RCMP could unionize without right to strike

Proposed legislation would drop officers from specialized health-care scheme

OTTAWA— The Liberal government wants to allow RCMP officers to form a national union but would not grant it the right to strike and would drop Mounties from a dedicated federal health-care scheme that now covers their workplace injuries.

The proposed move, which would instead direct Mounties injured or shot on the job to seek care under provincial workers’ compensation plans, stunned many Mounties Wednesday.

Treasury Board President Scott Brison introduced the Liberal government’s long-awaited response to last year’s Supreme Court of Canada ruling that found the current RCMP labour relations regime a breach of the constitutional right to associate.

“We’ve responded in consultation with RCMP members as well as with jurisdictions employing the RCMP,” Brison said.

Sources inside the RCMP suggested the move may cut costs but may also create a patchwork of care for the country’s national police force, and seems certain to boost support for unionization.

None would speak on the record, as Mounties cannot speak freely to the media without permission.

Mounties injured on the job are currently assessed by doctors, nurses and psychologists contracted specially by the RCMP who can approve expedited care as needed. The former Conservative government toyed with the idea of eliminating that scheme but never proceeded, although it made other changes to RCMP health care.

Most of the other changes unveiled Wednesday — barring the right to strike and requiring a national union, not provincially organized ones — had been anticipated. The proposed scheme would see impasses at the bargaining table resolved by independent, binding arbitration.

The government says it consulted broadly across the force and found many Mounties were mistrustful of how a new labour relations scheme would be set up, but the nearly half who responded to a survey wanted a national bargaining body. Now the jostling begins. Since last year’s court ruling, the RCMP’s in-house labour relations group, the staff relations representatives for rank-and-file members, has been disbanded.

There is no broad-based national voice for officers. Neither the Ontario nor the B.C. provincial associations that successfully challenged the RCMP scheme returned calls for comment.

The high court ruled that the RCMP’s non-unionized body set up for rank-and-file members in1967 by management that left all final decisions up to the RCMP chief denied the Mounties a right to form an independent labour association and hold “meaningful” collective bargaining talks with their employer. It didn’t mandate a union, but left much of the design of the new scheme to the government.

The RCMP is the only Canadian police service that is not unionized.

Consultations led by former CBSA head Alain Jolicoeur concluded: “There are more (RCMP) members who want change than there are members who are comfortable with the status quo.”

Under separate changes proposed in December by the Liberal government to repeal Conservative labour laws, it would be easier to certify a bargaining unit now.