RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki announced her retirement on Feb. 15. It is easy to make Lucki the scapegoat for almost five years of RCMP crises, debacles, collapsing public support and allegations of systemic racism and employee harassment. After all, the buck stopped at her desk. But there’s no point replacing the driver when the vehicle itself is rusted out, out of fuel and mechanically unsound.
We shouldn’t have hopes for an RCMP renaissance with Lucki’s retirement. The problems with RCMP leadership are not about the gender or identity of the person in charge.
The national RCMP structure is clearly befuddling. It has a multi-billion-dollar annual budget and about 30,000 police officer and civilian employees spread across Canada. It includes six levels of policing (rural, municipal, provincial, national, First Nations and international) and is subject to hundreds of federal statutes and agreements.
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