FLETCHER: American ‘defund the police’ movement lives on in Victoria

Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984.You may have heard about the B.C. government firing the entire Greater Victoria school board at the end of January. It even made the front page of The Globe and Mail, but none of the news reports I saw about the controversy got to the heart of what was going on.In short, the school trustees elected in province-wide local elections in 2022 had banned police liaison officers from schools in the B.C. capital region. This brought objections, not only from police, but from parents, youth workers and local indigenous leaders. They all spoke of a growing threat of gang influence in schools, and complained that the board had acted abruptly, with little or no effort to discuss the issue with them.A former superintendent appointed by the education minister as an advisor resigned, saying he couldn’t get any cooperation. Trustees made a mockery of the minister’s demand for a school safety plan, releasing a series of hastily revised plans that avoided the real issues, making impossible demands of staff and even threatening to sue the province. Then they were gone, as they must have known they would be, replaced by a single appointee to restore order and finish out the four-year term.It was no surprise to me that the local teachers’ union was behind the anti-police move. In my years as a community newspaper editor I saw glaring examples of teachers’ unions controlling candidate forums and school boards. Public participation in school board elections is so low that the union executive’s choices are often enough to elect their slates. School board meetings turned into two-part union meetings, first with teacher demands and then the support staff union coming in to seek the crumbs left on the table. For decades, especially since they lost the authority to raise taxes directly in B.C., many trustees saw their role as lobbyists to the provincial government to demand smaller class sizes and more teachers.It’s also no secret what motivated the Victoria board to turn against police. Protests following the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer roared into urban Canada, fuelled by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s participation that disregarded COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. The B.C. health minister would soon after claim (falsely as it turned out) that hospital employees were making bets on whether indigenous patients in emergency had been drinking. This was cited as evidence of “systemic racism” throughout health care and government in general.“Black lives matter” signs popped up, students cut classes to protest, and in a Victoria public square, a mural declaring “MORE JUSTICE MORE PEACE” was painted. The artists, identifying themselves as black, indigenous and people of colour or BIPOC, added the acronym ACAB to the mural, short for “All Cops Are Bastards.” It was grudgingly painted over after being identified, but I still see this message in graffiti that defaces the city.School trustees held onto a fervent prejudice against police. They were backed up by B.C. Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender, who joined them to cite U.S. surveys that suggested BIPOC students may be fearful of police presence. Local input was ignored.Govender was appointed by the NDP government in 2019, restoring the commissioner position that had been eliminated by the previous government. It’s kind of a roving prosecutor role, to get complaints coming into the human rights tribunal.Govender’s biography includes her pronouns (she/her/hers) and a summary of her activist legal career. She is a former director of the Pivot Legal Society, where another activist lawyer named David Eby had earlier made his name by backing protests and confronting police.Govender moved on to be executive director of West Coast LEAF (Legal Education and Action Fund). From 2008 to her latest appointment, Govender’s bio boasts that she “co-authored key reports and articles on crucial social issues such as hate speech, access to justice, gender-based violence and systemic racism.”As one local radio host described the school board dismissal, avoiding any offence to teachers, “it’s not the issue of police liaison itself, it’s their conduct” that got them fired. Wrong. It’s their unfounded, unshakeable hatred of cops that led to their conduct.Victoria recently made it into the national news for another disgrace, after Coun. Susan Kim signed an open letter questioning whether the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist assault on Israel was really so bad or unjustified. Kim and four other city councillors were elected on what is effectively an NDP-union slate.This kind of thing is going to continue until voters take enough interest in local elections to prevent them from being hijacked by campus radicals, who often exert influence through the little-noticed offices of unions.Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984. tomfletcherbc@gmail.com X: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: American ‘defund the police’ movement lives on in Victoria

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