Getting ready for retirement
More than 40 CBRPS employees currently eligible to leave the workforce
The Cape Breton Regional Police Service is preparing for a potentially large number of retirements, with more than 40 employees currently eligible to leave the workforce.
Like a lot of workplaces, the police service is dealing with the demographic shift and its aging workforce.
“That’s one-quarter of our workforce and three-quarters of our management team,” McIsaac said in an interview in his Grand Lake Road office.
“I’ve got people on this management team who have got 40 years service who are 60 years of age who have worked long careers and a lot of them in the management for the last number of years, high stress positions. They’re looking forward to retiring.”
The service’s unionized police members have an average age of 45 and it is 55 among its management team. During the last sitting of the house of assembly, legislation was passed that enables the province’s municipalities to move to the provincial pension plan if they so choose. A joint committee is currently investigating that option in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, and a decision could be made later this year.
Many police service employees who are now or will soon be eligible to retire are waiting to see the outcome of that process before making their decisions about when to leave the workforce, McIsaac said.
But to prepare for the inevitable flow of those veteran officers from the service, preparations are being made to try to ensure that those that remain have the necessary skills and training, the chief said.
“When they go out the door, it’s going to cause a crunch here in relation to I’m going to lose all that skill and ability,” McIsaac said.
“The good part of it is, I’ve got a bunch of new people that are ready to come out that have all kinds of energy that, when they take on these roles, are going to have a significant learning curve but that energy and desire to learn and desire to take on these roles and hopefully the curve can be flattened in a relatively short period of time.”
McIsaac said part of that process has included delegating work such as overseeing recent renovation projects to less senior people. As well, younger members of the management team have been doing more work in areas such as training, getting involved in budget processes, disciplinary procedures and Police Act issues, and hiring and promotions processes.
Just within the past few days, eight new officers have been hired, including the service’s first Chinese member, a First Nations member and three women, as they work to promote diversity and try to boost the number of women and visible minorities within the service. They are due to be sworn in on March 23.
McIsaac said there is never a lack of people applying for available positions with the police service.
“There’s an overabundance of people that are actually trained now from the Atlantic Police Academy for these positions,” he said.
One of the members of the management team awaiting a decision on the pension plan is Supt. Walter Rutherford. He started out in 1977 with the former Sydney police department, working in foot patrols for a number of years before moving on to investigative work and major crime. He was promoted to staff sergeant and became a member of the management team in 2007.
Now 60, Rutherford, who is married with two adult sons, has been eligible to retire for five years but wasn’t yet ready to do so. He said he has been thinking more seriously about it over the past year but the pension issue is delaying that decision.
“You have to wait to see what results come from that and then you make whatever personal decision you make, whether the money you make is suitable for you or not,” he said. “I would retire if the numbers are right, (but) if I have to continue working, I don’t mind continuing working. I still enjoy coming to work and doing my job.”
Rutherford has worked as a manager in every section of the service and in several patrol divisions. He has also worked on more than 25 homicide investigations throughout his career, including being the officer who ultimately put handcuffs on Ernest Gordon Strowbridge a decade after he stabbed to death Marie Lorraine Dupe at Big Ben’s convenience store in Sydney.
“That was extremely satisfying,” Rutherford said.
The job can also be stressful, he said.
“I always tell younger offices probably the most difficult thing you’ll do in your career is walk up to a door and tell someone that their loved one is dead, whether that’s through an accident or
through a crime,” Rutherford said. “But the most satisfying is when you close the case and you have the suspect and the first people you call … is the victim’s family.”
According to Statistics Canada, in 2015 there were about 192 officers per 100,000 population generally in Canada and almost 197 in Nova Scotia.
In the Cape Breton Regional Police Service, there are 167 CBRM-funded members, with the remaining 35 members funded through the province’s Boots on the Street program, policing agreements with Membertou First Nation and the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board and the integrated traffic unit with the RCMP.