Ongoing Training for RCMP Employees

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Fully releasable (ATIP)? Yes

Branch/Agency: RCMP

Issue:

The role of education and training to address systemic barriers to career advancement and gender-based discrimination.

The RCMP recognizes that education and training can play an important role in efforts to address issues of systemic barriers and gender-based discrimination, and move forward in a positive, inclusive manner and foster a safe, respectful workplace.
Ensuring effective, modern and inclusive training is critical to the RCMP’s ability to effectively fulfil its mandate.
A suite of new mandatory Harassment and Violence Prevention courses were introduced to all employees in January 2021.
The RCMP acknowledges that accountability and training are key to ensuring that leaders function effectively.
To address systemic barriers and modernize learning opportunities, the RCMP’s suite of leadership development programs are being modified to a virtual, face-to-face, interactive format.
Virtual classroom offerings will help to remove barriers to access, while maintaining the benefits of a ‘face-to-face’ offering. The development programs will also be provided to employees outside of the promotions process to enable access for all interested employees.

A review of national selection processes for entry into specialized teams was conducted to ensure the removal of application barriers to specialized programs such as the Emergency Response Team (ERT) resulted in the introduction of a new standardized gender neutral selection process.
Enhancements to the RCMP’s Learning Management System are underway that will promote transparent decision-making with respect to learning opportunities, and learning allocation decisions. These enhancements include:
- The launch of formal learning plans, tied to employee goals and development/career objectives. This will provide an opportunity to track and report in a more formal way, progress against learning plans.
- A new registrar system that will provide transparent information about all learning offerings available at the RCMP, displayed for learners to register via the learning management system.
- Ability to offer virtual learning, in lieu of traditional in-person learning. This is expected to remove certain barriers to learning, such as elimination of travel costs, inability to travel as a result of family obligations, etc.

New mandatory anti-racism training, developed with external experts, will be launched in the summer of 2021 for all RCMP employees.
A modernized e-learning course on 2SLGBTQ+ will be available shortly to all employees of the RCMP to support the fostering of an inclusive and safe workplace.
The infusion of character leadership into the RCMP’s leadership curriculum will foster positive change. Unconscious bias, anti-racism and anti-discrimination expectations will be established for senior managers and leaders. It is anticipated that this will further support efforts to support cultural change.

The RCMP introduced several new courses, Cultural Awareness and Humility and a Using a Trauma Informed Approach, which are designed to improve capacity across the RCMP to effectively respond to gender-based violence (GBV) in a gender and culturally sensitive manner.
In addition, a Guide to Supporting Transgender, Non-Binary and Two-Spirit (TNB2S) Employees was published in 2020, which aims to help to help promote a gender-inclusive workplace. It provides accessible information for managers and employees, including defining key terms and providing practical advice to support TNB2S employees.