Alberta already pays for most of its own policing. The RCMP serves rural Alberta under a contract Alberta funds, and that cost is already in the provincial budget. The transition replaces the contract with an Alberta service; it does not add a police force where none existed.
What is genuinely new is federal: the criminal intelligence, forensic laboratory, national police information systems and specialised investigative capabilities that Canada supplies to every police service in the country, and the corrections estate that houses offenders serving sentences of two years or more. Alberta operates provincial correctional centres today for shorter sentences; the federal institutions in Alberta and the Albertans held in federal institutions elsewhere are a separate and larger problem, and one the transition has to solve on a fixed date.
The domain does not redesign policing or sentencing. Officers, detachments, equipment and practice continue, with an Alberta service standing in the place of a federal contractor and Alberta law standing in the place of federal authority. What it funds is the layer beneath that — the laboratories, the records, the intelligence and the institutions — which is invisible to the public until the day it is not there.
Alberta has no border service. It has four external boundaries — an international one with Montana, and three provincial boundaries, with British Columbia, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, that become international — airports that become international ports of entry, and no officers, no systems and no legal authority to control any of them. It is one of the few domains where Alberta holds no existing capability, because the function has never been provincial.
The design is facilitation-first: the objective is that goods and people keep moving, not that every movement is inspected. Commercial freight depends on advance data, risk assessment, broker connectivity, carrier codes, payment and release messaging long before it depends on an inspection booth, so the systems matter more than the buildings. Trusted trader and preclearance arrangements are pursued because they move risk assessment away from the line, and because the alternative at Coutts is a queue that reaches back into the province.
What the domain does not do is build a comprehensive border. It builds the ports of entry that carry the traffic, the systems that release the freight, and the legal authority to act — and it accepts, deliberately, that controls at the interprovincial boundaries are built out after the international ports of entry rather than alongside them. The single largest risk in the domain is not Alberta's to control: if a United States authority declines to accept an Alberta border process, no amount of Alberta spending fixes it, and the answer is a liaison arrangement negotiated in advance rather than a larger budget.
Policing, Corrections & Public Safety
C$ millions, fiscal 2026-27 price base. A one-time cost, a recurring cost and a payment to a member of the public are different things and are never added together.
How the figure is built
C$1,113.1M a year and C$472.6M one-time, of which C$90.0M is capital. Alberta already polices itself: it pays C$432.0M a year for provincial contract policing and Budget 2026 funds the Alberta Sheriffs Police Service at C$200.9M, rising to about C$644.7M by 2029 under its own legislation. The full cost of public safety after independence is C$2,208.0M, of which C$1,094.9M is already in the provincial budget. What independence adds is the federal cost-share that ends, the federal policing and national specialized services Alberta has never paid for, and custody of federally sentenced offenders.
The lines
| C$M | ||
|---|---|---|
| Provincial policing - full cost | 818.0 | Grossed-up contract service at C$617.1M plus the ASPS at C$200.9M |
| less already funded in Budget 2026 | -632.9 | C$432.0M contract policing plus C$200.9M ASPS |
| Provincial policing - increment | 185.1 | The 30% federal cost-share that ends with the agreement |
| Federal policing | 225.4 | National security, organised and financial crime, cybercrime, protective services |
| National specialized services | 94.5 | Criminal records, forensic laboratories, DNA databank |
| Federal corrections | 608.1 | Federally sentenced offenders, at Alberta's 15.2% share of CSC capacity. The share is derived from the seven published institutional capacities |
| Provincial corrections | 0.0 | C$397.0M full cost, entirely already funded |
| Police oversight and support | 0.0 | C$65.0M full cost, entirely already funded |
| ADDED RUNNING COST, a year | 1,113.1 | |
| Forensic biology and laboratory capability | 34.0 | Alberta holds no casework capacity and its own laboratory will not accept serious-crime DNA until 2031 |
| Criminal records, CPIC-equivalent and DNA databank | 26.0 | National police services Alberta does not hold |
| Corrections systems and institutional fit-out | 18.0 | Offender management on transferred institutions |
| Federal policing technical and secure communications | 12.0 | Configured, not built |
| Capital | 90.0 | |
| Records, evidence and case migration | 40.0 | Active investigations must not fail on disclosure |
| Institutional and operational transfer | 32.0 | Seven correctional institutions and their populations |
| Offender repatriation and movement | 11.0 | Escort, security, records and receiving capacity for the two-way exchange of sentenced offenders with Canada |
| Legal authority and regulation | 18.0 | Police Act, corrections legislation, oversight |
| Programme management and assurance | 35.0 | 24-month stand-up |
| Contingency at 15% | 61.7 | |
| ONE-TIME TOTAL | 472.6 |
The people
| Posts | C$M | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Recruitment and training | 185 | 4,118 new posts at about C$45,000 each | |
| Complement carried | 4,118 new permanent posts (federal policing, specialized services, corrections) |
The complement for this domain is carried at domain level. A function-by-function split has not been established, and none is shown rather than one being constructed for presentation.
Comparators
| Figure | ||
|---|---|---|
| RCMP Federal Policing, 2026-27 | C$1,464.9M and 5,470 FTE nationally | The function Alberta does not pay for today. Alberta at population share is C$178.9M |
| RCMP National Specialized Services | C$614.3M and 2,901 FTE | Criminal records, forensic laboratories, DNA databank |
| Correctional Service Canada, 2026-27 | C$4,000.6M and 18,620 FTE | Alberta hosts 7 institutions - Bowden, Drumheller, Edmonton, Edmonton Institution for Women, Grande Cache, Grierson and Pe Sakastew - whose published rated capacities sum to 2,128. The 15.2% share of national custody is derived, not published: CSC publishes no current national rated-capacity total |
| Alberta contract policing cost share | 70% provincial, 30% federal | Alberta's C$432.0M line grosses up to C$617.1M of service |
| Alberta Sheriffs Police Service | C$200.9M in Budget 2026, about C$644.7M by 2029 | Alberta's own plan for a provincial force, and it corroborates the grossed-up contract figure |
What these figures assume
- Alberta continues to fund provincial policing and provincial corrections as it does today. Independence changes who receives the money for contract policing, not whether Alberta pays for policing at all.
- The 30 per cent federal contribution to provincial contract policing ends on independence and Alberta meets the whole cost. That contribution declines in any case as the Alberta Sheriffs Police Service takes over detachments under Alberta's own timetable.
- Federal policing and national specialized services are fixed-capability functions. A sovereign state needs a national security capability whether it is large or small, so a population share is a floor and a standalone factor of 1.26 is applied.
- Alberta assumes custody of federally sentenced offenders held in the seven Correctional Service Canada institutions on its territory, at that capacity share of national cost.
- The correctional institutions themselves are costed on that assumed exchange rather than as a purchase.
- Municipal police services in Calgary, Edmonton and elsewhere continue unchanged and are not costed here.
- Alberta holds its own offenders. Its seven institutions serve the whole Prairie Region today, so non-Albertans leave and Albertans held elsewhere return; the two flows broadly offset and Alberta's 2,128 rated beds are sufficient for a own-offender population of about 2,000. No prison construction is required.
- An offender transfer agreement with Canada is in force from Day 1. Canada moves sentenced offenders under the International Transfer of Offenders Act, which requires a treaty; without one neither side can repatriate the other's nationals.
Sources
- Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2026-27 Departmental Plan: planned spending and FTE by core responsibility.
- Correctional Service Canada, 2026-27 Departmental Plan, and the institutional capacity schedule for Alberta.
- Alberta Budget 2026, Public Safety and Emergency Services; Bill 15, Public Safety and Emergency Services Statutes Amendment Act, 2026.
- Alberta Transition Council costing analysis, federal policing and corrections: the Alberta baseline and the reusable baseline credit.
Border & Customs
C$ millions, fiscal 2026-27 price base. A one-time cost, a recurring cost and a payment to a member of the public are different things and are never added together.
How the figure is built
C$297.2M a year and C$24.9M one-time, of which C$2.7M is capital, for customs and border services at Alberta's land and air ports of entry. The figure is Canada Border Services Agency planned spending taken at a blended Alberta workload share.
The lines
| C$M | ||
|---|---|---|
| CBSA total planned spending, 2026-27 | 3,069.9 | 17,999 FTE; Border Management, Border Enforcement and Internal Services |
| Blended Alberta workload driver | — | 9.68% Base, within a range of 8.00% to 11.00% |
| Recurring requirement | 297.2 | Reproduces to the dollar |
| Transition and stand-up | 24.9 | |
| of which capital | 2.7 |
The people
Complement: 1,742 permanent posts, at the CBSA unit cost. This domain’s build is not divided into named post blocks, so the figure is stated whole rather than tabled.
Comparators
| Figure | ||
|---|---|---|
| CBSA planned spending, 2026-27 | C$3,069.896M and 17,999 FTE | Departmental Plan, corroborated by Supplementary Estimates (A) at the same dollar figure |
| Implied Alberta establishment | 1,742 posts at the CBSA unit cost | A scale check on the recurring figure |
What these figures assume
- Alberta's share of national border workload is 9.68 per cent, blended across travellers, commercial releases and air passengers, within a range of 8.00 to 11.00 per cent.
- CBSA publishes no provincial allocation of spending, workload or staffing. This figure is a share of a national programme and is not claimed to tie to a published Alberta figure.
- Customs duties and taxes collected at the border are a revenue item and are not netted here.
How this connects to other domains
Border and customs personnel are also implied inside the Policing and Public Safety personnel band. They are costed here and excluded from Policing and Public Safety. Customs duties and taxes collected are a revenue item and sit at Taxation and Revenue.
Sources
- Canada Border Services Agency, 2026-27 Departmental Plan; Supplementary Estimates (A) 2026-27.
- Alberta Transition Council costing analysis, border and customs: the Alberta workload baseline.
