With fewer recruits entering training and more members leaving, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police need to add more boots.
According to data provided to CTV National News, the RCMP currently has a national recruitment rate of 4.3%, which equates to an estimated 300 positions.
Manitoba has the highest RCMP vacancy rate in the country at 6%, followed by Nunavut with 5.3%, British Columbia at 3.5% and Yukon at 3.3%. Smaller vacancies were also recorded in Saskatchewan (1.2%), the Northwest Territories (1%) and New Brunswick (0.5%).
Calvin Lawrence, who has served in the RCMP for 28 years, says the force has lost a lot of its former charm.
“Because of harassment, discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying and overwork, people are leaving the RCMP,” Lawrence, who is now an author and advocate, told CTV National News. “The day of the red dog was glorious and everyone wanted to be a Mountie; nowadays people don’t want to be a cop or an RCMP member.”
Known as the Depot Division, the RCMP academy in Regina has consolidated and scheduled training this spring to deal with a smaller number of recruits. Once a pre-employment requirement, multi-graph tests will also be eliminated.
“The RCMP is actively recruiting,” RCMP spokesman Robin Percival told CTV National News. “Work is underway to modernize the candidate assessment process while maintaining rigor.”
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki has acknowledged that systemic racism exists within the force.
Some argue that the national police force should focus on border integrity, combat organized crime and security for dignitaries and politicians, and delegate control of local politics. for local or provincial police forces, as in Ontario and Quebec.
Michael Boudreau, criminologist at the University of St. Thomas of Fredericton, told CTV National News: “The RCMP is in the process of calculating. “I think the RCMP needs to overhaul its entire organization and rethink what it does as control.”
“They need to get out of the provinces and cities that are controlling the policy,” adds Robert Gordon, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University.
For new hires, the cultural training and greater diversity in today’s RCMP, as well as the new union, has led to a pay rise.
“Members have a voice they didn’t in the first 148 years of the RCMP,” RCMP sergeant and National Police union director Robert Farrer told CTV News. “I think that would make change happen a lot quicker.”
Manitoba’s attorney general told CTV News Winnipeg that he is concerned about the province’s high RCMP vacancy rate and plans to continue raising the matter with the federal government to secure more officers.
Blank rate data provided by RCMP; the country figure is from April 2022, the provincial structure is from April 2021. RCMP’s national vacancy rate is calculated on a quarterly basis.
The RCMP vacancy rate of 4.3% is still lower than the national job vacancies rate, which was 5.2% in the first quarter of 2022, up from 3.6% a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada.
