How big a problem are ‘hard vacancies’ for NWT RCMP?

The man in charge of RCMP in the Northwest Territories says police have “no idea” who will fill many roles in the territory that are vacant. But he says that’s also an “artificial” problem.

Chief Superintendent Dyson Smith, appointed the territory’s commanding officer earlier this year, told Cabin Radio a recent influx of new positions in the NWT makes the vacancy rate look worse than it is.

Smith said about one in five NWT RCMP jobs is currently a hard vacancy, a term that he said means “we don’t have anybody named, we have no idea who’s going to that position.”

Another six percent are so-called soft vacancies, where someone is expected to arrive soon and take the job or someone is away on leave. All told, a quarter of roles in the territory are a vacancy of one kind or the other.

Those empty positions mean the results generated by new initiatives – like the Crime Reduction Unit to tackle drugs, or an expanded Emergency Response Team to handle unfolding crises – could be compromised if people aren’t available to do the work.

Smith said he expects the Crime Reduction Unit’s seven-person team to be fully staffed by the spring, if not sooner. That unit can “swoop in and assist” detachments when information comes in about drugs and organized crime, he said, alongside other issues. He said he was “very optimistic” about the impact the unit will have.

Staffing an expanded nine-person Emergency Response Team will take longer, he said, because funding is arriving in waves over multiple years and team members must be highly trained.

This is the first in a series of articles exploring how NWT RCMP view critical issues facing the territory. This time, it’s staffing. We’ll also hear from Smith on bail, drugs, and how safe you are in the Northwest Territories right now.

You’ll be able to hear the whole interview in an extended edition of the Cabin Talks podcast later this week.

Read a transcript of the discussion about RCMP staffing below, which sets out where positions have been added and where the struggle lies in filling them, plus some steps Smith says are being taken to change that.

Staffing in Yellowknife is also discussed, where Smith says “different approaches” are being tried after “quite a shortage” of officers in recent months.

---

This interview was recorded on December 4, 2024. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Ollie Williams: What have you rolled out in recent months in terms of adding capacity here?

Chief Supt Dyson Smith: We’ve been very successful in gaining support from the government here for things like the territorial Crime Reduction Unit. We’re really looking forward to that hitting the ground. It has already started. That’s a seven-employee team, six regular members as well as one support staff. They gave us full funding for that outright, which is fantastic.

Their mandate is going to be the front-line drug issue, number one. My expectation is they’re going to have a bag packed and be ready to go at all times. If you have information that rolls in from Tulita, it’s hard to expect the local members are going to have the time to really do justice to a drug investigation. This unit will be able to swoop in and assist. I’m very optimistic about how this is going to work. The biggest impact is going to be the drug problem, the organized crime groups.

Alongside that, there is an expansion of the Emergency Response Team (ERT).

We have funding for nine full-time ERT positions. If you’d asked me years ago if that would ever happen, I would have told you you were crazy. Right now we have a part-time ERT, which is very difficult, because they have to work a substantive job taking files, working night shifts, and then all of a sudden there’s an ERT call or there’s a training requirement. That’s unrealistic. It’s taxing on them. It’s not fair to the detachment they’re working on, too, because at the drop of a hat they’ve got to go.

The ERT is highly trained and specialized to handle critical incidents. If you have an armed and barricaded person, and you know somebody is in a house and they’ve got a weapon, they are trained and have the resources and equipment to handle that. When we talk about the drug situation, we’ve seized more handguns here in the last couple years than probably ever in the history of the division. That’s a big shift. The ERT has the ability to handle that safely.

My understanding is some detachments are seeing small increases to their regular complement as well. But do you have the people to fill the positions we just talked about?

We’re getting there. When we talk about vacancies, there are hard vacancies – meaning we don’t have anybody named, we have no idea who’s going to that position – and then we have soft vacancies where someone has been identified and will get here at some point, or they are on parental leave or sick.

All told, our vacancy rate by the end of the summer was about 25 percent. That seems high but it’s not the highest in the country, and the soft vacancy rate for our division is the lowest in the country. It was only about six percent.

That presumably means it’s about a 20-percent hard vacancy rate, then.

That’s right. However, it’s an artificial vacancy rate.

We’ve had a big influx of new positions. I love to use Whatì as an example, Right now, on paper, it’s a four-person detachment. Last year, it was at 100 percent because we had two positions. Today, it’s at 50 percent – not because we’ve lost any positions but because we’ve gained positions, which is a good news story.

It’s only a good news story once you fill them.

Absolutely, and we will, and we’re getting there. I think we actually have a couple people identified as going in there, so pretty soon we’ll be back up to 100 percent, but it takes time.

The thing is, we’re always a little bit behind the eight-ball when it comes to transfers. The NWT is 100-percent isolated, meaning when somebody comes in there is a hard stop date. If you come in and you sign for five years, you are here for those five years (unless something happens and you have to leave early). At the end of those five years, I can’t extend them, because it’s limited-duration.

So there are factors that contribute to this, but it doesn’t change the fact that one in five positions is a hard vacancy right now within the NWT. Let’s look at the Emergency Response Team and Crime Reduction Unit. How are you staffing those? Are you having to move people out of existing NWT positions to fill those?

A few. The ERT program, not anybody can just slide into those. You have to be an ERT member. You have to have been trained, passed all the courses and be an ERT member to get an ERT position. That’s a little more difficult to staff, but we’re getting there. A couple of our members are moving into the full-time spots and we’re taking them out of other locations, but we already have people that are lining up and interested in those positions, so that’s good.

The Crime Reduction Unit, we have one or two from outside of the division that are coming. We do have a few people in the division that have been really working hard in those areas – running sources, writing warrants – that have been identified as coming into the Crime Reduction Unit. So again, we’re actively looking to staff those positions.

It is a bit of a shell game at times but sometimes it’s the bigger picture that you have to look at. For example, the Crime Reduction Unit: yes, we may be taking a member out of a community, but that Crime Reduction Unit? The focus is going to be to benefit that community and others, because they’ll be able to go in and tackle problems, which will reduce the crime rate in that community. Therefore, it’s easier to police with less people.

My goal is to have 100-percent staffing. I just want that on the record. I am not blocking any positions. I don’t want to try to save bucks by blocking a couple positions and saving the salary dollars. No, I want every position filled.

When do you expect to be able to have the Crime Reduction Unit and the Emergency Response Team fully staffed to a 100-percent level?

The Crime Reduction Unit will be fully staffed by early spring, hopefully sooner.

The ERT team is a different story. We’ve got the funding for it, but it’s in waves. We have five positions right now that are funded and two more positions next year, followed by two more positions.

We’re looking for current ERT members from outside of the division. A lot of ERT members down south are run off their feet. They are going from call to call almost daily. It’s not really good for the work-life balance and family. I’m trying to entice them to come up here where they’ll still retain all their skills and abilities, and they’ll still be actively busy, but nine times out of 10, they’ll be able to attend their kids’ plays or tuck their kids in at night, or be there for Christmas hopefully. There are benefits to being up here.

I’m told the situation in Yellowknife has changed a little lately, from what was a four-watch system to three watches instead. Can you walk us through what’s happening there?

That was a temporary solution because we were facing quite a shortage there. Our numbers have started to increase so from what I understand, we’re going to stick with the four watches for now. We are back up to four.

Now, having said that, that’s just a schedule. If we went back to a three-watch or got rid of 12-hour shifts, even, it would still be 24-hour policing. It would just look different. The less hours you work, the more you’re able to put on the road. With 12-hour shifts, you’re actually stretching it out. You’re not necessarily having as many police as possible. So we’re looking at different approaches to see what is the best fit for the city.

My understanding is there are eight people theoretically on a watch but in practice, that can be quite difficult to achieve. On average here in Yellowknife, how many people are on a watch right now?

You could be looking at four or five. Sometimes you have a full watch.

And how much of a difference does that then make operationally, if you have half what a watch should be on paper?

It makes it so that you have to really prioritize – and rightfully so. Not everything requires police attendance, and that’s sometimes a hard pill for people to swallow, and sometimes it’s a hard message to get across to our own members, because everybody wants to do a good job and everyone wants to please the client, which is the public.

But does that require a face to face interaction where a police officer is driving to your house because of, say, theft from a vehicle? You know, “I left my vehicle unlocked. Somebody stole stuff out of my vehicle.” OK, well, you report it. There’s really not much that can be done realistically because, on a priority scale, you have our forensic people working homicides and sex assaults and major files. It’s an unrealistic expectation that somebody’s going to come and fingerprint the car because a cupful of change or a cell phone was stolen out of an unlocked vehicle.

We have to look at ways of modernizing. A lot of cities have gone to online reporting for minor offences, which actually takes a big load off the front-line employees. We have to start looking at things like that. But I can promise you and everybody who’s going to be listening that every call for service is addressed, no matter if there’s five people working or if there’s two people working, or if there’s eight people working. We get to them, but it’s going to be on a prioritized scale. So it may not be today that you get a phone call back. It might be tomorrow when they have time. But every call for service is attended to.

What would get done if there were eight people on every shift that isn’t getting done because you’re prioritizing?

The visibility and the proactive approach, which is something we strive for. So the ability to road people is limited.

When you say “to road people“…

To get onto the road and drive around. It’s a term we use, roadable police officers. The more people you have, it’s easier to say, “OK, you three are just going to go out and drive around aimlessly and be visible.” But if you’re down to four and you have some people in cells or a couple of domestics going on, you don’t have that ability for the roving patrols any more.

We still try to accomplish them but it depends on the night. You could have some nights where not very much is going on – perfect. Doesn’t matter how many police officers you have, you can get out there. But you could have other days where you’re swamped and you can’t go. In fairness, that could be even with eight members on the road. You could have a busy day where everybody’s tied up with files and you just don’t have that ability to do proactive work.

What it really comes down to is the services and other agencies, and the lack thereof that we have up here. Sometimes we refer to ourselves as the agency of last resort. Sometimes it’s actually the agency of first resort. We get a call for a lot of things that, down south, we would never be called for. And that’s not because there’s an unwillingness to have proper addictions treatment and ambulance services in the communities and all these wonderful programs that we’d all love to see. It’s the inability, sometimes, to develop these systems. It’s not about the money, it’s about having people to actually do it.

In some of our communities, there’s no ambulance. Quite often the police get called to transport people and we’re always there for the emergencies, always. So in that regard, that’s not unusual. It’s not unique just to us. But up here, what we’re faced with are people who might have an appointment at the health centre and ask for a ride. Well, that becomes problematic, and it’s not because we don’t want to help but it’s not our mandate.

And in doing so, there’s only so many hours in a day. So if I’m transporting somebody who I shouldn’t be dealing with, that’s less time I have to work on that sex assault investigation or do proactive patrols, because my time has been eaten up.

There is a will to do it. I know there is because I’ve been in the meetings and I’ve talked with everyone. It’s the inability to do it at times, and I’ve openly said I would give up police positions in exchange for proper services and agencies up here, because that would take the burden off. It makes no sense to have more police if crime goes down because of the availability of other services that impact the crime rate.