Letter to Commissioner Duheme regarding MAB’s May 2024 Quarterly Meeting 

June 13, 2024

 

Commissioner Mike Duheme
RCMP National Headquarters
70 Leikin Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0R2

 

Dear Commissioner,

On behalf of the Management Advisory Board (MAB) for the RCMP, I write to thank you for spending time with us May 9 and 10, 2024, during our quarterly meeting in H Division (Nova Scotia). The purpose of this letter is to share with you the key points emerging from this meeting and items for follow up.

As expressed to you when we were together last month, the MAB sincerely appreciates its time with you, key members of your Senior Executive Committee (SEC), and the federal Deputy Minister of Public Safety (PS). The MAB cannot overstate the importance of dedicated time with all of you. This facilitates our understanding of the RCMP and PS’s priority areas, goals, opportunities, and challenges and advances our ability, as an independent advisory board, to provide well-informed, and meaningful counsel to you in accordance with our legislated mandate. We do not take your engagement and candour with us for granted.

During our May quarterly meeting, the MAB was grateful to have an opportunity to meet with members of the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners, which demonstrated an effective model for collaboration between RCMP and municipal police services. Additionally, MAB appreciated meeting with the Integrated Criminal Investigation Division of the Halifax Police and RCMP as well as our visit to the Cole Harbour office, which enhanced MAB’s familiarity with the diverse scope of police service needs across the country.

The MAB was also grateful for the discussion on the RCMP’s Management Response Action Plan (MRAP) to MAB recommendations as outlined in our advisory report on Federal Policing Sustainability. The MRAP demonstrates how the RCMP is taking seriously the advice the MAB is providing. Moving forward, we ask that where progress on implementing recommendations is “ongoing”, that the MRAPs detail the specific steps that have been taken and/or are being planned, as well as highlighting any foreseen risks to full implementation.

We fully support you naming recruitment as your top priority for the RCMP and we are committed to supporting efforts to sustain and enhance recruitment through multiple modes and channels. The MAB was pleased to hear of the RCMP’s updates regarding enrollment of a full complement of troops at Depot in 2024, and we have confidence in the potential of the RCMP’s newly-appointed Chief Human Resources Officer, Jasmin Breton, supported by the newly-appointed Deputy Chief Human Resources Officer, Shelley Peters, to pursue the RCMP’s efforts in this regard. At the same time, the MAB is concerned that, even with the increased numbers of cadets who will soon be loaded at Depot, all Regular Member (RM) vacancies will not be filled and this will remain the case for several years. Through our Human Resources Standing Committee, the MAB will continue to dedicate consistent time and attention to this issue, with a view to supporting the objective of filling all vacancies, both actual and predicated in view of pending and future retirements. In this regard, we will be encouraging bold and creative thinking around recruitment and training, both at and beyond Depot to fill RM vacancies in short order.

Further to information shared at the May 2024 quarterly meeting, the MAB is concerned about the RCMP’s data analysis and planning capacities related to personnel. We heard that there are issues in relation to data capturing systems that render the RCMP's numbers unreliable. This hinders the organisation’s ability to assess and analyse where it is and where it ought to be in regard to its RM complement. A plan is needed to address this situation and it will be an item that the MAB will track. In order to better understand this issue, we request a demonstration of the existing systems’ functionality and we will be working with the MAB Secretariat to this end.

The MAB also had a robust discussion about communications at this quarterly meeting and how it wishes to move forward to bolster the transparency of our work. We are committed to ensuring that work product and the issues we are examining are accessible to the public in a timely fashion. We appreciate your support in ensuring that this goal is achieved in that our advice, and the RCMP’s response, is made public as early as possible, in both official languages.

Lastly, the MAB had a rich conversation on the Future of Policing and the Future of the RCMP. Our thinking on this is still in its earliest stages, but an active brainstorming session resulted in convergence around the theme of how the RCMP can and ought to work within a web or ecosystem of service providers, and what this means or requires in terms of resourcing from different levels of government for service providers that include but extend well beyond police services. We look forward to sustaining a dialogue on this topic within the MAB and with you and with members of the SEC as we progress in this work.

Moving forward, focal points for the MAB’s work include:

• Examining procurement challenges that the RCMP continues to face, and what may or may not be possible regarding separate employer status for the RCMP.
• Compensation to support RMs posted to remote and rural detachments.
• Continuing to monitor and engage closely with the RCMP on progress made in relation to recommendations in taskforce reports submitted to-date, notably on: organisational climate and harassment, the Cadet Training Program, Indigenous recruitment, and Federal Policing.
• Continuing to engage on the review of the Conduct Measures Guide and monitor performance metrics for the Independent Centre for Harassment Resolution.

As is true of every time the MAB meets, members expressed recognition for the tremendous weight of responsibility that falls on the shoulders of the RCMP and we see how you and your SEC are endeavouring, along with all members of the organisation, to take up the heft of this work with integrity and diligence.

As such, we remain committed to supporting you and your team as you move forward in your essential work for Canada.

Sincerely,

Professor Angela Campbell
Chairperson, Management Advisory Board for the RCMP

 

CC: Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs

       Deputy Minister of Public Safety Canada

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