Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors Devin Dreeshen was criticized on Dec. 2, for his announcement of sweeping photo radar changes in Alberta, by members of Alberta’s law enforcement community.

Speaking to the media, following the minister’s announcement on Monday, Calgary Police Chief and President of the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police, Mark Neufeld, said that out of respect he had declined to answer questions about the proposed changes on Friday Nov. 29, following Postmedia columnist Rick Bell writing an exclusive story on the changes.

Chief Neufeld said that the Calgary Police Service, along with law enforcement colleagues across the province, was only given notice of the changes at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, long after the column had been published.

“We are very concerned at what we perceive to be glib and perhaps inappropriate communication by the Minister of Transportation and economic corridors that serves to trivialize and effectively diminish the seriousness of what’s a very important public safety issue in Alberta,” said Chief Neufeld.

Minister Dreeshen, wearing a custom “no cash cow” apron and button during the announcement at the Transit Smokehouse and BBQ in Edmonton, repeatedly called photo radar enforcement in the province a cash cow, and cited specific locations where photo radar was used as fishing wells.

“My colleagues and I believe that at a time in our community, when many people are displaying a diminished respect for our institutions, including policing, we’ve conveyed to the provincial government that having a provincial cabinet minister speak in this manner is unprofessional and it has the potential to undermine the public’s trust and confidence in their police services,” said Chief Neufeld.

“Ultimately, a loss of trust serves nobody and makes the job of the honourable police members doing the work on the front lines all the more difficult.”

He said that he encouraged a more professional dialogue when discussing the issue of traffic law enforcement, saying that while some might have found Minister Dreeshen’s media announcement funny, it diminished the very serious harm that is done by traffic collisions.

“We would encourage the Minister to consider those citizens who have been injured or killed on Alberta roadways and their loved ones. 24 such Albertans have died in fatal collisions on the streets of Calgary in 2023, and year to date, there’s been 25 killed on the streets of Calgary in 2024.”

LiveWire Calgary sent questions to Minister Dreeshen’s office, asking about why he chose to present the changes in that way, and for his response to comments made by Chief Neufeld.

Policing efforts to be likely defunded as a result of reduced ticket revenue

Chief Neufeld said that calling traffic enforcement a cash cow was also insulting to police officers, who base their photo radar locations on the number of collisions that occur, and on the requests of community members to improve traffic safety.

“The language is very insulting because I think it speaks to professionalism. The reality of it is, it’s been framed up as though this is just done to generate money,” Chief Neufeld said.

The work they do to enforce traffic laws by effect is revenue-generating, because of how the province has set up the laws around that enforcement.

“At the end of the day, there’s nothing we can do in terms of traffic enforcement that won’t generate revenue,” he said.

“It makes it sound as though we’re out there putting these things wherever to make money, and then using the money for the Christmas party, the revenue that is generated by these things actually goes into things and programs that Albertans value. The reality of it is, they probably don’t know what those are, until they start going away.”

Among those, said Chief Neufeld, were funds used directly for traffic safety enforcement, for supporting the victims of crime, and for policing in general.

The reduced revenue likely to come as a result of fewer tickets being given out shouldn’t be conflated with the talk about defunding the police.

“I don’t want to get into the rhetoric around that. At the end of the day, this isn’t a political decision for us. It may well be for the province, certainly, and that’s why they’re called politicians,” he said.

“But this, for myself and my colleagues, is a public safety issue. There’s implications to budgets, of course, because some of the money flows back to the municipality. But again, it would do a tremendous disservice to people in the city and to police officers to say that this is a cash cow.”

Chief Neufeld also took issue with the lack of engagement with law enforcement in the province on the changes, saying he’d tried on no less than eight different occasions since July to schedule a meeting with Minister Dreeshen to discuss the issue, without result.

“The one time there was a meeting set, the minister canceled the meeting with no alternative, and we have not been able to speak about this,” he said.

Data, and position of law enforcement mischaracterized

He said that he also took offence to the way that the minister also characterized law enforcement officers in the province as being supportive of the changes to photo radar.

“At best, we believe that the input of the Alberta police community was ignored, and at worst, we’re concerned that it’s been mischaracterized. To be clear, what we told the government on this file was, firstly, that evidence clearly demonstrates that automated traffic enforcement is effective in making streets safer and in saving lives,” he said.

“In a letter, we were advised that these decisions will enhance traffic safety. We don’t believe that to be true. Further, the letter stated that law enforcement in the province was engaged and that our feedback was instrumental in shaping these decisions. To be clear, the feedback we gave the government was not consistent with these decisions.”

He said that in the letter provided to the province, statistics like fatal crashes being down 75 per cent, injuries down 56 per cent, and total collisions down 33 per cent in Calgary were conveyed as a result of photo radar enforcement.

He said locations for automated enforcement, like Beddington Trail and Country Hills, were singled out by the province inappropriately.

“In 2024 thus far, so year to date, we know, because of the intersection safety devices at the location, that over 9 million vehicles have gone through that intersection. Thus far in 2024, there’s been 14,500 speeding tickets that have been issued there. So that actually comes down to 39.7 per day on average, or 1.6 tickets an hour,” Neufeld said.

“That equates to one-tenth of 1 per cent of drivers that went through that intersection received a ticket.”

The natural result of the changes to photo radar in Alberta would be decreased safety for the public and for officers, said Chief Neufeld.

“We also believe that further restrictions on ASD or the removal of intersection safety devices will result in one inescapable conclusion, that is that we will see an increase in serious injury and fatal collisions on our roadways,” he said.

“We’re talking about the fact that it offers an alternative to officer-based enforcement where safety is a concern. I’m talking about those situations on roadways that are high-speed roadways, where perhaps there’s not adequate room to pull motorists over and do in-person traffic enforcement. We want to keep our officers and citizens safe during these types of enforcement interactions for obvious reasons.”