Ottawa is overhauling its RCMP units to ensure officers dedicated to investigating transnational threats are separated from the demands of policing the hundreds of communities across the country they are hired to protect, the federal Public Safety Minister has told his provincial and territorial colleagues.
The RCMP’s federal policing wing will be given more independence to better focus on major investigations in areas such as money laundering, foreign interference, drug trafficking and cybercrime, Dominic LeBlanc said in a May 23 letter to B.C. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth.
But Mr. LeBlanc said the change won’t affect the contract policing work the RCMP does, functioning as local law enforcement, according to the letter, which Mr. Farnworth’s office shared with The Globe and Mail on Thursday. Mr. LeBlanc committed Ottawa to honouring its contract obligations to continue providing “effective and responsive delivery of policing in these communities.”
His letter also indicates no plans to proceed with a new, separate and standalone policing agency aimed at investigating federal crime, a move recommended last fall in a parliamentary report.
The National Police Federation, the union that represents thousands of front-line Mounties, has confirmed that letters similar to Mr. Farnworth’s have been sent by Mr. LeBlanc to other public safety ministers across the country.
In the letter, Mr. LeBlanc said he ultimately envisions “an end-state for federal policing that is separate and distinct from the RCMP’s contract policing mandate.”
Mr. LeBlanc’s pledge to put the RCMP’s federal policing wing in a position where it is more insulated from the imperatives of local law enforcement follows years of criticism inside and outside government about the conflicted structure of the nationally-run force.
Last summer, a group of premiers asked Ottawa to clarify whether the RCMP intended on continuing to police the smaller communities of every province and territory except Ontario and Quebec after these contracts end in 2032. Provincial leaders such as B.C. Premier David Eby have long highlighted how the RCMP’s mission is often underfunded at the provincial and federal level.
Mr. Farnworth told The Globe on Thursday that British Columbia welcomes the clear division of provincial and federal RCMP responsibilities outlined in Mr. LeBlanc’s letter, and said improving the federal arm of the agency will only help front-line Mounties working as municipal officers.
The RCMP’s contractual relationships with provinces and territories oblige the same police force to supply given numbers of general-duty police officers to do local law enforcement, but there are no such strictures at the federal arm of the force. Local law-enforcement contracts exist in every province and territory but Ontario and Quebec.
A Public Safety Canada briefing note from early last year shows that provinces that hire Mounties are often wary of initiatives to bolster the federal policing side of the force.
“There is a perception amongst some contract policing jurisdictions in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Yukon that federal policing responsibilities are being downloaded from the RCMP,” the federal memo says. It said that these provinces “will be interested to know whether federal policing transformation initiatives would alleviate or compound this issue.”
In May, 2023, Yukon assistant deputy minister of justice Ian Davis wrote federal RCMP officials to warn that this overhaul of federal units could cause crime problems in his communities.
“While we understand the overall needs of federal policing in Canada, the Yukon is extremely concerned about the proposed governance structure changes,” his letter says.
Late last year, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) called on Mr. LeBlanc to get serious about bolstering the federal wing of the police force, saying in a report that that the agency “is the only organization capable of conducting investigations of the most significant criminal threats across jurisdictions.”
The report says that it even “may be time for Canada to consider a stand-alone federal policing organization.”
Access to information records recently released by Public Safety Canada show that Mr. LeBlanc’s speaking notes say the RCMP’s current system of recruiting and training aspiring Mounties with only general skills is “ill suited” to the specialized forms of investigation needed at the federal level.
Brian Sauvé, president of the National Police Federation, said his organization discussed recruitment solutions with the RCMP Commissioner, including giving every new recruit three months of basic police training before allowing them to decide between two career paths: another three months learning local law enforcement and joining a community detachment, or continuing more specialized training needed to join a federal unit.
Mike Hager
Colin Freeze