Attorney General
Wally Oppal

Wally Oppal, Q.C., 1s British
Columbia's Attorney Gener-
al and Minister Responsible
for Multiculturalism. After
legal studies at the Univer-
sity of British Columbia, he
practised law before being
appointed to the County
Court of B.C., the B.C. Supreme Court and in 2003
the B.C. Court of Appeal. Among his many other
diverse positions over the years was President
of the provincial Law Courts Education Saciety,
Director of Family Services of Greater Vancouver
and Director of the B.C. Coalition for Safer Com-
munities. In the early 1990s, he authored a re-
port on behalf of the independent Commission
of Inquiry into Policing in British Columbia (more
commonly referred ta as the Oppal Report)

“Because one of the Commission's terms of
reference dealt with training police, | spoke with
an instructor at the Police Academy, Gil Puder,
who was seconded from the Vancouver Police
Department. Playing basketball at the police gym
with him one day, | told him my interest in the
use of force course. As he told me about hand-
gun retention and neck restraints, he said, ‘Why
don’t you just take our course?’ That was a bi-
zarre question and, even more bizarre, | took him
up on it. The course was for several days in the
mornings and | got a first-hand flavour of what
they were doing. | realized how thorough and
how professional they were. that the use of force
involved more than subduing people engaged in
wrongful activities. It also involved an element of
accountability—how do you do it and still be ac-
countable to the public?

“I took the course and also took the POPAT
(the Police Officers Physical Ability Test}—and

proposal to create what were the basics of the extensive five-block system of
instruction that exists today.

On June 12, 1974, the provincial Legislature passed the Police Act,
creating the B.C. Police Commission, whose first appointed members
were Stewart, Reverend Bob Burrows and Inspector Robert Heywood,
the RCMP’s Director of Planning and Development, with the Chair John
Hogarth from Simon Fraser University’s criminology department. To
upgrade and standardize the quality of training, the Commission estab-
lished the B.C. Police College in 1975. It began in the humble quarters of a
cluster of classroom trailers and an office on the concrete pad of the parking
lot behind the Seaforth Armouries at York and Burrard.

Bob Stewart did a national search and found his Director, Gerald
Kilcup, a former police officer then leading the security program at Kitch-
ener’s Conestoga College. In B.C., Kilcup oversaw instructors from six
municipal police departments and the RCMP teaching the first class of
106 recruits. There was a gymnasium in the armouries, but for specialized
courses such as gun handling and advanced driving skills, recruits were
shuttled to locations such as the Coast Marksmen Range in Burnaby and
the Professional Driving Centre at Boundary Bay in Delta.

Stewart envisioned prospective police officers learning their trade
from the widest-possible cross-section of the population—a police equiva-
lent of a liberal education.

“It took about three years to convince the government that they
should expand into an Institute to accommodate the first responders, emer-
gency personnel and some of what I call people in the social justice area.
What I was observing was that in the police-training curriculum, we had
people from the fire department, from the paramedic side, from the correc-
tions side, parole, probation, etc., come and speak or do an hour or two on
other parts of the justice system. So why not have a great big roof area and
have everybody inside the building?

“It’s important that the person responsible for corrections training,
John Laverock, came on side and was one of my supporters. But there were
people in other areas who saw their own bailiwicks in their own training
academies being invaded. So after romancing these people for a while, the
government could see there wouldn't be too big an explosion if they created
the Justice Institute of British Columbia.

“Then the School for the Blind became available at Jericho and the
Attorney General said the government was embarrassed with empty build-
ings—‘How about you people moving in?” Now renamed as part of a larger
institution, the Police College became the Police Academy as it folded into
the Jericho site above Fourth Avenue on April 27, 1978. The Justice Institute
became a permanent fixture before it had existed for a year, with a Correc-
tions Staff Development Division, a Fire Services Academy and a budding