Question Period Note: Rural Crime

• The RCMP provides local policing services across Canada’s vast territory, much of which is rural.

• Policing in rural and isolated communities can pose unique challenges and complexities, and the RCMP works with the provinces and territories to optimize available resources.

• To address rural crime, RCMP jurisdictions develop and pursue customized initiatives tailored to the unique and diverse characteristics of the communities they serve. For example, the RCMP’s Crime Reduction Strategy in Alberta has seen improved crime trends year over year. From January through December 2020, there was a 17% decrease in Break and Enters in Alberta RCMP jurisdictions compared to 2019.

• The RCMP’s recruitment efforts and enhanced service delivery options will also enable it to bolster its presence and community safety across the country.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is Canada’s national police force and provides contract policing services to eight provinces, three territories, approximately 150 municipalities, and hundreds of Indigenous communities, as well as federal policing services for all Canadians. Given the geographic scope of Canada, much of the territory under RCMP jurisdiction is rural.

Policing rural and isolated communities may pose a number of challenges and complexities, including the demand it puts on police resources. The RCMP works with provinces and territories (P/T) to evaluate needs and optimize the available resources for rural communities. Contract policing ensures a consistent quality of service across Canada with the level of policing services provided in each P/T determined by the provincial or territorial governments. In this way, objectives, priorities, and goals for policing in each respective jurisdiction are also determined by the RCMP in consultation with P/Ts. As such, each jurisdiction may develop and pursue individual, customized initiatives to address the issue of rural crime, as opposed to a single national solution. Local priorities and crime prevention approaches are discussed regularly by community leaders with RCMP Detachment Commanders and delegated personnel.

The RCMP currently has a number of Enhanced Service Delivery Options to supplement and improve policing service delivery within RCMP contracted jurisdictions. These options include: the Community Program Officer Program, the Community Constable Pilot Program, and the Auxiliary Program. The roles of these options are to:
• enhance, not replace, existing RCMP core resources.
• draw from the unique skill sets of community members.
• solidify the relationship between the RCMP and the communities we serve.
• help the RCMP better meet community and client needs and expectations.

In accordance with national policy, RCMP National Crime Prevention Services now facilitates the exchange of information and sharing of best practices between divisions. A Rural Crime Reduction Toolbox is also available to all employees on the RCMP’s intranet. This toolbox provides good practices and tools from RCMP divisions and external resources.

Examples of Rural Crime Initiatives:

National Level: The RCMP implements many different initiatives to address the root causes of and solve crime. For example, in 2020, the RCMP and the National Crime Stoppers Association signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a collaborative effort for solving crime. In addition, as a partner to the Federal Family Violence Initiative, the RCMP’s Vulnerable Persons Unit receives annual funding, which is distributed to RCMP detachments, non-profit community organizations, as well as municipal, provincial, and territorial partners to support communities in responding to, and reducing root causes of crime and family violence. Since 2004, this fund has supported over 315 local-level initiatives in communities across Canada. The RCMP also hosts national Youth Leadership Workshops annually that bring together youth from across the country. With the support of an RCMP ally, the youth identify an issue in their communities and develop a community action plan to help address the issue. The RCMP launched the Centre for Youth Crime Prevention—an online hub that provides youth, adults working with youth, and police officers across Canada with evidence-informed and age-appropriate crime prevention messages, information, tools, and programs to prevent youth crime and victimization.

Indigenous Communities: The RCMP is committed to building a renewed relationship and trust with Indigenous communities, which are often rural and isolated. The RCMP aims to improve community safety and well-being, to enhance investigative standards, and to deliver culturally responsive policing services. The RCMP works closely with Indigenous groups to develop innovative, culturally sensitive and trauma-informed responsive policing approaches that meet their distinctive needs, helping to strengthen trust and foster positive relationships with Indigenous communities, to support reconciliation. In support of a rural crime strategy, the RCMP is currently updating Restorative Justice policies, procedures and tools to strengthen the organizations role as a referral agent of Restorative Justice across the RCMP. Restorative Justice is a process that involves victims, offenders, and the community to deal with the impact of criminal and offending behaviour by addressing the needs of victims and the community with an emphasis on offender accountability and repairing harm.

Province of Alberta: Beginning in 2017, Alberta RCMP have implemented a comprehensive Crime Reduction Strategy, as the foundation for the delivery of policing services to Albertans. This strategy is built on proven methodologies and uses evidence based practices guided by intelligence. In September 2019, the Alberta RCMP introduced “Data 2 Action” (D2A) which integrates various police disciplines (uniformed to specialized services) as well as civilian and law enforcement partnerships into a comprehensive, process-driven program that is fundamental to the success of reducing crime in Alberta. The strategy is data-driven and built on four pillars: apprehension, offender management, targeted prevention and suppression. This "systems thinking" process links RCMP data and intelligence with operations to create an agile, motivated, and results driven focus on crime reduction. As a result of D2A and other initiatives, there have been year over year decreases in the key rural crime indicators between 2017-2020. From January through December 2020, there was a 19% decrease in Theft of Motor Vehicles. Theft Under $5,000 also declined, dropping by 22%. Overall, there were 14,230 fewer Property Crime offences and 21,285 fewer Total Criminal Code offences in 2020.

Province of Saskatchewan: The Government of Saskatchewan’s Community Safety Officer (CSO) initiative is also a strong example. CSOs are municipal employees tasked with carrying out high-priority, low-risk enforcement of bylaws and select provincial statutes. Diverting these types of investigations to CSOs has freed up the RCMP to focus on more serious crimes. There are CSOs located in a number of rural communities and Saskatchewan RCMP encourages communities to consider the CSO program. In addition, the RCMP in Saskatchewan continues to have success with its robust Crime Reduction Strategy. Informed by data on crime trends and intelligence, specialized Crime Reduction Teams take targeted enforcement measures that focus on priorities such as gang related activity and combatting rural crime. These targeted efforts have been so successful that between April and August of 2021, they resulted in nearly 170 arrests and over 300 charges, as well as the seizure of over $600,000 in proceeds of crime and 60 illegal firearms. Due to the achievements of the program, the Government of Saskatchewan has announced funding for approximately 51 new RCMP positions, to further expand and enhance the Saskatchewan RCMP’s efforts in reducing rural crime.

Province of Manitoba: The RCMP in Manitoba has also implemented a Crime Reduction Strategy that includes efforts to reduce incidents, severity, fear, and impact in rural communities. The objectives include forming partnerships, evidence-based service delivery, and results-based accountability. The focus of the strategy is on the root causes of crime, prolific offenders, and crime hot spots.

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