the uncertainty of any new monies coming, we directed our Chief of Police to reduce the salary increase level to one half of the imposed arbitrator’s decision,” the executive said.
The executive said NAN Grand Chief Harvey Yesno, Ontario Regional Chief Stan Beardy, National Chief Shawn Atleo and the board of directors all lobbied different levels of government for an increase in funding, but to no avail.
“To say the least, reality set in and to keep from incurring further debt, or being irresponsible and not doing anything, a painful but necessary decision had to be made to have our officer’s salary revert back to pre-arbitrator’s rates of pay effective June 10,” the executive said.
The executive said the employee benefits would also create a $330,000 debt.
“Taking into account the firm position of governments, with no funding increases, coupled with massive projected debt if our service continued to pay the arbitrator’s imposed decision of OPP rates, our projected deficit would be in excess of $3.3 million at the end of the 2013/2014 fiscal year,” the executive said. “We made it clear to the local union executive that our budgets are fixed and we need them to understand our fiscal situation. Fixed funding will be provided to our police service over the next four years and we can get out of debt with our debt reduction plan in the next few years.”
Meanwhile, the executive has requested the union to drop its Canadian Industrial Relations Board challenge, grievances and unfair labour practices against the board of directors; maintain registration under provincial legislation to form a union provincially, while dropping the unfair labour challenges; and to have regional union representatives to personally negotiate with the police service management team to formalize a new collective agreement under provincial labour laws and stay within the funding levels provided by both levels of government.