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Rebuilding the RCMP

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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is a revered national institution, and among the most famous police forces in the world. Yet the agency has been slipping in recent years. That point was made clear last Tuesday when Auditor-General Sheila Fraser released her report on RCMP operations.

Even with some recent budget increases, more than a decade of lean times has left the force understaffed by as many as 1,000 officers. Years of politically correct hiring policies - seeking racial and gender balance rather than simply the best cadets - have compounded the shortages. Indeed, the Auditor-General has found that as many as 94% of officers assigned to local detachments or provincial duty are deficient in at least one of six mandatory training requirements.

With representation in every province, the RCMP is the largest police force in the country. Over 11,000 of its members are deployed to 600 detachments in medium-sized cities, on First Nations' reserves, and in the seven provinces and three territories where the RCMP are the principal rural police service. This has tremendous advantages for the force and for the communities it serves. Small towns and cities benefit by having a local police force that is trained to higher standards than they might be able to afford on their own. And local officers have ready access to regional SWAT teams when major crimes occur. The Mounties' vertical integration and national reach also allow officers to specialize in such needed areas as forensics, national security,money laundering and organized crime.

But as good as this system is in theory, its effectiveness has been hampered by poor implementation. In her report, Ms. Fraser revealed that nearly one-fifth of new officers had fewer than the required six months in-the-field training before they were graduated. Of their on-the-job trainers, 12% were still on probation themselves since they had less than two years experience. One-fifth of field "coaches" had not completed the coaches' training course. Given the deadly consequences of officer inexperience, as demonstrated in last March's killing of four Mounties at a marijuana grow-op in Mayerthorpe, Alta., neither officers nor the communities they serve can risk under-trained graduates.

Conservative MPs recently have challenged Public Security Minister Anne McLellan about the state of the RCMP. Peter McKay, the deputy Conservative leader, revealed "the RCMP vacancy rates are now as high as 25% in certain units, including drug interdiction and organized crime," while rural shortfalls are leading to the closure of detachments. Meanwhile, internal RCMP documents, produced by Saskatchewan Tory Garry Breitkreuz, show shortages of 281 officers in B.C., 139 in Ontario, 134 in Quebec and slightly smaller deficits in six more provinces. Through it all, Ms. McLellan has somehow insisted that the RCMP is not undermanned.

The shortage is also beginning to show up in crime statistics. According to a study released this month by Simon Fraser University and University College of the Fraser Valley, the chance that a home burglar in B.C. will be caught and convicted is just one-in-12, down from one-in-four. The principal reason for the fall? A reduction in police resources. Researchers showed that there are now nearly twice as many reported crimes per officer as there were in the 1960s.

This situation is only compounded by the fact that the Commissioner of the RCMP is not an independent officer of Parliament, but rather the equivalent of an assistant deputy minister, and hence is beholden to the government. This makes him hamstrung in his ability to defend the force and vulnerable to the perception of bias.

It is clear what's needed to restore the lustre to our nation's finest: The federal government must guarantee the independence of the force, and must make a serious commitment to increase recruiting, training, hiring and promotion on the basis of merit, not identity politics.

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AUDITOR GENERAL’S REPORT - NOVEMBER 22, 2005
http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/media.nsf/html/20051101pr_e.html

MINISTER McLELLAN’S QUOTES ON SHORTAGE OF 1,059 RCMP OFFICERS http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/2005_new/33.htm