(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)

By paNOW Staff

RCMP 150

Sask. RCMP acknowledge the past 150 years and look to the future

May 24, 2023 | 11:09 AM

When Canada’s founding leaders first conceived of a federal police service, history tells us it was merely an emergency measure— a contingency plan to enforce Canadian laws throughout what was then known as the North-West Territories.

Now, fast-forward 150 years later and that police force has grown to hundreds of detachments in the country, with thousands of men and women serving.

The RCMP recently marked its 150th anniversary with acknowledgements in many major cities including Regina.

Assistant Commissioner with the Saskatchewan RCMP Rhonda Blackmore was there for the occasion and took time to speak to paNOW about the historic milestone and also the work the police force has to do to acknowledge its wrongdoings and work towards gaining the trust of all Canadians.

“When you think about 150 years ago and what the RCMP looked like when it was first created and think about the march west and some of the historical photos you’ve seen from that, that that’s a pretty huge milestone,” said Blackmore.

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“It certainly gives us a lot of opportunity for the future as well,” she added. “There’s so many great things happening within the RCMP.”

In recent years, calls for change to the RCMP have been driven by the force’s reckoning over harassment and bullying of members, public anger about police brutality and racism, shortcomings in the force’s response to the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia and more general concerns about rural crime.

There’s also the tainted past of the RCMP’s role in the Residential School system, something Blackmore said, they need to address.

“We need to acknowledge that certainly our role in the residential Schools and apprehending children indigenous children, as part of that initiative, very much a dark reflection on our history,” she said.

“We’re certainly moving in a much more positive direction looking to acknowledge the past and learning from those mistakes so that they don’t get repeated and that we can do better.”

She added that some of the initiatives they’re doing in Saskatchewan include an Indigenous recruiting Unit.

“We had 64 Indigenous potential Indigenous applicants here at two different sessions that we held here, one in February and one in March and those applicants came from across the province.”

Roughly seven per cent of its members identify as Indigenous, according to the force’s diversity statistics from 2020, down from almost eight per cent a decade earlier.

Relations with First Nations people is still something the RCMP is grappling with and Indigenous leaders continue to call for change.

Heather Bear, a vice-chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN), said when a First Nation needs the RCMP, it isn’t there. But it always seems to be there for writing speeding tickets, or when someone misses a court date, she said.

She pointed to last September’s mass stabbing rampage on James Smith Cree Nation, where it took nearly 40 minutes after the first 911 call for officers to arrive.

They were dispatched from a detachment more than 30 minutes away — a distance that underscores the realities of the contract policing model that spans the country’s rural and Indigenous communities, made worse by widespread vacancies.

Blackmore acknowledges those concerns and said the force is still working with those affected by that tragic event.

“There are a lot of people who are going to be deeply impacted by those events for the rest of their lives in a negative way, many families lost loved ones or are struggling to deal with injuries, some physical injuries, some mental wellness issues,” she said.

The Saskatchewan Coroners Service’s inquests into the 11 deaths on the James Smith Cree Nation have tentatively been scheduled for next January.

According to the Ministry of Justice, there will be two separate inquests. One will cover the 11 deaths of the victims, and a separate inquest will be held to examine Sanderson’s death.

–With files from The Canadian Press and 650 CKOM