Public Accounts committee  Thank you. The Auditor General has identified that gap. It's a gap that, through our management action plan, we hope we can close. I would, if I may, talk about our national reconciliation pathway, which might assist. As we renew our priorities and commitments for reconciliation, we continue to embrace the phrase “nothing about us without us”, ensuring the inclusion of first nations, Métis and Inuit voices, perspectives and advice, and new and innovative ways of working together.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for that. I would start off by saying, again, as Mr. Tupper referred to earlier, the provinces and territories are responsible for the tempo, if you will, and the priorities for policing in that specific area. Our primary concern as the RCMP is to ensure that in all communities public safety is the number one priority.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I will answer if I may. I can't get into specifics regarding pay. I do know that the RCMP, since we've been unionized, is now more comparable to other police forces of similar type and size across Canada. Other police of jurisdictions and provincial areas have pay and benefits that I won't speak to.

Public Accounts committee  We have a number of programs under way. Primarily the commissioner has his indigenous advisory committee, which includes representatives from each province and territory to provide the commissioner and me—I'm the chair of that committee—with direction on what types of programs they would like to see in their communities.

Public Accounts committee  Additionally, we have an anti-racism unit now embedded within our chief human resources office. Right now, we are looking at a pilot project nationally for race-based data collection. That's the perception of police officers when dealing with people they can encounter in the community.

Public Accounts committee  That's a very good question, Mr. Chair. Yes, we're looking at implementing recognition for those employees who endeavour to learn indigenous languages in communities. However, our tenure is often very short in some of the more remote locations. We're looking to see if we can find a retention and attraction strategy for that.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The RCMP's management advisory board has also provided similar information, which we received in the fall of 2023. We also have the RCMP-indigenous, co-development, collaboration and accountability unit that was launched in 2021 to address some of those internal barriers to ensure that the indigenous employees in the RCMP are provided fair and equitable opportunity, but external outreach as well.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, I have.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Out of the 231 recommendations, it becomes very complex. Some are provided directly towards the RCMP; some are provided to our stakeholders, and some are provided in combination between us and others.

Public Accounts committee  I can't provide an exact number, but I believe it would be around 30.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, I can name one of them.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, for your confidence, I'm not confused with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where there are 96 recommendations. A springboard from that is a direct quote from Justice Murray Sinclair, “We have to turn that 150 years of negativity into generations of positivity.”

Public Accounts committee  A recent example I can provide is our engagement with some of the national indigenous organizations, including Inuit communities. Many of the Inuit communities have young adults and children who come down to larger hubs, some hubs that we do not police that have different police of jurisdiction, where there is concern about a high or disproportionate rate of human trafficking.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just for a little perspective, the RCMP polices in 146 community tripartite agreements; that's 443 regular members. We have 30 positions vacant right now. Those are our latest statistics. That's an approximately 11% vacancy pattern compared to the deputy commissioner's 15% reference to our contract policing overall.