Evidence of meeting #33 for Veterans Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rcmp.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
Following on Mr. Mayes' comments about overwork and stress, you made reference to a female officer getting pregnant, then leaving and not being replaced. That's part of your stress right there.
5:15 p.m.
Staff Relations Representative, Occupational Health & Safety, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Yes.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
I wonder if you could just elaborate a bit more. If you had additional officers who could come in and follow up so that the other folks weren't doing double duty.... Could you elaborate a bit more on that?
5:15 p.m.
Staff Relations Representative, Occupational Health & Safety, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Yes. You know, to an extent I was kidding with you, but I've made that reference so much that it usually gets a little laugh.
The truth of it is that for our female members there's still a lot of ostracization over the fact that they're going to be away for a fixed period of time to have a child. Now we also do male-hunting when the wife comes back to work and the male wants to take paternity leave. You know what happens now? It's both. We say, “Well, in my day, I never took that stuff”, but these are benefits that they're entitled to, and I'm glad they can enjoy them. The trouble is that in a detachment in Sherbrooke, Nova Scotia, with four people, if you have your female member down--probably the only female in Sherbrooke--then she's gone for a minimum of a year, if there's no splitting of leave. We have no replacement for that.
For a number of years--probably 15 years now--we've been working on resourcing formulas, and there were none in the police industry. We created a resourcing formula so that we could go to the contracting partner, ask them to tell us what kind of service they wanted, and pump that into a resourcing formula. We can factor in things like family leave, compassionate leave, training time, or court time. If the town says they also want someone on bicycle patrol, we can factor that in and tell them that for the duties they want in their contract, we will need x number of members. However, that formula is not being executed in that fashion, so those are difficulties.
Peter, regarding the two members who just recently got washed off the rocks in Peggy's Cove while trying to save that young fellow, both of those members haven't returned to work yet. One of them was thrown pretty hard against the rocks there in the Atlantic Ocean. Those two men went to save that guy who got washed off the rocks, and one of them was hurt fairly badly. As Brad said--and I thank him for it--this is what happens every day in theatre.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
The only reason I say that, Mr. Chairman, is that if a woman in the military in the 1950s became pregnant and was not married, she was dishonourably discharged; if she was married, she'd be medically discharged. We have come a long way in that regard.
Thank you.
5:15 p.m.
Staff Relations Representative, Occupational Health & Safety, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
We have, yes.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
Thank you.
I thank our witnesses very much for their testimony here today.
5:15 p.m.
Some hon. members
Hear, hear!
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
We're going to take a two-minute break and then we'll go in camera.
5:15 p.m.
Staff Relations Representative, Occupational Health & Safety, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Mr. Chair, just before I leave, I want to thank you very much for your patience.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative