Grande Prairie raises police background check fee
City raised fee from $40 to $45 to cover added cost for those who require fingerprinting
People in Grande Prairie who need a police background check will pay $5 more for the service, which previously cost $40, as the city tries to redistribute a new fee that would otherwise target only certain people.
In Canada, anyone with the same gender and birthday as a registered sexual offender must submit to a fingerprint search if they are applying for a police check in order to work with children, the elderly or the disabled.
The rule was instituted in 2010 to close a loophole allowing sex offenders to conceal convictions by changing their names.
Those in Grande Prairie who require fingerprinting currently pay $50, in addition to the police-check fee.
In the past, the city forwarded $25 of the fee to the federal government and kept the other half to cover its own costs.
A recent $25 increase in the federal fee prompted city administration to suggest a new $75 charge for fingerprinting.
As a result, anyone who required the additional service would have paid a total of $115, while those who didn't would pay $40.
Fingerprinting is an additional charge, on top of the criminal record check that employees and volunteers require to work with vulnerable people.
Coun. Dylan Bressey suggested the city instead raise the price of police background checks for everyone in the city by $5, rather than charging a handful of people more for fingerprinting.
"I wasn't comfortable with that," Bressey said. "Fingerprinting is a cost of the system overall, it should be borne by everybody that gets a background check, not just those unlucky people that need to get fingerprinted."
Grande Prairie city council voted in favour of Bressey's amendment on Feb. 12, raising the price of police background checks from $40 to $45.
"It's a requirement that some people have that's only because of their gender and birthday," Bressey said. "I really don't feel that they should have increased costs because of the criminal activity of someone that they've never met before."
Without a municipal fee increase to match the new federal charge, the city would have absorbed an estimated $17,000 annually.
"We're really trying to be careful with our revenues across the city," Bressey said. "Is $17,000 itself significant? In a budget of over $100 million, not in that regard ... But it all really adds up and it's noticeable to taxpayers."
Police background checks for volunteers in the city will remain free. The reduced fee for practicum students won't increase from $15.
The change marks the beginning of more tweaks the city plans to make to its user fees, Bressey added.
"I believe it's been over a decade since we've done a comprehensive look at our user fees," he said.
The city will review fees including bus fares and charges at recreation centres ahead of the 2019 budget cycle.