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The Town of Banff and local RCMP are gearing up for next year’s G7 leaders’ summit in neighbouring Kananaskis Country, including for potential protests and the media centre to be located in the tourist town.
Banff RCMP detachment has already seen the secondment of an administrator to the planning team for the G7 in K-Country in June, which will host policymakers and world leaders, including U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
“We can anticipate that there will be a fairly heavy lift on the Banff detachment, although there currently is not,” said Staff Sgt. Mike Buxton-Carr, the detachment commander for Banff RCMP.
“We are well integrated in advance communication with people who are responsible for what will be the media centre in the town of Banff, and also planning for various protest activities.”
With the Kananaskis Country summit a controlled access zone for security reasons, RCMP are preparing for potential protests in Banff given the media centre will be located at The Banff Centre.
“We have seen in the past that sometimes planned protest is possible where the event is occurring, but again it’s a controlled access zone. Sometimes it’s where the media is so they can get the attention that they are looking for,” Buxton-Carr said.
“Sometimes planned protest is benign and civil … other times planned protest is a way for other agents to take advantage of that and perhaps forward a more violent or challenging mandate.”
Buxton-Carr, who is now qualified as a critical incident commander, said additional resources will be brought in.
“We can anticipate having many extra resources in town to manage the media centre … that will not be from the Banff detachment. The RCMP will provide a significant amount of resources to deal with that,” he said.
“Banff detachment will be responsible as usual for policing in the townsite, but there will be resources available to us if that policing requirement spills out of G7. If it’s G7-related, will they be helping? Yes, they will.”
Buxton-Carr said he anticipates some Banff RCMP officers will be required for work around Kananaskis Country, but most will remain in Banff.
He said there is also a restriction on vacation around the time of the G7.
“None of our members are allowed to have leave around that period so we will have a full complement on hand to deal with eventualities as they are,” he said.
“We can anticipate altering our schedule so that all of our team will be working during the G7 period.”
Discussions are also underway about guards for any potential prisoners at the RCMP detachment.
“We are already in discussions about what we can do about making sure that we have guards, whether our prisoner facility will be used for all prisoners, whether we’ll use a larger centre like Cochrane and transport,” Buxton-Carr said.
Katherine Severson, director of emergency and protective services for the Town of Banff, said planning for the G7 is happening as quickly as possible.
She said the summit is also happening at a busy time of year for visitors to Banff and a time of potential severe weather, such as fire or floods.
“What I can tell you is we’re working with both federal and provincial public safety emergency management folks. Both Public Safety Canada and AEMA (Alberta Emergency Management Agency) are heavily engaged with us to look at the other impacts to town services,” she said.
“One of my main questions is around fire service expectations. I can tell you there’s an entire health plan involving EMS all the way to hospitals that is sort of out of hands, but will be more of an augmented piece to us… a lot of outside resources are going to come and be within our community to support.”
As far as tourism impacts, Severson said there may be family members of G7 delegates that come to the national park for tourism-based activities.
“We don’t have any of that formally and some of it will be protected and we’ll never know, but we are working with our partners to make sure we have a good understanding of those impacts in town,” she said.
Mayor Corrie DiManno said it is interesting to hear of all the behind-the-scenes planning.
“We really appreciate all the work going into that,” she said.
Canada has hosted six G7 summits. The last time the summit was held in Kananaskis Country was in 2002.
