MLA Wright wrong about damning RCMP story

By ZOE MASON on November 8, 2025.

zmason@medicinehatnews.com

An anecdote about RCMP in the region used by Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Justin Wright in the legislature to discuss a bill this week has been proven to be false.

Wright rose in the legislature Wednesday to speak to Bill 4, the Public Safety and Emergency Services Statutes Amendment Act. Bill 4 proposes to treat the new Alberta Sheriffs Police Service like other municipal police forces to streamline the hiring of officers for a new provincial police force. The bill was tabled Oct. 30.

Wright outlined a number of complaints he said he received from one of the municipalities in his jurisdiction, including an incident that occurred July 8.

On July 8, Wright told the legislature, the RCMP received a call regarding a suspicious driver and failed to respond for 36 hours.

“When they finally got on the road and decided that they were going to investigate this situation, what did they find? Did they find nothing? No. They found that vehicle on the side of the road, and they found a dead body beside it,” Wright said.

“These are the types of types of situations that are happening in rural Alberta where the RCMP are frankly not responding.”

The News contacted the RCMP for more information about the incident, but the RCMP said the events Wright described did not take place.

The RCMP told the News that Wright met with RCMP officials and Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis on Tuesday to discuss a number of concerns the RCMP agreed to look into, including the alleged incident on July 8.

“What we have found out is that the MLA’s understanding (which was reflected in his remarks in the Legislature the day after) unintentionally contained inaccurate information,” said RCMP superintendent Rick Jané, acting district officer for southern Alberta, in a statement to the News.

Wright did not mince words when discussing in legislature his Tuesday meeting with the RCMP, telling MLAs that his concern was met with ambivalence from the RCMP.

“Do you know what their answer was? ‘I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be having these situations.’ Not an action plan, not a real, meaningful way to address this,” he said.

The RCMP informed the News they had received a call for service at 9:37 a.m. on July 8 in which a complainant reported an abandoned vehicle near the community of Irvine. The caller advised that they had seen the vehicle in the same location 26 hours earlier.

Jané says the complainant did not provide any information to indicate it required an emergency response.

The on-duty member of the Redcliff RCMP attempted to call the complainant to gather more information. The officer was not able to reach the caller, and left them a message requesting a call back.

After the officer did not receive a call back, they drove to the location, arriving at 11:40 a.m. Jané says the location was 30 minutes from the detachment area. When the officer arrived at the location, they conducted a search which revealed a deceased person. A death investigation was launched, which deemed the manner of death non-suspicious.

“In this case, this response is a normal response on the totality of circumstances. I feel like we responded in a manner that was normal, and as information changed, we changed our approach,” Jané told the News.

Jané says response times will vary based on risk factors. In this case, there was no indication in the complaint of an abandoned vehicle that there was any public safety danger, so the response time is considered routine. An officer was on scene within two hours of the initial call, not 36 as Wright had said.

Jané encourages both elected officials and residents to bring forward any concerns they have to the RCMP.

“Sometimes we are able to provide information that addresses inaccuracies or adds additional context about how or why we responded to a particular incident the way we did,” said Jané. “On those occasions that we learn that our response could have been better we share the information learned from those reviews so that we can use any lessons learned to further improve our service delivery.

Wright was travelling back from Edmonton on Friday and wasn’t reachable during business hours for comment, though his office did submit a statement from him early in the evening. He didn’t address the falsehoods within his legislature comments but did say it came from Cypress County Reeve Dan Hamilton, who sent him a letter with the anecdote.

“In my Bill 4 speech in the Chamber, I referenced a letter sent to me by the Reeve of Cypress County,” Wright’s statements reads. “This week, I also had the opportunity to join Minister Ellis and RCMP leadership to discuss the concerns outlined in that letter and others from across the province.

“I am grateful for the productive conversation and look forward to continuing to work with the RCMP to address the concerns of the residents of Cypress-Medicine Hat.”

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