Red tape a burden for RCMP

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This article was published 17/06/2019 (2447 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A Mountie dressed in red serge is one of Canada’s enduring symbols, but red tape threatens to tarnish that reputation. An internal RCMP report says bureaucracy prevents officers from doing their job properly.

Disjointed databases, which are managed under lax rules over how to input, verify and store information, “make it impossible to provide consistent and trusted information in a timely and practical basis,” an internal audit obtained by the Free Press concluded.

“The RCMP is challenged when attempting to produce information and data in a timely, relevant and usable fashion,” reads the 2017 report, which warns about the effect on everything from criminal trials to procurement.

The Mounties have publicly confronted sexual harassment within the force, inadequate equipment and low morale. To get a handle on internal matters, the force commissioned KPMG to probe how its overlapping branches are funded and the effect on officers’ ability to do their jobs.

The report identified conflicting protocols for data entry, hiring and budgeting. “This drives duplicative work, inefficient workflows, inconsistent standards and the proliferation of incompatible systems that compound challenges.”

Frontline officers, who police almost every rural area outside Ontario and Quebec, spend almost one-fifth of their time either attending trials or getting ready for them. That’s partly due to unconnected databases that require intermediaries to pull information from multiple sources, such as fingerprint registries and lab tests.

The problem has worsened because the number of employees who maintain and access data on criminal records, biometric data, sex offenders and property-record checks dropped by 14 per cent from 2012 to 2016.

That could help explain issues faced by Manitoba Mounties; officers are straining to police vast distances amid an increase in rural crime.

The KPMG report confirmed media reports that officers have been diverted to deal with radicalization and foreign fighters in recent years. As a result, the branch that investigates fraud, forensics and gangs dropped to 14 full-time equivalent prevention officers from 64 over a three-year period, 2012 to 2015.

The RCMP can bill federal and provincial governments when it exceeds its budgets, meaning multiple programs dip into each other’s funding allocations. As a result, the force duplicates work and fails to keep track of how much money is needed by each office.

For example, the force didn’t have a separate budget for accommodating the recently completed National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, so various divisions and branches pulled from their own budgets to respond to requests for evidence, records and testimony.

The head of a union that seeks to represent RCMP officers, said the force has long used “Mountie math” to do what’s requested, and then bill one branch of government or another.

“It’s just a weird, convoluted way of doing businesses,” said Brian Sauvé, head of the National Police Federation.

“We are one massive behemoth, with a number of different silos that don’t work well together in an efficient matter.”

This accounting practice results in the force struggling to fulfil secondary duties such as responding to media requests (which had doubled in a four-year period), responding to freedom-of-information requests and buying equipment through a cost-effective process. The report notes Mounties must do all three tasks to uphold public confidence.

The auditors called on the federal government to undergo a strategic “formal change program” to restructure its bureaucracy.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said his government is instead incorporating resource issues into a single review that includes everything from harassment to unionization, budgeting and resources.

He noted that after years of cuts, the force is starting to graduate recruits at the same rate as a decade ago.

“They have this very complex layer upon layer upon layer of responsibilities, and that complexity keeps growing,” Goodale told the Free Press.

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki launched the force’s five-year review, which ends in 2023.

“Everything is on the table, as far as what we look at and challenging every assumption that we base our organization on,” Lucki told the Free Press during a visit to Winnipeg last week.

She added that she was “not at all” worried about Manitoba officers’ ability to do their jobs.

This year, the Liberals created a management board for the RCMP, which is one of the few police forces that doesn’t have an advisory board or oversight commission to probe issues such as human resources and procurement.

Goodale blamed the former Harper government for its cuts to the force, with “the RCMP often being put in the position of having to rob Peter to pay Paul, because their resource base had dwindled.”

Yet many of the issues go beyond budgeting.

The force takes far too long to run security screens on applicants; prospective officers wait longer than those trying to join the military or the Canada Border Services Agency. For public service positions, it takes the force roughly 175 days to hire someone, which is three times longer than federal departments.

Intake screening was “consistently cited as the No. 1 impediment to sourcing talent,” leading to “internal churn” where all security-related federal agencies “vie for talent from a narrow internal pool” instead of hiring from outside.

The force has a mishmash of buildings owned by the RCMP, federal departments and leases, leading to lengthy repairs and costly rents. Only 12 per cent of facilities had an up-to-date security assessment as of 2016.

— with files from Kevin Rollason

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca

KPMG report on RCMP resourcing review

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