By Spencer Sterritt

Gender-specific guarding ends at Nanaimo jail

Oct 31, 2017 | 2:38 PM

NANAIMO — The City has followed through on eliminating gender-specific guarding, but it’s unclear how much money the controversial policy shift will save taxpayers.

During a presentation to Council Monday night, chief operations officer Brad McRae confirmed the 12-year practice of ensuring a male and female guard are at the RCMP detachment cells was cancelled.

The move was recommended in the Core Review, which said the City could save $360,000 a year by eliminating the policy and four prison guard positions.

McRae said the positions were eliminated and four prison guard staff were re-assigned within the detachment.

Coun. Sheryl Armstrong, who retired from the RCMP after 35 years on the job and was involved with gathering info on other police detachments and their guarding policies, said it was appropriate to cancel the policy because it raised too many concerns.

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“Everybody used to have male and female guard. And then studies came out that it wasn’t appropriate and could be a human rights violation (over hiring specific genders),” she said.

Armstrong noted guarding at the jail is now gender-neutral rather than gender-specific.

“I believe every police force in Canada has gone to gender-neutral. It doesn’t mean we don’t have female guards, because we still do.”

It’s unclear what savings, if any, will come from the re-assignment.

“We won’t realize exactly what those numbers are until we give it some time to play out,” coun. Fuller said. “We just started these things, so we can’t say exactly how much we’re going to save over the long run.”

In May, the City’s chief financial officer Victor Mema said he couldn’t commit to the savings referenced in the core review, since it hadn’t been analyzed by City staff at the time.

“I never commit to a recommendation that’s coming from somebody else’s review,” he told NanaimoNewsNOW at the time.

Previously, Nanaimo council voted 5-4 in October 2016 to controversially eliminate the positions, sparking an outcry on social media.

During Monday night’s council meeting, coun. Diane Brennan reiterated her concern over getting rid of gender-specific jail guarding.

“Not knowing how much money we were going to save, we still went ahead in the face of considerable push back from the community, in particular the women in this community. That has always been a disappointment for me and I remain disappointed we would have taken those steps not knowing how much money we would save.”

spencer@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @spencer_sterrit