Monday, August 15, 2022

In a commentary for Policy Options, published Aug. 15, Faculty of Law Professor Kent Roach writes change will not come from within the RCMP police service. He suggests 10 ways to bring about an ambitious remake of the Mounties. He writes: 

The RCMP is in the news again and, as usual, the news is not good. There are ongoing controversies over whether there was political interference or pressure placed on the force to release information about the type of gun used in the 2020 Nova Scotia massacre, as well as proposals for British Columbia and Alberta to create their own police services to replace the RCMP. 

Regardless of how the Nova Scotia scandal plays out, it is additional evidence that the RCMP must be fundamentally changed. The interaction between the commissioner in Ottawa and the RCMP in Nova Scotia underlines some of the tensions of having a large bureaucracy run from Ottawa providing local policing. This is not news. In in 2007, the Brown task force, which included two former RCMP commissioners, expressed concern that there was too much central control over contract policing.

Professor Roach is the author of Canadian Policing: Why and How It Must Change (Irwin Law Inc. 2022).

Read the full  commentary at Policy Options

Read 'We have urgent work to do': New book by U of T's Kent Roach on why Canadian policing needs to change: U of T News