Public Accounts Committee on Sept. 24th, 2026

[Commr Michael Duheme]

Thank you for the question.

I'll go with hiring the right people. That's what we want to do. Right now we're seeing an attrition rate at Depot, which is our training facility, that's not comparable with other law enforcement. This is a concern for us, because the initial point of entry is where we have to be really convinced that the people we're moving through the process are the right people, people we believe will successfully graduate from Depot.

I believe the indigenous strategy will be coming out in March 2027. We have a first nations, indigenous, Métis and Inuit strategy coming out. It was developed with key stakeholders. It was also developed in my national advisory committee.

There are a lot of things going on, especially when we look at the north. The north has such a small basin of people we can recruit from. For instance, if you look at the StatsCan data for Nunavut—I think the last time it was entered was in 2021—for the 20-to-30-year-old age group, there are only about 5,000 people in there, so this sometimes makes it challenging.

When I look at some of the programs, we have successful ones. There is one called DICE, which is the diverse and inclusive precadet experience. We bring in people from different walks of life, different experiences, different ethnicities and different backgrounds. They come in and we expose them to policing for three weeks. We currently have 1,800 applicants in the process. Out of those, we've had eight DICE troops and 229 graduates so far. This is done at Depot. There are 28 DICE graduates who are now serving police officers, and 11 are currently enrolled in the cadet program. This exposes them....

We do the same thing with regard to the indigenous applicants. They can go through DICE, but there's also the indigenous precadet training program, which is a period of three weeks at Depot that exposes the people to what policing is all about.

The challenge—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. I'm going to stop you there because we're well over, but you've opened up several lines of questions and inquiry. I'm sure there will be more questions to drill down into.

We will begin our third round now, with five individuals and various times.

Mr. Stevenson, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for attending. I always enjoy having Ms. Hogan and her team here, but I'm going to focus my questions on the RCMP.

To start, I'll go down a similar path of questioning to Ms. Tesser Derksen's and ask about some of the training.

The auditor's report said that the number of recruits you were going to train was determined by your capacity to train them at Depot. Was there a conscious decision as to how many you were going to train at the time, or was it just the reality of what you could do, Mr. Duheme?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

Thank you for the question.

To put things in context, there's a set funding for Depot, for training people. We are funded to train 1,280 cadets annually. This would be 40 troops of 32 people per troop. That's the capacity right now at Depot. We must remember that, if I increase—

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

You had the funds, but you didn't have the trainers, apparently, to get them trained. Is that not correct?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

Quite honestly, we did not fill every single troop to 32. That was one of the challenges.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

This was in the report we've seen.

[Commr Michael Duheme]

This has stemmed from the whole review of the recruiting process that we're doing, but also the curriculum and the environment at Depot, of which we're doing an extensive review to make sure that we have everything lined up to be a modern-day police force.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

When an officer is trained, who decides where that officer is going to be stationed? How do you prioritize to say, “Twenty of them are going to Alberta; 16 are going to Saskatchewan”? How does that determination get made?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

In March 2027 we'll have a new process. It will be easier to track all the vacant positions and transfers. Right now the system we have doesn't really meet the requirements. What we have right now is an HR office out of Depot, and from there the commanding officers from each province and division will call in and ask for certain cadets. They will say how many vacancies they have, how many cadets they require.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

If they ask for 2,000, you have to make a choice, or somebody has to make a choice. I just want to know, how and where is that choice being made?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

Most of the choices are being made through conversations with the HR process, depending on the urgency. Right now, as I mentioned earlier, anybody coming in who wants to go to Saskatchewan or Manitoba is fast-tracked through the process: They're going there and they know it.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I had a recent conversation with an RCMP officer on the ground. In one of my local areas, there are two indigenous reserves, and they were allocated, for their offices, two officers per reserve. Previously, in the spring, we had a report that said indigenous policing was chronically understaffed. Can you tell me where that number of...or how there are only two per...allocated? I believe they had nine others, so they had 13 in this one station, and two were allocated for each of the reserves. Can you tell me how they came up with that number and who made that decision?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

To put things in context, we have 700 detachments across the country, and we serve over 600 indigenous communities. I am not familiar with the example that you're providing, but we do have, through Public Safety, community tripartite agreements that are signed with the community. Those community tripartite agreements specify the number of police officers that are supposed to be assigned.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Would you say this was a local request to allocate 13 for the one detachment, and it was four for the two reserves?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

My understanding is it's specifically for, as you referred to it, the community, the reserve, but I'll have to follow up because it could be.... If you give me specifics, I'd be more than happy to follow up. We have close to 150 community tripartite agreements across the country, and through those agreements we determine how many people are working in the indigenous communities or assigned to indigenous communities.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I'll go to a slightly different question. Albertans are looking to increase their number of sheriffs. You're to renew—I think in 2030 or 2031—the RCMP part of it. What kind of sales pitch are you going to have to say, “You need to keep the RCMP in Alberta”? There are a lot of rural areas that are not necessarily going to say this is what they need.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Stevenson.

I'll allow an answer, please.

[Commr Michael Duheme]

How long do I have for a sales pitch?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Commr Michael Duheme]

Thank you for the question. I'll be really brief.

You have to look at what one entity can bring to Canada. We could cover 70% of Canada's land mass but only about 23% of the population. I can mobilize, at a moment's notice, resources from across the country to come help out. We saw it at the G7 that took place in Alberta. We mobilized resources from across the country to go there. There's strength in numbers. I will say that there are a lot of good police organizations throughout...but we have something to offer that many can't, and it's that power to mobilize people, at a moment's notice, across the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Mr. McKinnon, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for being here today. It's good to see you all again.

I want to give a particular welcome to Assistant Commissioner Palmer, who advised me that he hails from Coquitlam. As the member for Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, I certainly welcome him here.

I want to start by drilling into the 1,000 new personnel accommodated in our last budget.

Commissioner, you mentioned 750 frontline officers and 250 special personnel. Could you please clarify what those 250 people do? Are they a sort of investigator? Are they forensic professionals or whatever?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

Briefly, it's a breadth of expertise that we're looking for, from the IT component to intel in terms of intel analysts. I don't have a set description of all the different skill sets we're looking for. It's anyone who brings a special skill set that will help advance our federal policing investigations and mandates.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, but to me, that all adds up to 1,000 people.