The Case for RCMP Reform

This is not an anti-police document. This is a pro-accountability document. Every fact cited here comes from public commissions, federal court proceedings, Auditor General reports, Parliamentary committee testimony, and the RCMP's own published data. The men and women who serve honourably in the RCMP — and there are thousands of them — deserve an institution that matches their dedication. They do not currently have one. What follows is the evidence.

SECTION 01By the Numbers: The Scale of Institutional Failure

The men who built the RCMP — Sam Steele in the Yukon, the officers who kept order across the Northwest Territories when there was no one else — they would look at these numbers and weep. Not because they were soft men, but because they understood that an institution is only as strong as its integrity. Every dollar paid in harassment settlements, every operational failure that cost lives, every complaint buried in a backlog — it all comes from the same rot.

When you lay out the numbers side by side — the settlements, the deaths, the complaints, the vacancies — a pattern emerges that no amount of public relations can obscure. This is not a police force experiencing occasional difficulties. This is an institution in systemic crisis, and the data proves it beyond any reasonable doubt.

SECTION 02Merlo-Davidson: The Harassment the Institution Protected

Let's be precise about what happened here. Women who joined the RCMP to serve their country — who went through the same Depot Division training, who wore the same uniform, who swore the same oath — were systematically harassed, assaulted, and bullied by their colleagues and supervisors. When they reported it, the institution protected the perpetrators. When they persisted, the institution destroyed their careers.

Janet Merlo and Linda Davidson did what the RCMP's own internal systems were supposed to do — they demanded accountability. They filed a class-action lawsuit in 2012 after years of internal complaints went nowhere. The Federal Court certified the action in 2017. What emerged during the claims process was not a story of occasional misconduct but a portrait of an institution that had normalised the degradation of its own members.

This was not a few bad apples. Over 3,131 women came forward. The settlement exceeded $125 million. The claims spanned from the 1970s through the 2010s — four decades of institutional knowledge that harassment was endemic, and four decades of institutional decision-making to do nothing meaningful about it.

Consider the arithmetic. If 3,131 women came forward — knowing they would be doubted, knowing the institution would resist, knowing many of their harassers still wore the uniform — how many more stayed silent? The Bastarache Report itself acknowledged that the true number of victims was likely far higher than those who participated in the claims process. This was not an aberration. It was the culture.

• Commissioner Bob Paulson's 2016 public apology: Paulson acknowledged "a failure of the RCMP as an organization" and stated the force had been "unforgiving towards women." He apologised. The institution did not meaningfully change.
• Categories of harm documented: Sexual assault, sexual harassment, bullying, intimidation, career reprisal for reporting, forced transfers, psychiatric injury, and constructive dismissal. Claims were categorised across severity levels, with the most serious receiving up to $220,000.
• The Bastarache Report (2020): Former Supreme Court Justice Michel Bastarache, who served as Independent Assessor, released a final report describing the RCMP culture as "toxic" and stating he was "shocked" by the severity and frequency of the misconduct reported to him.
• Repeat failures: A second class-action, Tiller v. Canada, addressed harassment of RCMP civilian members and public service employees — settling for approximately $96 million with over 2,300 claimants. The pattern extended beyond sworn officers to anyone who worked within the institution. Combined, the two settlements exceeded $221 million — paid by Canadian taxpayers for an institutional culture that the RCMP's own leadership failed to correct.
• The claim categories: Claims were assessed across six levels of severity. Level 1 (most serious — sexual assault) received up to $220,000. Level 6 (workplace bullying creating hostile environment) received up to $10,000. The distribution of claims across categories revealed that this was not primarily about verbal harassment — a substantial proportion of claims involved physical conduct and sexual assault.
• Institutional response cycle: The RCMP's pattern of response to harassment allegations followed a predictable cycle documented by Bastarache: (1) complainant reports; (2) supervisor discourages or minimises; (3) complainant escalates; (4) informal resolution attempted; (5) complainant faces career consequences — transfers, denied promotions, social isolation; (6) complainant leaves or goes on medical leave; (7) perpetrator faces no consequences. This cycle repeated hundreds of times over four decades.
• Impact on operational effectiveness: The Bastarache Report documented that the harassment culture directly degraded operational effectiveness. Officers who feared retaliation did not report safety concerns. Teams with active harassment problems had higher absenteeism, lower morale, and worse operational outcomes. The toxic culture was not just a moral failure — it was a security risk.

SECTION 03Nova Scotia 2020: Twenty-Two Dead and the Failure That Killed Them

On April 18-19, 2020, a gunman dressed in an RCMP uniform, driving a replica RCMP cruiser, murdered 22 people across rural Nova Scotia over approximately 13 hours. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history. The Mass Casualty Commission, which spent three years investigating, produced seven volumes of findings that paint a picture of an institution that failed at every level — before, during, and after the killing.

The generation that fought at Dieppe would ask one simple question: how did 13 hours pass without a public alert? The RCMP had access to the Alert Ready system — the same system used for weather warnings and Amber Alerts. They chose not to use it. They tweeted instead. People died because they did not know a killer was on the road in a police car.

This was not a failure of courage. RCMP officers on the ground responded with bravery, many of them without adequate equipment or clear orders. This was a failure of command, of communication, of institutional preparedness, and — in the aftermath — of honesty. The Mass Casualty Commission's seven-volume report is the most damning institutional autopsy in Canadian policing history.

• Prior knowledge of the gunman's behaviour: The MCC documented that the RCMP had received multiple reports about the perpetrator's violent behaviour, illegal firearms possession, and a replica police car years before the massacre. No meaningful action was taken.
• Firearms licensing failures: The perpetrator did not hold a valid firearms licence. He obtained weapons through illegal cross-border smuggling from the United States. The Commission found gaps in RCMP enforcement of the Firearms Act.
• Critical Incident Command failures: The MCC found the RCMP's critical incident response was "poorly coordinated" with "no unified command structure" for much of the event. Officers in the field received conflicting or absent direction.
• The Alert Ready decision: RCMP members in the field wanted a public alert issued. The decision not to use Alert Ready was made at the command level. The Commission found this decision "defied common sense" and "likely contributed to deaths."
• Commissioner Lucki's role: The MCC found that Commissioner Lucki made a request regarding disclosure of the firearms used, which multiple witnesses described as pressure related to the federal government's pending gun-control legislation. Lucki denied this characterisation. The Commission found her testimony "at odds" with contemporaneous notes taken by other senior RCMP officials.
• Post-event accountability: No RCMP officer has faced disciplinary action for operational failures during the massacre. The institution investigated itself and found no individual accountability was warranted.
• Equipment deficiencies: The MCC found that responding officers faced equipment shortcomings similar to those documented in the 2014 Moncton shooting review — including inadequate long guns, body armour inconsistencies, and communications equipment that did not support interoperable communications between detachments.
• The replica cruiser: The perpetrator's replica RCMP cruiser — a decommissioned Ford Taurus repainted with RCMP markings, equipped with a light bar, and bearing the RCMP crest — was known to at least some RCMP members before the massacre. The MCC found that no formal investigation was conducted despite tips about an illegal police vehicle.

SECTION 04The CRCC: A Watchdog Without Teeth

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP is supposed to be the mechanism by which Canadians hold the RCMP accountable. In practice, it is an agency drowning in a backlog of thousands of unresolved complaints, whose recommendations the RCMP can — and regularly does — simply ignore.

Established in 1988 as the RCMP Public Complaints Commission and renamed the CRCC in 2014 under the Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, this body was supposed to represent a new era of civilian oversight. Instead, it represents the gap between promise and performance that defines the RCMP reform cycle. Every decade brings a new name, a new mandate, and the same structural impotence.

The CRCC's own Chair has testified before Parliament about the Commission's inadequate resources. In 2021, Chair Michelaine Lahaie told the SECU Committee that the CRCC's budget had not kept pace with complaint volumes, that investigation timelines were "unacceptable," and that the RCMP's responsiveness to interim reports was a persistent concern. The chair of the body created to hold the RCMP accountable was publicly stating that the body could not do its job. Parliament did nothing.

Think about that. Canada created a civilian oversight body for its national police force and then gave it no binding authority. The CRCC can investigate, it can review, it can recommend — but it cannot compel. When the RCMP disagrees with a finding, the Commissioner can reject it with a written response. That's it. That's the accountability mechanism for a force of 30,000 that polices 75% of Canada's land mass.

The veterans who built this country's democratic institutions understood something fundamental: power without accountability is tyranny. It does not matter that most RCMP officers are decent people doing difficult work. What matters is that when the institution fails — when officers commit misconduct, when operations go wrong, when people die — there is no independent body with the power to compel corrective action. The CRCC is the appearance of accountability without the substance.

• Non-binding recommendations: The CRCC's findings and recommendations are advisory. The RCMP Commissioner has the legal authority to accept, partially accept, or reject any recommendation. The CRCC's own annual reports consistently note that the RCMP's response rate to interim reports is "unacceptable."
• Chronic underfunding: The CRCC has repeatedly stated in annual reports and Parliamentary testimony that it lacks the resources to process complaints in a timely manner. Staffing levels have not kept pace with complaint volumes.
• Chair-initiated investigations: The CRCC has the power to launch its own investigations (Chair-initiated complaints), but has used this power sparingly. High-profile investigations — such as the review of RCMP conduct during the 2020 Nova Scotia shooting — take years to complete.
• Bill C-20 (stalled): The proposed Public Complaints and Review Commission Act (Bill C-20) would have replaced the CRCC with a stronger body covering both RCMP and CBSA. Introduced in 2022, it died on the Order Paper when Parliament was dissolved. The RCMP continues to operate under the weak CRCC framework.
• Comparison to provincial models: Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has binding authority over police officers and can lay criminal charges. Alberta's ASIRT similarly has investigative and prosecutorial power. Quebec's Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI) conducts mandatory independent investigations of police incidents involving death or serious injury. The CRCC has neither binding authority nor independent prosecutorial capacity.
• The complaint experience: CRCC annual reports document that many complainants abandon the process due to delays, lack of communication, and the perception that outcomes are predetermined. The Commission's own surveys show declining public confidence in the complaints process — the very mechanism designed to build trust is eroding it further.
• International comparisons: The United Kingdom's Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has statutory authority to direct investigations, access police records without consent, and make binding recommendations. Australia's National Anti-Corruption Commission has broad investigative powers including compulsory examinations. Canada's CRCC falls far below international norms for police oversight bodies.

Oversight Body Comparison

SECTION 05Missing Women: The Investigations That Weren't

The Highway of Tears. The Downtown Eastside. Robert Pickton's farm. These are not just place names — they are monuments to the RCMP's failure to protect the most vulnerable women in this country. Indigenous women disappeared for years before the RCMP treated their cases as anything more than routine missing-person files. When the investigations finally came, they revealed not just a serial killer but a systemic indifference that let him operate for over a decade.

There is no polite way to state what happened. Women were murdered, and the police force responsible for investigating did not investigate — not with urgency, not with adequate resources, not with the presumption that these lives mattered. The official record, compiled through multiple independent inquiries, establishes this beyond dispute. The families of the victims knew it for decades before the commissions confirmed it.

A veteran of the Merchant Navy convoys would understand this: when you lose people because you weren't watching — because you decided their lives weren't worth the effort of vigilance — that's not a mistake. That's a choice. The RCMP made that choice, over and over, for decades.

The pattern is unmistakable. When middle-class white women disappeared from suburbs, the RCMP mobilised immediately. When Indigenous women and sex workers disappeared from the Downtown Eastside and remote highways, they filed paperwork. The differential response was documented by the Oppal Inquiry, the National Inquiry into MMIWG, and the RCMP's own internal reviews. It is not allegation — it is established fact, confirmed by the institution's own data.

• The Pickton investigation timeline: Women began disappearing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in the late 1980s. Despite reports from sex workers, families, and community organizations, the RCMP and Vancouver Police did not launch a coordinated investigation until 2001 — over a decade after the disappearances began accelerating. Robert Pickton was arrested in February 2002. He was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder in 2007, with charges related to an additional 20 women stayed by the Crown. He was killed in prison in May 2024. The Oppal Inquiry found that the delay in launching a coordinated investigation was attributable to both institutional bias and jurisdictional disputes between the RCMP (which had jurisdiction over Port Coquitlam, where Pickton's farm was located) and the VPD (which had jurisdiction over the Downtown Eastside, where victims were last seen).
• The Oppal Inquiry (2012): The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, led by former BC Attorney General Wally Oppal, found "blatant failures" in the police investigation, including jurisdictional disputes between the RCMP and VPD that caused critical delays. The inquiry found that the RCMP's Project Evenhanded investigation was "inadequately resourced" and "poorly managed."
• Highway of Tears: Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Over 40 women and girls — predominantly Indigenous — have gone missing or been found murdered along this 720-kilometre stretch since the 1960s. RCMP investigations have resulted in very few convictions. Community groups and Indigenous leaders have consistently criticised the RCMP for failing to dedicate adequate resources. The lack of public transportation along the highway forces many residents — particularly young Indigenous women — to hitchhike, creating vulnerability that the RCMP has acknowledged but not adequately addressed. A Highway of Tears Symposium in 2006 produced 33 recommendations for the RCMP and other agencies; implementation has been partial.
• National Inquiry into MMIWG (2019): The National Inquiry found that the violence constituted a "Canadian genocide" and documented persistent failures by police forces — particularly the RCMP — to investigate cases involving Indigenous women with the same rigour applied to non-Indigenous victims. The Inquiry's 231 Calls for Justice included specific recommendations for RCMP reform.
• The RCMP's own acknowledgement: In 2014, the RCMP published its own report, "Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Overview," which documented 1,017 Indigenous female homicide victims and 164 missing women between 1980 and 2012. The report was criticised for minimising systemic factors and focusing on individual case statistics.
• The Wally Oppal findings in detail: Commissioner Oppal found that the VPD and RCMP both exhibited "institutional bias" in how they categorised missing women from the Downtown Eastside. Reports were routinely classified as voluntary disappearances. Investigating officers were told the women had "chosen" their lifestyle. File reviews were cursory. The inquiry found that if the missing women had come from affluent neighbourhoods, the police response would have been "dramatically different."
• Helen Betty Osborne (1971): The murder of 19-year-old Cree student Helen Betty Osborne in The Pas, Manitoba, went unsolved for 16 years despite the identities of the four men involved being widely known in the community. One man was convicted in 1987. The Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission later found that racism was a "significant factor" in the failure to investigate.
• Ongoing systemic issues: In 2021, the National Police Federation — the union representing RCMP regular members — acknowledged that the force had "not done enough" to address the systemic factors contributing to MMIWG. The RCMP's own internal reviews, conducted after the 2019 National Inquiry, identified resource allocation, cultural competency training, and community liaison capacity as areas requiring "significant improvement."

Timeline of Investigation Failures

SECTION 06Foreign Interference: The Jurisdiction Nobody Owns

While CSIS gathered intelligence about foreign interference operations on Canadian soil — agents of the People's Republic of China operating police stations, funding political candidates, intimidating diaspora communities — the RCMP, which is the only agency with the legal authority to investigate and lay criminal charges, was largely absent. The result is a national security gap wide enough to drive a foreign intelligence operation through.

This is not a new problem. When the McDonald Commission recommended separating intelligence from law enforcement in 1981, it identified the risk that criminal investigation might fall between the cracks. Forty years later, that risk has become reality. The intelligence-to-evidence gap is not a theoretical concern — it is the reason foreign agents have been able to operate on Canadian soil with near-impunity for decades.

The scale of the problem became undeniable in 2022-2024 when a cascade of revelations — leaked CSIS intelligence reports, Safeguard Defenders' documentation of PRC police stations, Globe and Mail investigations into election interference, and ultimately the NSICOP special report — forced the government to establish the Hogue Commission. What the Commission uncovered was not a few isolated incidents but a systematic campaign by foreign states to influence Canadian democratic processes — a campaign that CSIS documented and the RCMP largely failed to investigate criminally.

The veterans who fought to protect this country's sovereignty would find this incomprehensible. Not that foreign powers would attempt to influence Canadian politics — that's as old as statecraft — but that Canada's own institutions would leave the door open through sheer bureaucratic dysfunction.

The numbers tell the story: CSIS documented foreign interference activities spanning elections, academic institutions, diaspora communities, and political financing. The intelligence was collected. Reports were written. Briefings were given. And the RCMP — the only body with the authority to investigate criminally and lay charges — treated foreign interference as a secondary priority, below drug enforcement, financial crime, and other mandates competing for the same shrinking resources.

• NSICOP Special Report on Foreign Interference (2024): The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians found that foreign states — primarily the PRC — engaged in "sophisticated and pervasive" interference activities targeting Canadian democratic processes. The report identified gaps between CSIS intelligence collection and RCMP criminal investigation capacity as a critical vulnerability.
• The CSIS-RCMP handoff problem: CSIS, created in 1984 specifically to separate intelligence from law enforcement, collects intelligence under warrant authority from the Federal Court. However, CSIS intelligence cannot be directly used as evidence in criminal proceedings. The RCMP must conduct its own parallel criminal investigation. In practice, this handoff has been described by multiple Parliamentary witnesses as "dysfunctional."
• The Hogue Commission (2023-2024): The Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes, led by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, heard testimony that the RCMP's capacity to investigate foreign interference was "severely limited" by resources, expertise, and competing priorities.
• PRC police stations: In 2022, the Spanish NGO Safeguard Defenders published a report identifying alleged overseas PRC police "service stations" in multiple countries, including at least three in Canada. The RCMP confirmed investigations were underway but as of early 2025, no charges had been publicly laid under the Security of Information Act or Criminal Code provisions related to foreign interference.
• Bill C-70 (2024): The Countering Foreign Interference Act received Royal Assent in June 2024, creating a Foreign Influence Transparency Registry and updating the CSIS Act and Criminal Code. Implementation depends on RCMP capacity that experts have questioned.
• RCMP Federal Policing capacity: The RCMP's Federal Policing division — responsible for national security, organised crime, and now foreign interference — has faced chronic resource constraints documented in multiple Auditor General reports. In 2022, the AG found that the RCMP's cybercrime investigation capacity was "not meeting demand." Foreign interference investigation competes with these existing priorities for the same limited pool of skilled investigators.
• The intelligence-evidence gap in practice: In 2018, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA, successor to SIRC) examined the CSIS-RCMP relationship and found "persistent challenges" in converting intelligence into evidence suitable for criminal proceedings. The problem is structural: CSIS collects intelligence under the CSIS Act, which has different evidentiary standards than the Criminal Code. Building a parallel criminal case from scratch, without compromising CSIS sources and methods, requires specialised investigators and prosecutors. The RCMP has acknowledged it does not have enough of either.
• Comparative international response: Australia's ASIO-AFP relationship is supported by dedicated counter-foreign-interference task forces, funded separately from general policing budgets. The UK's MI5-Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command maintains embedded officers who bridge the intelligence-law enforcement divide. The United States FBI combines intelligence and law enforcement functions in a single agency. Canada's split model — CSIS collects, RCMP investigates — has been described by former CSIS Director Richard Fadden as "structurally challenged" in the foreign interference context.

SECTION 07De-Policing and Recruitment Crisis: An Institution Hollowing Out

You cannot fix an institution that cannot recruit good people. And the RCMP — burdened by decades of scandal, remote postings with inadequate support, pay that lags municipal forces, and a culture that multiple independent reports have described as "toxic" — is losing the recruitment war. The force that once attracted the best candidates in the country now struggles to fill its Depot Division training classes.

The irony is vicious. The same institutional failures that demand reform — harassment, operational failures, accountability gaps — are the very factors driving away the officers who could deliver that reform. Young Canadians who might once have aspired to wear the scarlet serge now see a force associated with harassment settlements, mass shooting failures, and an organisational culture described by a former Supreme Court Justice as "toxic." The brand damage is real, and it is self-inflicted.

The good officers — and there are thousands of them, doing difficult work in remote communities, investigating organised crime, protecting Canadians — deserve better than this. They deserve an institution worthy of their service. Right now, they don't have one.

The recruitment crisis is not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. In 2017, the Auditor General warned that the RCMP was not meeting recruitment targets. In 2020, the Bastarache Report linked the toxic culture directly to retention problems. In 2023, the Mass Casualty Commission documented how staffing shortages in Nova Scotia contributed to the failures of April 2020. Every warning was documented. Every warning was acknowledged. Nothing sufficient was done.

• Vacancy crisis: The RCMP has acknowledged over 1,000 unfilled regular member positions across Canada. Contract policing provinces — where the RCMP provides provincial and municipal policing under federal-provincial agreements — are disproportionately affected. Rural and remote detachments face the worst shortages.
• Pay gap: RCMP constables earn less than officers in comparable municipal forces. An RCMP constable's base salary at top increment is approximately $106,000 (2023), compared to approximately $115,000-$125,000 for constables in Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver municipal forces. The gap widens when municipal supplements, overtime policies, and benefits are factored in.
• Attrition and early retirement: The RCMP's own departmental plans note increasing attrition rates, particularly among mid-career members (10-15 years of service) who leave for municipal forces, private sector, or early retirement. The Auditor General's 2017 report on RCMP human resources found the force was "not meeting its own recruitment targets."
• Mental health toll: RCMP members face among the highest rates of PTSD, depression, and suicide of any federal workforce. A 2019 Statistics Canada study found that 36.7% of RCMP members screened positive for one or more mental health disorders. The institutional culture has historically stigmatised mental health support, though recent initiatives aim to address this.
• The morale problem: Survey data published in RCMP departmental plans and the Public Service Employee Survey consistently show RCMP members reporting lower satisfaction with workplace culture, leadership, and harassment prevention than comparable federal agencies. The Bastarache Report linked morale collapse directly to unaddressed harassment and bullying.
• Training constraints: Depot Division in Regina, Saskatchewan — the sole RCMP training academy — graduates approximately 1,000-1,200 cadets per year. With attrition exceeding intake in some years, the force faces a structural demographic crisis as experienced members retire faster than they can be replaced.
• Remote and Indigenous community policing: The vacancy crisis hits hardest in remote and Indigenous communities, many of which rely exclusively on RCMP contract policing. Some detachments operate with 50-60% of authorised strength. The communities that most need policing services are the communities least likely to have adequate staffing — a pattern that reinforces the justice gaps documented in the MMIWG inquiry.
• Lateral transfers and competition: Municipal police services across Canada actively recruit experienced RCMP members with offers of higher pay, better working conditions, and urban postings. The RCMP effectively serves as a training pipeline for better-funded municipal forces — it bears the cost of training, then loses the officers to competitors who can offer more attractive terms of service.

SECTION 08Reform: What It Would Actually Take

The men who stormed Juno Beach did not accept "we'll look into it" as an answer. They demanded action and they got results. The RCMP has been "looking into" reform for decades. Reports pile up. Recommendations are "accepted in principle." Nothing fundamental changes. Here is what actual reform would require — not wish-list thinking, but concrete structural changes that address the documented failures.

Every proposal below has been recommended by at least one independent commission, Parliamentary committee, or Auditor General report. These are not radical ideas — they are the minimum standard applied to provincial police forces across Canada. The RCMP has simply been exempted from accountability requirements that every other major police force in this country must meet.

FINAL ASSESSMENTThe Institution Must Earn the Uniform

This article is not anti-police. The men and women who serve in the RCMP — who patrol the Trans-Canada in January, who investigate organised crime in Vancouver, who work alone in remote Northern detachments — deserve an institution that honours their service. They deserve leadership that holds itself to the same standard it demands of constables. They deserve a culture that protects whistleblowers instead of punishing them, that supports mental health instead of stigmatising it, and that investigates misconduct instead of burying it.

The RCMP was supposed to be the finest police force in the world. The Mountie was a symbol of Canadian integrity — respected globally. That reputation was not destroyed by the officers who do their jobs with honour every day. It was destroyed by the institution's leadership, over decades, through decisions that prioritised institutional reputation over justice, convenience over accountability, and silence over truth.

The veterans of the Second World War — the ones who came home from Italy, France, the Netherlands, the North Atlantic — built institutions that worked. They built a country with a functioning civil service, an independent judiciary, and public trust in government. They expected those institutions to be maintained. They expected accountability. They expected that when an institution failed, it would be reformed — not excused, not defended, not allowed to investigate itself and find nothing wrong.

The 22 dead in Nova Scotia. The 3,131 women who were harassed. The missing and murdered Indigenous women. The foreign interference that went uninvestigated. These are not footnotes in an annual report. They are the measure of an institution's failure. And they demand more than another report gathering dust on a shelf.

The RCMP has had 150 years to get this right. It has had the McDonald Commission, the Hughes Report, the O'Connor Inquiry, the Braidwood Inquiry, the Oppal Inquiry, the Bastarache Report, the Mass Casualty Commission, and countless Auditor General reports. Each one documented the same patterns. Each one recommended reform. Each time, the institution acknowledged the findings, promised to do better, and returned to business as usual.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The definition of institutional failure is commissioning the same report over and over and ignoring the same findings. Canada deserves better. The good officers of the RCMP deserve better. The victims deserve better. It is time to stop accepting promises and start demanding proof.

What You Can Do