Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Michael Duheme is pictured during an interview at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa on Aug. 16.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail
Decades ago, Michael Duheme accidentally ended up writing an entrance exam for the RCMP that set him on a path to becoming the force’s 25th commissioner.
The leader of Canada’s national police force laughs about it now. He was living in the city of Chambly, south of Montreal, and working with his dad in his small construction company. Mr. Duheme decided to put his name in to join the force, spurred in part by the stories of a hockey coach who worked for the RCMP and spoke about the teamwork involved in policing.
In work boots and tattered jeans, the unshaven Mr. Duheme turned up at the force’s Montreal-area office on his motorcycle to look for information but ended up in a room with other prospects. They were handed forms that turned out to be an entry exam.
“I was like, ‘Okay. I’m here. I’m not going to walk out,’ ” Mr. Duheme said in an interview. “So I write the exam. They say, `Everybody go for lunch and when you come back, we’ll call the names of the people that must leave.’ So they call the names of the people that must leave. `Oh geez. I am not one of them.’ ”
Within six months, Mr. Duheme was at the RCMP’s training facility in Regina. It was 1987.
In the interview, Mr. Duheme spoke about the twists and turns of a career that has spanned 37 years, with the latest chapter bringing him to his current office about 20 kilometres south of Parliament Hill. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed him Commissioner in April.
He is fluently bilingual. When he grew up in Chambly, Mr. Duheme said it was about 60-per-cent francophone and 40-per-cent anglophone. His parents were born near the border. English was spoken at home, but he went to a French school and grew up in a bilingual neighbourhood.
Mr. Duheme has worked in a number of provinces, and accumulated experiences that included being a member of the RCMP’s Emergency Response Team, working in peacekeeping in Kosovo and serving as commanding officer of the RCMP’s national division.
For about four years, Mr. Duheme worked as a VIP protection officer, guarding cabinet ministers, the chief justice and incoming heads of state in Ottawa. He said he ruled out work in the unit that guards the prime minister because his daughter was young and he wasn’t interested in the travel the job required. He said his daughter now works for the force, providing analysis.
Later, Mr. Duheme was the first director of the Parliamentary Protective Service, created as a unified security service for Parliament. He also served as a deputy commissioner of federal policing for the force and was serving as interim RCMP commissioner, succeeding Brenda Lucki, when the Prime Minister tapped him to take on the job on a permanent basis, saying that Mr. Duheme would provide stability for the force.
“Oddly enough, I never had a career path,” Mr. Duheme said . “I never looked for opportunities to become a supervisor.” Instead, he said he just pursued things that interested him, and found abundant opportunities within the force.
The national vice-president of the union representing members of the RCMP said he has known Mr. Duheme for years, facing him across the table on varied issues. Dennis Miller, now in his 30th year as a Mountie, said the Commissioner’s varied professional experiences have given him a helpful perspective.
“We’ve had previous commissioners – I’m not going to name them – where they have come from one specific area, with limited knowledge of other areas,” Mr. Mills said in an interview.
“But the simple exposure to the various areas that he’s worked in gives him some broad knowledge of the gaps, challenges, lack of potential funding or lack of support, [what] those areas may require in order to build a stronger organization and support the members.”
Mr. Miller said the Commissioner maintains an open-door policy. “He’s as approachable for a constable as he is for the guy that’s sitting in the office beside him that’s a deputy commissioner or a high-ranking individual.”
Beyond specific issues such as recruitment, federal policing and other files, Mr. Duheme said one of his key responsibilities is dealing with stress in the organization.
“I find my job is the job of calming people down,” he said. “It’s just bringing people back to a perspective that, `We’re going to make mistakes, folks, right? But it’s not the end of the world.’ We’ve got to learn from it and move on as an organization when we make these mistakes.”
As for dealing with his own stress, the Commissioner’s hobbies include annual fishing trips as well as one other pursuit. “Oddly enough I like to cook,” he said, noting he makes homemade pasta and pizza with his partner, Nathalie, a member of the force, who he said convinced him to take the commissioner’s job.
“She’s part of the organization as well so she understands the organization, but I would tell you for the most part we don’t talk that much about the organization other than I might bounce a few ideas off her the odd time,” he said.
“She’s a sounding board and understands me very well.”