Thank you and good morning, Mr. Chair, Vice-Chairs, and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to be with you today to continue the discussion.
I am joined by Nadine Huggins, Chief Human Resources Officer.
The RCMP is unique in the world in that it has international, federal, provincial and municipal responsibility. It has 30,000 employees: 19,000 regular members, who are police officers, and 11,000 Public Service employees or civilian members.
The RCMP has three distinct mandates. Its first mandate is to offer front-line policing services in eight provinces and three territories, including over 150 municipalities and 600 indigenous communities. Its second mandate is to act as the federal police force, responsible for organized crime, cross-border services, national security, cybercrime, financial crime, VIP protection, international deployments, and criminal intelligence. Its third mandate is to offer specialized police services such as Air Services, laboratories, covert techniques, and several other services in sectors that support police organizations in Canada.
Being bilingual, I do not need to tell you that I believe both official languages to be a key element of our culture of inclusion. I welcome this opportunity to speak with you about the RCMP's current strategy to comply with the Official Languages Act.
Across the organization, 87.5% of employees in bilingual positions meet the requirements of their position. For Public Service employees that number is 91%, while it is 95% for civilian members and 82% for the regular members, the police officers.
As reported, we do face certain challenges among senior management with respect to bilingualism. I'm pleased that public service employees at the EX-01 to EX-05 levels meet their language requirements in about 98% of bilingual positions, while that percentage is unfortunately only 59% for officer-level regular members in bilingual positions.
With the organization focused on its operational mandate of ensuring public safety, we have struggled at times in ensuring our full compliance with the act, but I'm committed to improving second-language competencies across senior leadership and the entire organization.
To support this, I approved an official languages strategy, with implementation to start this fall. It is centred on four priority areas: strengthening leadership in official languages, promoting legislative compliance with the Official Languages Act, creating a culture of inclusion, and ensuring accountability, transparency, and measuring progress.
As part of the Strategy, we will determine compliance gaps and barriers. Executives and officer-level regular members who do not meet the bilingual requirements will undergo assessments and initiate training to ensure they will become compliant. This is happening at the highest levels, including at the deputy commissioner level.
The RCMP is focusing on preparing the leaders of tomorrow by ensuring that officers and executives are better equipped to perform leadership roles. As well, we are actively engaged in developing future leaders. We are ensuring that officers and executives meet the language requirements of their position and are supported throughout their career, in order to promote a genuinely bilingual and inclusive working environment where the use of both official languages is welcome.
French and English are the anchors of our diversity and inclusion. We are increasingly being asked to provide policing services in other languages as well, such as Mandarin, Hindi and Punjabi, in order to effectively meet the evolving needs of communities across the country.
All of our efforts are meant to strengthen the RCMP's ability to ensure public safety, while simultaneously improving compliance with the act.
Thank you, and we will be pleased to answer your questions.
