RCMP wage rollback raises controversy

Posted By Marc Zienkiewicz

An information campaign recently launched by the RCMP has Provencher MP and Federal Treasury Board president Vic Toews playing defense. 

Toews said this week that he stands behind the Treasury Board’s recent decision to roll back a planned 2009 wage increase for RCMP officers.

“This is going to save Canadian taxpayers $1.1 billion. That’s a significant amount of money, especially when other Canadians are either losing their jobs or facing wage rollbacks of their own. The fact is, the public sector has largely been immune from layoffs,” he said.

 That explanation isn’t good enough for RCMP officer Cpl. Kevin Elliot.

Elliot, who served as a constable in Pinawa for six years before recently moving to serve as corporal for Bloodvein First Nation, said the Treasury Board’s rollback is but a symptom of a larger problem facing the RCMP. 

“Obviously, it’s a disappointment,” he said. “I do believe we get a decent wage, but at the same time I think the government should stick to what was agreed upon last year.” 

Toews told the Leader this week that the wage rollback is fair in light of the economic downturn. The increase, announced last June as part of a new compensation package, would have constituted a pay raise of 3.5-per-cent in 2009 for members of the RCMP. In December, the Treasury Board knocked that figure down to 1.5 per cent, citing the slowing economy as the reason for the rollback. A two per cent increase scheduled for 2010 has also been rolled back to 1.5 per cent.

In the past few weeks, RCMP members have waged a full-scale public relations battle to try and have the wage increases pushed back up. A website, CallForBackup.ca, has been started to rally support for the cause. 

More than 10,000 people have signed the website’s online petition. Elliot - who now must live apart from his wife and children, who stayed behind in Pinawa - said widespread staff shortages are the wider problem, and the wage rollback will only make it harder for the RCMP to recruit new members. 

“Here in Bloodvein I should have three constables working under me, but I’m only able to have one,” he said. “I love my job and I love being here in Bloodvein, but the fact is we have to work 35 days before we get four days off. Not to mention the fact we’re always on-call. That doesn’t make it any easier to recruit new people. I love the RCMP, but we simply need more resources from the government to solve these problems.”

Cpl. Paul Joyal, spokesperson for the RCMP’s Staff Relations Representative Program in Manitoba and an organizer of the CallForBackup.ca campaign, said the concern over the wage rollback is about more than just a pay raise for police officers. 

“This is not about dollars,” Joyal said. “It’s about the value of public safety in this country. We’ve had an overwhelming response from the public and we hope the government listens.”

Toews said the government simply did not anticipate the full scale of the economic downturn until the middle of the recent federal election, after the pay raise had been promised in June. 

“We’re not singling out the RCMP in any way,” he said. “We’re treating the RCMP the same way we treat everyone else in the public service.”

 Joyal disagrees with that rationale. He echoed Elliot’s concerns over staff shortages, and said the RCMP face unique challenges not encountered by other areas of the public sector. 

“The fact is, our members live in places where no other public employees live, and in places like northern Manitoba are often required to stay in antiquated, substandard houses where most Canadians wouldn’t want to live. How do we convince young people to serve in we can’t offer competitive wages?” 

Joyal pointed out the RCMP is forbidden by law to unionize, and instead relies on a pay council committee established in 1996. He said when the compensation package was negotiated last year, it was intended to put the RCMP in the top three of the country’s more than 80 police forces in terms of pay. The wage rollback means that won’t happen, and now the RCMP ranks at around No. 34 in terms of pay. 

Joyal is hoping the CallForBackup.ca campaign, coupled with an application for a judicial review of the Treasury Board’s rollbackd ecision filed this week, will show the federal government that Canadians value public safety.

 

A Nanos Research poll conducted in early January showed only one in four Canadians support the government rollback.

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