Good morning, Committee Chair and honourable members of Parliament.
My name is Patrick Mehain. I'm a director of the British Columbia Mounted Police Professional Association. I've been involved in the association movement my entire 18-year career. I was president of the B.C. MPPA for eight years. I sat as an executive on the CPA, and I'm one of the founding members of the MPPAC. I'm also one of the affiants in the Supreme Court challenge.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my concerns as they pertain to the significant shortcomings of Bill C-7. While the Liberal government is ensuring the Supreme Court decision is complied with, the bill misses the true spirit of the decision: the absence of a fundamental onus found in collective bargaining in other agencies.
The bargaining restrictions found in Bill C-7 and the existing PSLRA are more restrictive than those found in other police forces across Canada. Many collective bargaining agreements deal with promotions, equipment, transfers, workplace conflict, etc. While my colleagues in the MPPAC have already touched on these issues, I'll speak about resourcing and health care.
Resourcing has always been an issue. Our municipal brothers and sisters refer to us as the “Kmart cops”—we do more with less. Comparing the cities of Vancouver and Surrey, we see that Vancouver has approximately 1,340 officers and polices 605,000 people, while Surrey has approximately 800 officers and polices 500,000 people. Resourcing directly impacts members' vacations, minimum staffing levels, workloads, and I would suggest job satisfaction.
Members are getting burned out, and their health, both physical and mental, is being impacted. Due to long-term illnesses, spots are left vacant, the spots are held out in detachments, and units are required to run with shortages. Treasury Board wants to convert the approximately 4,000 civilian members into public servants. If this is allowed to happen, it will undermine resources even further in the RCMP, as our civilians to do jobs that public servants cannot.
Provincial health care and workers' compensation is different from province to province. The RCMP is unique and requires a unique way to address these concerns. In B.C., we pay our basic medical premiums whereas members from other divisions do not. The Lower Mainland already has a difficult time filling vacancies, but the added costs associated with changes to our medical benefits have made it worse.
This is of course not the sole reason that it is hard to staff vacant spots in the LMD, but it definitely contributes: prescription changes, reduced benefits, health services inappropriately getting involved in members' treatments, and the alarming and concerning fact of the recent privacy breaches conducted by senior RCMP officers. Unfortunately, all too often, members do suffer long-term injuries. How will workers' compensation affect this? Will a transfer to B.C. be halted because a member is deemed ineligible by the WCB or vice versa? Simply lumping the RCMP under existing mechanisms does not work.
Since the Supreme Court of Canada decision, I have had mixed emotions. While collective bargaining is one of those things that I have fought 18 years for, Bill C-7 leaves a lot to be desired. In its current state, it does little to provide true collective bargaining, which is protected under section 2(d) of the Charter of Rights.
While I am thankful for this opportunity to share my concerns about Bill C-7, without significant changes we will continue to see labour unrest and more court challenges, and the RCMP will continue to degrade in operational effectiveness as well as morale.
Thank you.