RCMP union challenges bilingualism claim in province's Alberta Next survey
The union representing RCMP officers is disputing that its members do not have the opportunity to advance to senior roles unless they speak French, as claimed in the preamble to a new Alberta government survey.
On Wednesday, Premier Danielle Smith launched the province's 15-member Alberta Next panel along with corresponding online engagement questionnaires.
The panel is seeking feedback on measures Alberta could pursue to further assert itself against the federal government, with an initial focus on an Alberta pension plan, tax collection, immigration, constitutional changes, federal transfers including equalization, and a provincial police force.
The panel's website has individual polls for each of those issues that can only be taken following a short animated video.
'Because of French-language requirements, English-speaking Alberta officers do not qualify for senior RCMP positions,' states the narration for the video prior to the survey on a provincial police force.
The survey doesn't define what constitutes a senior position.
In a statement to Postmedia, the National Police Federation (NPF) president and CEO Brian Sauvé challenged the survey's claim.
'As we've seen previously, the government of Alberta continues to mislead Albertans about the benefits of the Alberta RCMP,' he said.
'In its campaign, the government falsely claims that English-only members are barred from advancing to any senior ranks tied to government requirements. Unfortunately, this is yet another instance of the province spreading misinformation.'
The NPF is Canada's largest police union, representing 20,000 RCMP members, and has also been a longtime opponent of a potential provincial police force.
The office of Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis responded to those remarks by saying the union was mistaken.
'The National Police Federation is wrong,' reads a statement from Ellis's office. 'The RCMP has previously confirmed that all deputy and assistant commissioner positions in Ottawa are designated bilingual, as are senior positions held by civilians within senior staff.'
It goes on to note prior media reporting that the Mounties had to implement new measures to ensure that current and prospective senior managers were bilingual.
The statement did not address questions about the future of French-language policing in Alberta.
The RCMP told Postmedia that bilingualism requirements for certain roles are not so simple, and vary by region.
'Alberta is designated as a unilingual region for language-of-work purposes, and the vast majority of senior leadership positions in Alberta are identified as English-essential,' said RCMP in an email.
The statement adds that of the 3,691 bilingual regular member job positions across Canada, 142 of those roles are located in Alberta, and that there are currently 321 bilingual regular members in Alberta-based K-Division in Edmonton.
The Alberta government has worked to establish the groundwork for a province-wide police agency, most recently through changes to the Police Act, which states the new service would be a Crown corporation operating at arm's-length from the province.
In 2022, Canada's languages commissioner wrote to Alberta Justice seeking assurances about the preservation of French-language policing in the province should it drop the RCMP, according to an internal briefing note which reads, 'if Alberta creates its own provincial police service, the RCMP would be replaced by a police force that will no longer have the obligation to offer services in French.'
According to the 2021 federal census, 261,435 Albertans were able to conduct a conversation in French with just over 88,000 Alberta residents identifying French as their mother tongue.
mblack@postmedia.com
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