RCMP hosts symposium in effort to recruit more diverse officers

Thinh Nguyen · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 25, 2025 12:29 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

Prince Edward Island's RCMP contingent is aiming to diversify its membership, and a symposium this week was designed to assistance execute that.

The event, held connected Monday, brought unneurotic RCMP officers, graduates and recruitment officers to sermon programs aimed astatine attracting much divers members to the force.

They see the Diverse and Inclusive Pre-Cadet Experience (DICE) and the Indigenous Pre-Cadet Training Program, successful summation to the RCMP's regular subordinate program.

One of the attendees, SreeKanth Mohanan, primitively from India and present surviving connected P.E.I., went to the symposium to larn much astir these opportunities.

Mohanan, who is simply a societal idiosyncratic specializing successful intelligence wellness and addictions astatine the Hillsborough Hospital, hopes to go an RCMP serviceman 1 day.

He said diverseness successful policing is crucial, not lone to combat racism but besides to amended service P.E.I.'s increasing newcomer community. More newcomers to the state could mean connection barriers oregon hostility when they brushwood officers, and successful those cases, helium said a divers constabulary unit tin marque a large difference.

Mohanan thinks programs similar DICE tin promote much newcomers to see a vocation successful instrumentality enforcement.

"I deliberation if galore radical are coming from antithetic parts of the community, astatine slightest they tin acceptable an illustration to different radical to join," helium told CBC News.

'Policing is built connected relationships'

RCMP Const. Tim Keizer said events similar the symposium are important arsenic Canada's communities proceed to turn much diverse.

"We're particularly seeing it present successful Prince Edward Island," said Keizer, who joined the national unit precocious aft a agelong vocation with the Charlottetown Police. "We're conscionable trying to code these concerns and however we tin person members that are typical of the communities that they're policing."

He added: "Policing is built connected relationships, and I deliberation that it's important that radical consciousness comfy successful approaching constabulary officers, that it's not met successful a antagonistic moment, and that they consciousness comfy making reports oregon adjacent conscionable successful day-to-day interactions."  

Opening doors for newcomers

Another attendee, Praneet Kaur, said the lawsuit introduced her to opportunities she hadn't antecedently known about.

Kaur has ever wanted to go a constabulary officer, adjacent earlier moving to Canada from India, and had been searching for accusation connected however newcomers tin articulation the force.

"For truthful long, I was looking for thing to get much information — similar successful a face-to-face, wherever I tin inquire them questions, they tin supply maine the existent answers. So that was [the] crushed that I came here."

Currently a imperishable resident, Kaur hopes to implicit the three-year residency request and past use for the DICE program.