As 2024 begins, we have a New Year’s resolution for Canada’s leaders: It is time to start building a national law enforcement training program.
This recommendation out of the Mass Casualty Commission’s final report in March 2023 was reiterated in a Dec. 29 SaltWire story about the Coalition for Canadian Police Reform.
“We are actually falling way behind,” David Cassels, a 30-year police veteran and chair of the Coalition for Canadian Police Reform, told SaltWire following a panel discussion on the topic in December.
MCC final report
Police training was only one of many factors the MCC pointed to in its report after its inquiry into the April 2020 Nova Scotia mass killings, where it devoted a 722-page section to policing.
The commission found that better training may have prevented the tragedy that began in Portapique, N.S., by a man known to be violent, and ended with the deaths of 22 people as police pursued him for 13 hours.
“Those who sought to report the perpetrator’s violence were often at best misunderstood by police who, at a minimum, did not possess the training or spend the time necessary to understand the nature of their concerns,” reads the report.
The commission found that better training may have prevented the tragedy that began in Portapique, N.S., by a man known to be violent, and ended with the deaths of 22 people as police pursued him for 13 hours.
The MCC report recommended that the federal and provincial governments invest in a three-year degree program for police officers at academic institutions across Canada, and that completion of a policing degree be required before an officer can serve. It also recommended the phasing out of the RCMP training depot.
Waning recruitment
Cassels says implementing those recommendations is overdue, noting professionalizing policing would solve eroding public trust in those wearing a badge
and waning police recruitment across the country.
RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme, who spoke with SaltWire during a visit to P.E.I. in December, also touched on the MCC report and declining recruitment.
"There are less and less people that are drawn to law enforcement as a job. Our partners have seen the same thing. There’s less of an interest in police work. Why? I'm not quite sure," he said.
Cassels’ group says part of the answer is to better prepare cadets for the complexities of the role they are seeking to fill.
“There is no entity in Canada that collects and disseminates current and relevant police training,” he said. “Most existing police training institutions are teaching in a silo.”
Six-month model
The MCC report includes a submission from the lawyer representing two of the families most affected by the 2020 massacre: “We seriously question the RCMP’s traditional 6-month basic training model … followed by the six months on the job first posting as the ‘best model’ going forward.”
We agree. Six months of theory followed by six months on the job cannot possibly be enough time to educate cadets about the laws they are meant to enforce, let alone the nuances of the diverse population they are meant to serve.
More time in school and more cohesion in the programs offered would only serve to keep our law enforcement officers, and our communities, safer.
