The RCMP is cutting back on investigations into mobsters, drug gangs and white-collar criminals, while putting off core duties so routinely that it is taking the force years to update simple records in its crime databases.
A stark contrast between the law-and-order agenda of the Conservative government and the dysfunctional day-to-day realities of Canada’s national police force was laid bare in a review released Thursday by Canada’s Auditor-General.
The report comes as the 30,000-member force stands at a historic crossroads. Demoralized by leadership failures and struggling to prioritize its workload, the Mounties have been waiting for months for the federal government to appoint a new commander. Under the status quo, a proliferation of fiefdoms within the RCMP leaves commanders raiding each other’s budgets for resources, and starving some important programs to feed others.
One big problem is the mounting paperwork backlogs at the RCMP, which serves as a data hub for all Canadian police forces. Detectives throughout the country tap the Mounties’ information repositories – DNA, forensic, and criminal history – only to find that records that are supposed to be updated instantaneously can take up to three years to change.
“The estimated time to process a criminal record update is 14 months for English updates and 36 months for French updates,” the new Auditor-General’s report says. The average time to update a criminal record is 334 working days – even though the goal is supposed to be a 24-hour turnaround.
These chronic problems make the public less safe, experts say. “These are the tools you want to have if you want to have fast, effective policing,” said Paul Kennedy, a former RCMP complaints commissioner. Outdated databases, he said, increase the risk that police will overlook warrants for dangerous criminals and clues that might identify sex offenders.
Over decades, RCMP responsibilities have bloated. Often Parliament gives the Mounties new duties without coming up with new funding. The result is an increasingly unfocused force that needs to pare down its workload and get back to basics, the report suggests.
“We have to go back and resolve some pretty fundamental questions,” said interim Auditor-General John Wiersema at a news conference. “… What services should the RCMP be providing? At what level?”
The Mounties send beat cops into native reserves, some cities, even a few entire provinces, while its top detectives pursue big-picture national investigations.
In terms of budget, the RCMP’s contractual obligations with the provinces make its beat-cop functions all but sacrosanct. Meanwhile, federal cops – the drug, gang and terrorism detectives – are viewed within the force as a ready source of fungible funds when inevitable shortfalls arise.
The Auditor-General’s review finds that the Mounties have also made up operational shortfalls by steering money away from programs to hire new recruits – a hiring push that was once a central pledge of the Conservative government.
In the meantime, the RCMP has struggled to find cash. In 2009, the force brought in an across-the-board 5-per-cent cut to its programs – exempting only contract police and also security duties for the Vancouver Olympics.
The very next year, the RCMP implemented a further 10 per cent across-the-board cut to programs. The Auditor-General’s report says that meant nearly $50-million was cut from the Federal and International Operations Directorate, “which has responsibility for organized crime investigations, border integrity, drug enforcement, and money laundering.”
The report warns that the RCMP’s duty to provide other police forces with investigative data has never been clearly spelled out. The force is also not tracking whether it is charging enough for the services it routinely provides to other police.
Even the Mounties generally agree with the findings of the new Auditor-General’s report, which builds upon similar recommendations made in 2000, 2004 and 2007.
“In order to sustain national police services in the future, agreement needs to be reached with partners on what services are required, and that issues related to governance, accountability and funding need to be addressed,” the RCMP said.
