With fewer recruits entering training and more members leaving, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has more boots to fill.
According to data provided to CTV National News, the RCMP currently has a national vacancy rate of 4.3 percent, equivalent to approximately 300 positions.
Manitoba has the highest RCMP vacancy rate in the country at six per cent, followed by Nunavut at 5.3 per cent, British Columbia at 3.5 per cent and Yukon at 3.3 per cent. Smaller vacancies were also noted in Saskatchewan (1.2 percent), Northwest Territories (one percent) and New Brunswick (0.5 percent).
Calvin Lawrence, who served with the RCMP for 28 years, says the force has lost much of its former luster and appeal.
“Because of harassment, discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying and overwork, people are leaving the RCMP,” Lawrence, now an author and advocate, told CTV National News. “Glorious red serge day and everybody wants to be a Mountie; not everyone wants to be a police officer today or a member of the RCMP.”
Known as the Depot Division, the RCMP academy in Regina consolidated and rescheduled training this spring to handle fewer recruits. Once a pre-employment requirement, polygraph tests are also being dropped.
“The RCMP is actively recruiting,” RCMP spokesperson Robin Percival told CTV National News. “Work is underway to modernize the applicant assessment process while maintaining rigor.”
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Luckey acknowledged that systemic racism exists within the police force.
Some suggest that the national police should focus on border integrity, organized crime and security for dignitaries and politicians, and leave local policing to local or provincial police forces, such as in Ontario and Quebec.
“The RCMP is about to pay,” Michael Boudreau, a criminologist at the University of St. Thomas in Fredericton, told CTV National News. “I think the RCMP needs to review their entire organization and rethink what they do as policing.”
“They should be out of the control of provinces and municipalities,” added Robert Gordon, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University.
For recruits, there is more cultural training and diversity in today’s RCMP, as well as the new union, which has led to increased pay.
“Members have a voice that they haven’t had in the first 148 years of the RCMP,” RCMP Sergeant and National Police Federation union director Robert Farrer told CTV News. “I think that’s going to make change happen a lot faster.”
Manitoba’s justice minister told CTV News Winnipeg that he is very concerned about the province’s high RCMP vacancy rate and plans to continue to raise the issue with the federal government to secure more officers.
Vacancy rate data was provided by the RCMP; national figure is from April 2022, provincial breakdown comes from April 2021. The national RCMP vacancy rate is calculated quarterly.
The RCMP vacancy rate of 4.3 per cent is still below the national vacancy rate, which was 5.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, up from 3.6 per cent a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada.
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