The federal government says it won’t charge provinces and municipalities for the retroactive portion of Mountie salaries while it considers whether to help shoulder some of the burden of a steep pay increase package. The RCMP union negotiated its first contract with the Treasury Department last August and won significant pay increases for its members, prompting some mayors and councilors to say that because of the increased costs, they could no longer afford their police. Costs for the RCMP’s nearly 20,000 officers are shared between federal, provincial and municipal governments. Salaries had been frozen at the nation’s largest police force since 2016. The total increases in the contract total hundreds of millions of dollars. Under the new RCMP salary grid, a sergeant who was making $100,000 a year now gets a $21,000 a year raise. Because the new contract is retroactive, Mounties are paid on an upward scale, plus an additional 3% to 4% in annual retroactive premiums. Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino met in Regina last month with members of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), which had long lobbied for funding to offset the increases. He presented a letter to the group confirming that the federal government will stop charging municipalities for the RCMP as the various governments discuss how to handle the retroactive portion of salaries. Continuing discussions “will allow the government to better understand the needs and repayment capabilities of contracting partners,” Mr. Mendicino said in the letter. “The government will not seek payment until a decision is made on the contracting partners’ request for retrospective cost flexibility.” This pause is significant considering the scale of the RCMP. The federal government has policing contracts with eight provinces, three territories and more than 150 municipalities. These decades-long agreements establish the Mounties as local law enforcement officers, covering three-quarters of Canada’s territory. More than one in five Canadians live in RCMP jurisdictions. Ottawa has always sponsored this project. The federal government receives 30 percent of the salaries of most Mounties contracted as local law enforcement. The only exception is in cities and towns with more than 15,000 inhabitants, where the subsidy rate drops to 10%. Local politicians point out they were never at the negotiating table when the new pay raise was struck with the RCMP. “As municipalities we cannot have deficits. So if we get a bill that we didn’t anticipate, that we didn’t budget for and that we weren’t consulted on, it’s going to make it very difficult for us,” said Taneen Rudyk, an Alberta councilor who is also FCM president. She said the retroactive portion of the RCMP increases was so significant that in her town of Vegreville, council considered a 6 per cent property tax increase. Provinces that use RCMP officers as provincial police forces also get a break. “Invoices for retroactive RCMP increases have been postponed,” said Chris Donnelly, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Attorney General of British Columbia. He added that Canada’s federal Department of Public Safety has “advised provincial, territorial and local governments that they will delay the tariffs and meet with levels of government to better understand the impact of retroactive payments.” Mr. Donnelly said the current RCMP wage contract expires next year, meaning all levels of government will soon have to figure out how to approach a new round of wage negotiations. RCMP contract policing arrangements have been in place across Canada for the past century, but the sustainability of that model is increasingly being questioned, with elected officials questioning whether the federally managed force is still a good fit for the growing communities it serves. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote a mandate letter last December asking Mr. Mendicino to “conduct a review of policing contracts.” Months before that, Parliament’s public safety committee had released a report on systemic racism in law enforcement. He urged the federal government to “explore the possibility of ending contract policing”. This spring, a legislative committee in BC studying similar issues released its own report. He urged “a new provincial police agency to take over services previously assigned to the RCMP.” Alberta’s United Conservative Party government has expressed its long-term desire to scrap that province’s RCMP contract in favor of an independent police force. Last year he hired an accounting firm to look at the costs. That report highlighted how Alberta could lose nearly $200 million a year in annual federal grants for the RCMP. But even so, the UCP government has said it may well be prepared to forego this funding in the future. Meanwhile, Alberta is among the jurisdictions asking Ottawa to waive RCMP pay raises, which it estimates could cost the province tens of millions of dollars. The Alberta government “believes the federal government should be responsible for paying the retroactive portion of the wage increase dating back to 2016,” said Joseph Dow, a spokesman for Justice Minister Tyler Sandro. Our Morning Update and Afternoon Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.
