Province expands funding for Justice Institute of B.C. to add 96 police seats

NEW WESTMINSTER — Public Safety Minister Nina Krieger says the province is providing funding to add nearly 100 new training seats per class for police recruits at the Justice Institute of British Columbia’s police academy.

The academy provides provincially approved basic training to all new municipal, transit and tribal police in the province.

The program typically lasts 25 weeks and includes both classroom and field training, ranging from firearms to emergency vehicle operations, Indigenous cultural safety as well as legal and investigative skills.

The province is providing $4 million to fund the additional 96 seats per class, which Krieger says will directly address the need for more recruits and making sure the next generation of police officers are well trained and ready to serve.

She says that means that the academy will see an increase from 192 to 288 seats for the 2025 — 2026 year.

The minister says the expansion is part of her government’s commitment to ensuring communities are safe and supported by “highly trained police officers,” adding that the funding will also go toward the “hiring of more instructors, the purchase of new training equipment and the creation of dedicated spaces to accommodate more police recruits.”

“We know that policing is a difficult profession and that staffing shortages can impact service delivery to communities,” Krieger told a news conference Friday.

“That’s why it’s so critical that this investment in assuring that we have enough offices on the ground to be prepared to meet today’s challenges.”

She says since becoming public safety minister, she has met with “every municipal police chief” across B.C. and has discussed some of the challenges departments face.

They include the toxic drug crisis, an increase in homelessness and the “increasing complexity of mental health responses,” she says.

Kreiger noted that Budget 2025 includes an investment of $235 million over three years to improve community safety, which includes the added capacity at the training institute and the hiring of 256 new officers.

“We are committed to working on an ongoing basis with police leaders, with municipalities, to continue to assess vacancies, that we do really on an ongoing basis, to ensure that police have the resources that they need to keep our communities safe.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2025.