The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police unit responsible for protecting politicians says the expansion of the unit is necessary to tackle a rise in threats and harassment targeted at members of Parliament.
Michel Paradis, deputy chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is in charge of the protection police force, told CBC News Network Power and politics The number of lawmakers seeking protection has nearly doubled since 2018.
“This surge is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. We’ve seen an exponential increase in calls for protection,” she told host David Cochran on Thursday.
Earlier this week, The Globe and Mail reported that RCMP documents showed the gardaĆ are in urgent need of filling 235 positions.
Paradis said the force is fully staffed and that the figures cited by the Globe and Mail were actually a projection of how much the force will need to grow over the next five years.
“We need to grow. Right now, our staff is stretched thin,” she said.
“It’s like a rubber band that’s about to snap, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing with the increased threats.”
Paradis said the recent assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump has forced the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to consider how it protects Canadian politicians, which he compared to the assassination attempt on former Japanese President Shinzo Abe in 2022.
“All of this [incidents]”Unfortunately, this will lead us to reconsider how we provide services and, of course, we will be discussing this with our American counterparts,” she said.
Paradis said the RCMP is looking to learn lessons from the recent British election on how to protect politicians while they are campaigning. Canada is due to hold a federal election in the fall of 2025.
“We’re considering all of that and evaluating it. We’ll provide security briefings, safety briefings to all parties as we go along. Driver training, all of those things are being considered,” she said.
Harassment of lawmakers increases 800% in five years
Patrick McDonnell, the House of Commons’ chief procedural and corporate security officer, said earlier this year that harassment targeting lawmakers had increased by nearly 800 percent over the past five years.
“In 2019, approximately eight files were opened relating to direct or immediate threatening actions against members of Congress, and in 2023, 530 files have been opened,” McDonnell told a House of Commons committee in May.
Former Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino has called for “protected zones” to be set up around constituency offices to protect MPs and their staff from intimidation.
“We need to take security at Parliament more seriously,” the Liberal MP told The Canadian Press. “As Canadians, we need to open our eyes and recognise that political violence isn’t just something that happens somewhere else, it’s also happening in our communities.”
Mendicino said the idea was to impose tougher criminal penalties, including prison time, on anyone who intimidates or harasses people within a 50- to 100-metre buffer zone around a councillor’s office.
Montreal police are investigating the vandalism this week of a building that houses Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s offices.
Paradis said what happened in Miller’s office was criminal, but he said he was concerned about “legal but egregious” behavior.
“The rhetoric around these nasty but legitimate comments worries me,” she said.
“If you are [a politician and you’re] “I’m not going to go to the event because we’re starting to hear talk that it’s going to impact our democracy. So what we want to do is keep people safe, do their jobs and stay in politics.”