RCMP's ability to defend national security is eroding, report warns
The RCMP's federal wing is at a "critical juncture" and its ability to police key files like foreign interference, terrorism and financial crime is on the line, says a recent report from the Mounties' independent ad‐ visory board.
After studying the sustain‐ ability of federal policing for more than a year, a task force set up by the external Management Advisory Board drafted a report that says the RCMP must change to sur‐ vive - and the federal govern‐ ment needs to step up to protect Canadians' safety.
"Federal policing has now arrived at a critical juncture of its sustainability, which present risks for the national security and safety of Cana‐ da, its people, and its inter‐ ests," says the report, shared with CBC News this week.
It's just the latest report to offer dire warnings for the federal government about the direction of the national police organization.
"There is, I think, a real call for political leadership in this report," said Christian Le‐ uprecht, a professor of politi‐ cal science at the Royal Mili‐ tary College and of intergov‐ ernmental relations at Queen's University.
"Without that dedicated attention, the rest is simply going to be moving deck chairs on the Titanic."
Federal policing is the sec‐ tion of the RCMP that investi‐ gates some of the most com‐ plex criminal files, those in‐ volving national security, or‐ ganized crime, money laun‐ dering, cyber attacks and war crimes.
The RCMP is also respon‐ sible for boots-on-the-ground policing in large parts of the country, including many rural and remote areas.
The Management Advi‐ sory Board, created in 2019 by the federal government to provide external advice to the RCMP commissioner, set up a task force in the fall of 2022 to study the federal policing program.
"Canada and its people have already begun to see the repercussions of the fed‐ eral policing program being stretched thin," says the task force's report, completed at the end of last year.
The report says budget and personnel shortfalls have left the RCMP "opera‐ tionally limited," restricting the number of cases it can take on annually.
That problem "is further exacerbated by other com‐ peting urgent criminal priori‐ ties (e.g. national security)," the report adds.
The report points to the 2022 Cullen Commission, the money laundering inquiry launched by British Colum‐ bia. It concluded that the pri‐ mary cause of poor law en‐ forcement results on money laundering files in that province was a lack of police resources.
Canada's credibility on the global stage at risk
The task force warns that there are global implications to the weakness of federal policing, since the RCMP rep‐ resents Canada in global se‐ curity bodies such as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance and INTERPOL.
"Federal policing's overall eroding capacity may have implications for the credibil‐ ity of Canada's federal police force and its investigations on the international stage," says the report.
"Ultimately, this may influ‐ ence Canada's overall ap‐ proach and standing in inter‐ national politics, including its ability to advance global pri‐ orities."
The report links the slow collapse of federal policing to government cost-cutting, starting with the $150 million trimmed from the RCMP in 2008 by the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
That reduced funding "sig‐ nificantly impacted [the RCM‐ P's] investigative capabilities," it says.
The RCMP has struggled in recent years to recruit and retain regular members, a problem that's particularly acute in federal policing, the report says.
The highly-skilled people the RCMP needs to advance complex investigations are in short supply and in high de‐ mand.
The force also has to com‐ pete for experts in cyber crime with the private sector - which can hire people faster and pay them more - and with other security agencies, such as the Communications
Security Establishment and the Canadian Security Intelli‐ gence Service, says the re‐ port.
The task force suggests that the RCMP obtain "special allowances" from the Trea‐ sury Board of Canada to of‐ fer higher salaries to people with specialized skill sets.
Feds' priorities come at the expense of core op‐ erations
Another factor acting as a drag on RCMP federal polic‐ ing is the effect of the force's contractual obligations, the report says. Regular mem‐ bers are routinely pulled from federal policing to work in regional contract policing and are not replaced.
The task force says feder‐ al policing has lost about 1,000 regular members in a 10-year period - about 24 per cent of its officer workforce. It also says the federal polic‐ ing unit is being pulled in multiple directions by federal government policing priori‐ ties, such as "protective ser‐ vices for political figures and dignitaries" and "ideological‐ ly-motivated violent extrem‐ ism."
Regular members are also generalists, the report notes. All Mounties get the same initial training as cadets at the depot in Regina, whether they're being tasked with pa‐ trol work in New Minas, N.S., or with taking on a mob boss.
The advisory board rec‐ ommends the RCMP focus on training would-be investi‐ gators with specialized skills.
Some of the report's 10 recommendations suggest an alternative training struc‐ ture that would allow recruits with specialized skills to join the federal policing unit di‐ rectly, without going through depot training - a concept the RCMP was piloting before it was paused by a union com‐ plaint.
While the Management Advisory Board was set up to provide the RCMP commis‐ sioner with guidance, its latest report saves its most pointed language for the fed‐ eral government.
"After all, the remit of fed‐ eral policing is at the very core of the mandate of the RCMP, Public Safety Canada and the government of Cana‐ da," the task force concludes.
The advisory board's re‐ port echoes recommenda‐ tions made by one of Parlia‐ ment's intelligence and secu‐ rity watchdogs, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentari‐ ans (NSICOP).
NSICOP's November re‐ port said federal policing is not "as effective, efficient, flexible or accountable as it needs to be to protect Cana‐ da and Canadians from the most significant national se‐ curity and criminal threats."
The public inquiry that in‐ vestigated the worst mass shooting in modern Canadi‐ an history raised concerns about the RCMP's structure and called for a review of how it operates.
The Mass Casualty Com‐ mission, launched in re‐ sponse to the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia that killed 22 people, suggested that review should "specifi‐ cally examine the RCMP's ap‐ proach to contract policing."
The task force's conclu‐ sions come as no shock to Garry Clement, who spent 30 years with RCMP, starting as a uniformed officer before eventually moving to the money laundering investiga‐ tions unit.
He said he constantly saw investigators leave federal policing to fill gaps on the contract policing side.
"You were only keeping competent investigators for maybe three years and that's just an insufficient amount of time," he said.
"It takes about five years
[for a] competent investiga‐ tor ... to be effective in this arena, especially in transna‐ tional organized crime and money laundering."
Clement, now the chief anti-money laundering of‐ ficer at VersaBank, said he believes the heart of the problem is the long-standing tension between the RCMP's contract and federal policing responsibilities.
"It's time that ... we take a look at an organization and ask ourselves as a country, can we really afford to have a group trying to be all things to all people?" he said. "And the reality of it is it won't work in this complex world we're in today.
"Let's quit talking about it. Let the federal government pull their head out of the sand, realize they have to do something, and let's get on with it."
Despite the growing list of critical reports, Leuprecht said he isn't convinced change is on the horizon.
"I think this government is not particularly seized with anything to do with defence, security or intelligence," he said.
"This government also has electoral constituencies that are not particularly favourable to issues of intelli‐ gence, defence and security. And as a minority govern‐ ment, I think this is rather not the bunfight that they would like to pick with their own electoral constituencies, possibly further alienating their shrinking electoral base."
A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the department agrees with the Management Advisory Board "on the criti‐ cal importance of the RCMP's federal policing functions to the security of Canada."
"We will work collabora‐ tively at every step of the way with the RCMP to ensure that they have the resources nec‐ essary to carry out those functions," said JeanSébastien Comeau.
The head of the federal policing, Deputy Commis‐ sioner Mark Flynn, said he welcomes the board's find‐ ings and will have more to say about how he plans to shake up the unit.
"But of respect to our em‐ ployees who have not seen the report yet, I will not go in‐ to great detail with respect to specific items in the report until they have access to it," he said in a statement.
"However, I will tell you that I believe the report will be well received by our em‐ ployees who are working hard keeping Canadians safe, as it will help us make our or‐ ganization stronger and to build on the amazing work they do in a complex and de‐ manding environment."