After many months of negotiations and appeals, North Cowichan has signed a contract with E-Comm 911 police dispatch services to provide emergency communications in the municipality until the end of 2025.
It’s estimated that the annual $884,000 cost of the service will alone add more than two per cent to North Cowichan’s property taxes.
CAO Ted Swabey told council at its meeting on May 21 that there is no other option for police dispatch services to consider at this time, and North Cowichan is legally required to pay for these services under its provincial police services contract by the end of May.
He said staff are looking for other providers for the service for when the contract with E-Comm expires, but he is skeptical that one will be found any time soon.
“I personally think we’re going to be in the same position next year and probably for the next several years because to get a new provider is very difficult,” he said.
“But we’ll look far and wide to find one. The Surrey Dispatch Service provides such a service and we will see whether they have capacity to expand or whether there’s a better service for that provision so that we can at least compare E-Comm for what we’re getting because it’s a very expensive service.”
In 2019, the funding responsibilities of E-Comm were transferred from the province to 10 South Island municipalities, including North Cowichan, Duncan and Ladysmith.
The funding for the service was split between the province (70 per cent) and the federal government (30 per cent), but the responsibility for costs associated with police dispatch transitioned to the south Island municipalities as a result of a change in service provider from the RCMP to E-Comm.
Currently, senior levels of government are still paying the costs of the service to all other municipalities in B.C.
Since receiving the news of the downloading of 100 per cent of the costs of the service, the impacted local governments had been actively opposing it and asked the province for a review of the issue.
While having these discussions, the province provided bridge funding since 2019.
But the provincial funding ended in April, 2025, and the 10 municipalities were given a deadline of May 31, 2025, to sign a contract with E-Comm.
Coun. Bruce Findlay asked Swabey if the 10 impacted communities are still working together in efforts to find another provider.
Swabey said that one of the CAOs from the municipalities has been delegated to start the search, which is already underway.
He said other dispatch operations that are further afield may also be investigated.
“There’s still a lot of work we can do to lobby to reduce the cost for the E-Comm contract, but I’m not hopeful that this will happen anytime soon,” Swabey said. “The other fact is that while all the other municipalities in the province are getting a free ride right now, the province has said that they will be straightening that out next, and we’ll see if that happens. We don’t know where they’ll go for services and we don’t know if they’ll go to E-Comm and whether that would reduce our costs. So that’s still yet to be seen as well.”
