Advertisement

Canada’s confidence improving in police, RCMP: survey

RCMP officers in Banff have found human bones in an area along Vermillion Lakes Road in Banff National Park.

Here’s some rare good news for Canadian police forces, which are so often thrust under the public’s glare for negative reasons, for right or wrong. Canada’s confidence in you is improving.

According to a new survey by Angus Reid Global, Canada's confidence in its police forces has improved over the past two years, highlighted by a significant improvements in support for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

According to the survey, which polled 1,013 randomly selected Canadian adults online, confidence in the RCMP was up to 67 per cent from 38 per cent in 2012.

The bump was felt across the country but most notably in British Columbia, where only 27 per cent of respondents expressed confidence in the national force two years ago. This year, 58 per cent said they felt either complete confidence or a lot of confidence.

“What we can see if confidence increasing in the RCMP,” Angus Reid Global vice-president Shachi Kurl told Yahoo Canada News. “The numbers are equally striking in terms of their increase in confidence in British Columbia, which has been home to people watching the RCMP experience some real lows in terms of their operations, and in terms of their transparence and openness.”

[ Related: Tim Bosma: One year later ]

The survey included other "good news" findings for Canadian law enforcement agencies.

Among those findings were these:

  • The public is increasingly confident in municipal police forces, up from 40 per cent in 2012 to 63 per cent today.

  • Asked about a change in the amount of crime in their community, 54 per cent of respondents said there had been either no change or a decrease in the amount of crime. The figure is slightly better than the 51 per cent that responded similarly in 2012.

  • Confidence in the court system has also increased, though it still sits below an ideal range. Forty per cent of respondents expressed faith in the criminal courts, up from 19 per cent in 2012.

  • The Supreme Court of Canada received support from nearly half (48 per cent) of Canadians.

But the increased confidence in the RCMP was perhaps the most notable. Respondents from every region of the country reported an increased level of confidence in the RCMP, between 18 and 37 percentage points.

[ Related: John Alan Lee pushes limits of Canada's assisted suicide debate ]

In 2012, British Columbia had the lowest level of confidence with 27 per cent. The province still had the lowest level of confidence in the most recent survey, but with a more reasonable 58 per cent.

“When you look at that 2012 number, what that said was that seven in 10 British Columbians did not have confidence in the police. Think about that for a moment,” Kurl said. “If you think of it that way, it is a very low measure. Now, we are seeing things normalizing, if you will.”

Indeed, the RCMP had been facing dark times two years ago, with the public questioning its response to the Robert Dziekanski airport Taser death and its handling of the Robert Pickton mass murder case, among other significant issues.

“All of that adds up, and it snowballs. It was a really unprecedented period in terms of what was happening with the use of force issues, with investigation issues, with failures to investigate, with attempts to cover up,” Kurl said. “It did quite a bit of damage to people’s confidence in their policing and justice institutions. We have not seen those kinds of crisis in the last two years.”

Since 2012, there has been a targeted housecleaning of the RCMP, specifically in B.C., where the province has recently established an Independent Investigation Office and RCMP in the region have committed themselves to transparency and openness.

The results speak for themselves and one suspects that if the RCMP were able to comment on such surveys, they would take a well-deserved bow. But with more than 30 per cent of Canadians still lacking confidence, the bow likely wouldn’t linger long.

Want to know what news is brewing in Canada?
Follow @MRCoutts on Twitter.