Bureaucrats in Uniform: The Politicization and Decline of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

In this Fraser Institute Digital Publication, we examine the evidence provided by judicial inquiries and reports and by other scholarly and journalistic investigations of the RCMP. The sources include testimony before the Gomery Commission, the first Report of the Gomery Commission, several reports of the Auditor General, the Report of the Hughes Commission, and several other analyses of the federal police. Whatever the impact of underfunding, it seems clear that politicization is a greater problem, not only for reasons noted above but because it has meant a decline in the core competencies of the Force, namely the enforcement of federal laws. That is, the RCMP as an institution appears to be less capable today than it was in the past as well as less capable than it proclaims itself to be. It is this last problem, the disconnect between image and reality that is at the heart of the federal police.