RCMP Goes South for Education, Training & Development

In an earlier post, it was noted that the new Commissioner of the RCMP, Robert Paulson, had thrown his support behind an initiative to design, develop and deploy e-Learning opportunities for senior personnel within that organization. Indeed, a detailed RFP was issued seeking proponents for precisely this purpose. I mused that an organization like the College of Continuing Education at Dalhousie University would be an excellent locus for this type of learning delivery.

Recently, it has come to light that the likely recipient of this very lucrative contract (approx. $1 million over several years) will likely be Cornell University and, more specifically, their e-Cornell services. While there's nothing to complained be about with regard to the potential quality and coverage of the e-Cornell leadership modules, it strikes me as exceedingly odd that an iconic, federal agency, like the RCMP, could not find some reasonable means to direct Canadian taxpayers' dollars to a Canadian organization offering this type of learning. Of course everyone knows that leadership is not something that is precisely defined by national perspectives, processes and practices. However, one could gently suggest that Canadian models and paradigms of leadership (especially those that relate to policing) are somewhat distinct from American equivalents. We need only consider the leadership campaigns currently underway in the Liberal and New Democratic Parties in Canada, and the battle for the Republican Party to underscore this point. We need only consider how American police chiefs and sheriffs are elected to their posts, or appointed by powerful city mayors who have the clout to remove them without due process or substantive cause. The e-Cornell offerings, as outlined on their website appear to be highly generic in nature and do not appear to be customized to deal with some of the pressing executive leadership matters that weigh upon the RCMP and their new Commissioner.



By an odd stroke of serendipity, the RCMP have just backed away from another American-based training commitment in Maricopa County:

RCMP Drug Recognition Training in Maricopa County

Remarkably, there was a plan to send "hundreds" of RCMP officers to Maricopa County, Arizona for drug recognition training. It came to light that the US Department of Justice had reasonable cause to believe that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office had engaged in a practice of conduct that violated the US Constitution and the Civil Rights Act, 1964. Basically, among other things, there was a finding that the Sheriff's Office had engaged in racial profiling. It should not be a surprise that Joe Arpaio is the Sheriff in Maricopa County. He has earned an international reputation for harsh approaches to immigration and is currently under pressure to explain how his department has failed to properly investigate hundreds of sexual crime cases.

Beyond all of this, it's disappointing in the extreme that the RCMP directs officers, from front-line drug investigators to senior police executives (including former RCMP Commissioner William Elliott) to south of the border for training, education and development programs that surely must be available in Canada. National loyalty and civic responsibility do not seem to be strong motivating factors for the RCMP decision-makers when it comes to selecting sites and services dealing with learning about leadership and executive development.