With fewer recruits entering training and more members leaving, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police needs to fill more boots.
According to data provided to CTV National News, the RCMP currently has a national vacancy rate of 4.3 percent, which equates to an estimated 300 positions.
Manitoba has the highest RCMP vacancy rate in the country at six percent, followed by Nunavut at 5.3 percent, British Columbia at 3.5 percent, and Yukon at 3.3 percent. Smaller vacancies were also seen in Saskatchewan (1.2 percent), Northwest Territories (1 percent), and New Brunswick (0.5 percent).
Calvin Lawrence, who served in the RCMP for 28 years, says the force has lost much of its luster and former appeal.
“Because of harassment, discrimination, sexual harassment, intimidation and overwork, people are leaving the RCMP,” Lawrence, now an author and advocate, told CTV National News. “The day of the glorious red serge and everyone wants to be a mounted policeman; today not everyone wants to be a policeman or a member of the RCMP.”
Known as Depot Division, the RCMP academy in Regina consolidated and rescheduled training this spring to deal with fewer recruits. Once a prerequisite to employment, polygraph tests are also being phased out.
“The RCMP is actively hiring,” RCMP spokesman Robin Percival told CTV National News. “Work is underway to streamline the applicant screening process while maintaining rigor.”
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki has acknowledged that there is systemic racism on the force.
Some suggest that the national police force should focus on border integrity, organized crime, and the safety of dignitaries and politicians, leaving local policing to local or provincial police forces, as in Ontario and Quebec.
“The RCMP is about to be held accountable,” Michael Boudreau, a criminologist at the University of St. Thomas in Fredericton, told CTV National News. “I think the RCMP needs to review their entire organization and rethink what they do as policing.”
“They need to be outside of police provinces and outside of police townships,” added Robert Gordon, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University.
For new recruits, there is more cultural training and diversity in today’s RCMP, as well as new unions, which has led to increases in pay.
“Members have a voice that they didn’t have during the RCMP’s first 148 years,” Robert Farrer, RCMP Sergeant and National Police Federation Union Director Robert Farrer, told CTV News. “I think that will make the change happen much faster.”
Manitoba’s justice minister told CTV News Winnipeg that he is very concerned about the province’s high RCMP vacancy rate and plans to continue raising the issue with the federal government to secure more officers.
Vacancy rate data was provided by RCMP; national figure is from April 2022, provincial breakdown is from April 2021. The RCMP national vacancy rate is calculated quarterly.
The RCMP vacancy rate of 4.3 percent is still below the national job vacancy rate, which was 5.2 percent in the first quarter of 2022, down from 3.6 percent a year earlier. , according to Statistics Canada.