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Justice Institute of British Columbia celebrates 40 years

“For 40 incredible years, the JIBC has provided quality education and training to thousands of students,” says Melanie Mark, minister of Advanced Education, Skills and Training. “Congratulations to all the students, staff and faculty on reaching this important milestone. The Institute has grown to become an internationally-recognized leader in training professionals in the justice, public safety and social services fields.”

JIBC was established in 1978 as a provincial institute with a provincial mandate to create a co-operative, collaborative model of educating and training public safety professionals in British Columbia. “It was an innovative concept, bringing the training for several disciplines together under one roof. Initially, these comprised policing, corrections, courts and firefighting,” the school states.

Today, these areas of study have expanded to include sheriff training, paramedicine and emergency management. JIBC says it confers credentials that ladder from certificates into undergraduate diplomas and degrees as well as graduate programs in the areas of complex trauma and sexual abuse, and intelligence analysis.

“At the heart of our learning model is a focus on experiential, scenario-based training. And as I watch students and recruits in policing, paramedicine, firefighting, the sheriff service and others practise how to respond to a wide range of real-life situations, I am constantly impressed by their dedication to service,” says Michel Tarko, JIBC president and CEO. “It is that evident desire to be the one coming to the rescue on people’s absolute worst days that never fails to give me hope for the future as JIBC continues to help build a growing community of professionals working together to create safer communities and a more just society.”

JIBC is currently training paramedics in Hong Kong and Singapore, law enforcement professionals in China, and firefighters in the United Arab Emirates. Within Canada, JIBC’s reach includes training corrections staff in Nunavut and Indigenous firefighters in Quebec.

In its first 40 years, JIBC says it has had nearly 295,000 individuals enrol in its courses, of which more than 40,000 have graduated from its programs, both non-credentialed and those resulting in certificates, diplomas, baccalaureate degrees and graduate programs.

For more information, visit JIBC.ca/40years.