The RCMP is a relatively unique organization in the sense that one of our challenges is that when we have big events like we've seen in the last couple of years, like major floods, evacuations, the Emergencies Act, the deployment of RCMP personnel, that takes members' attention away from processing requests and files.
One of our other challenges is the fact that we are an organization with 30,000 members across the country. Unlike some of my colleagues who have more centralized areas to go to grab those reports or files from personnel when there is an ATIP request, we have to leverage our network across the country to go to grab those files, which adds a little bit of complexity.
I would say that our most significant challenge, though, is that our information management systems are not centralized. There's often a public perception from police procedurals or whatever that an RCMP officer or a police officer can access any information about anyone from a centralized position, and nothing is further from the truth. It creates a lot of challenges for us. Just last week, for instance, I had nine bankers' boxes full of papers to go through that were sent to me by a force airplane. That not only requires personnel from an investigative unit to go through with an ATIP analyst, but adds additional pressures on us, and all those records have to be digitized, etc.
I can go on at length. We have a fair number of challenges. Our software remains out of date. We're currently trying to upgrade that. The number of staff in our shop.... We're actively recruiting. We're doing a lot to bring in new talent to the organization, with new perspectives, new ways of analyzing files. But our vacancy rate remains high. We can't continue poaching from our partner agencies, because everyone is modernizing in the Government of Canada right now. We are doing some innovative stuff to try to hire from a national perspective. We have employees in Vancouver and Toronto now, just to try to expand the base from which we draw those employees so that we're not just stealing from each other, and we're still bringing the level of expertise we require to process the requests on time.