Actually The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary is also a provincial force, though for various reasons they do not currently provide complete coverage. The RCMP is contracted by the provincial government to provide policing in most rural areas.
For more info on the RNC, see their website.
To stay at least a little closer to topic, the RNC does have a mounted unit, more info at here.
Whenever I see the thread title I get the image of a stuffed Mountie in a museum.
Or a Mountie’s head (wearing the hat, natch) mounted on a plaque and hanging on a wall.
Not just big cities - here in Columbia, SC, we have a few mounted cops. Very useful for festivals and such, and for public relations. I’ve read they’re going to step up mounted patrols in Five Points, which is a fantastic idea.
A few years ago two of their horses died in a tragic car accident (they were in a horse trailer). It was really sad, and the memorial service was very well attended. They haven’t been replaced because of the expense, but I think the mounted patrols (particularly if they put more of them in Five Points) are very useful and a very good way to increase police presence in places where there are a lot of stupid drunk college kids.
This is my understanding too. AFAIK, the Mounties do everything from writing speeding tickets, arresting criminals, and keeping order; up to investigating in a crime lab and providing security to domestic and foreign dignitaries. They also make great colour guards at sporting events. 
Toronto has mounted cops around all the time. They are almost always in pairs. ETA: Here are a couple at a drive-thru (ride thru?) window. They do traffic stops and everything you’d expect a cop to do, but they are found in their greatest concentration when crowd control is a priority. Eg/ You’ll see a whole bunch of them if there is a protest at Queens Park or something. ETA: The horses get their own riot gear if the cops are at a protest (even if it’s a peaceful one). See the visors?
Cycling over horse poo is a barrel of laughs, I tells ya.
Johnny L.A., an old joke:
Q: What is taxidermy’s greatest triumph?
A: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
A previous thread on police horses today, with links to two others: Are Police Department Mounted Units anachronisms or still useful? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
Milwaukee still has some mounted units downtown, since '99. I used to hear hoofbeats outside my window occasionally, and I’ve seen a mounted officer cantering through a lakeside park.
In fact, if you take the Amtrak to or from Milwaukee, you’ll go right by the stable. (For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why the hell someone had a bunch of horses in a paddock in Walker’s Point.)
The RCMP AFAIK do not have a mounted contingent anywhere. As for sled dogs, the last few decades, they’ve been replaced by snowmobiles. For chaising anyone violating some laws about off-road vehicles, etc they may also use quads. One contingent tested a Hummer for on/off road, but they don’t do too well in swamp and mud.
The RCMP provide police services in small towns, remote areas, federal lands (airports, etc.) as well as highway patrol and provincial police in any province that does not have a provincial police force. (The Ontario Provincial Police, Surete de Quebec, Newfoundland Constabulary, etc. ) The RCMP are especially good at tasering to death confused Polish immigrants and then lying through their teeth on the stand.
Most recruits can expect to spend their early years in remote locations like the north, or native reserves. They handle anything from traffic offenses to domestics to burglaries to murders. Later they can bid on fancier jobs down south, or at international airports.
I remember once shutting down a whole wing of the Calgary airport for 10 minutes until the RCMP showed up, many years ago. Ninja throwing stars are illegal weapons in canada. When the trained monkeys fo the private security service find one, they have to shut all the doors and call the RCMP as it it were something truly lethal like a pistol, or bomb (can I say that at an airport?). So we stood around waiting until the RCMP came, and based on the Xray, they opened my carry-on and pulled out the ornamental glass star, laughed, and sent me on my way… Looong before 9-11.
There are additional wings of the RCMP that do white-collar crime, will investigate other police if asked, do investigations across provincial boundaries, etc. There is CSIS, a separate group whose mandate is to mess up possibly international espionage in a uniquely Canadian way; sort of like the FBI arresting Moussaoui and missing the big picture. And CSE, our also Canadian flavour of the NSA. But anything criminal and national, the RCMP has jurisdiction - biker gangs, organized crime, foreign terror groups recruiting locally (shared with CSIS), security fraud, etc. Of course, if it’s a provincial law, a local provincial force may have first dibs on the case…
All criminal law in Canada is under the criminal code, is federal. All peace officers are mandated under federal law, so they are all empowered across Canada, including the Podunk Police force. It is just simpler for a small town to get their one or two officers from the RCMP than to set up their own collection of Andy Griffith and Don Knotts. The police have serious training (RCMPis still a prestige job) and answer to a hgher authority in Ottawa, so they are relatively immune to the usual pressures of a small-town police force.
For example the East St. Paul, Manitoba, police force was recently dissolved over allegations (more than allegations) that they gave a drunk driver from the Winnipeg police force a break; deliberately lied and messed up the evidence so he could not be convicted of Impaired Driving Causing Death. Simpler to teach the country a lesson, and fire 11 police officers, and get the RCMP heirarchy to replace them. Maybe next time the local police will think twice. Most local police are poeple who could not egt into the RCMP academy.
Me too.
If I bagged one with a rack like this, it would certainly be worth mounting:
OK, so I’m guessing there’s a story behind this. Tell us, please.
Google “Robert Dziekanski”. Ukrainian immigrating to join his elderly mother, got tasered (by Mounties, 5 times…he was armed with a stapler, though) at the Vancouver airport and died. Some of the Mounties testified in ways that seem to be somewhat at odds with surveillance video footage. I haven’t followed the story very closely, so will not offer any further commentary.
About two years ago, there was this immigrant from Poland named Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport. There were communication problems, because his mother, who was supposed to meet him there, missed him, and because he didn’t speak English, and the employees didn’t speak Polish. So he got agitated and started throwing things. The police were called, and four mounties showed up. He apparently picked up a stapler, and they tasered him. He was tasered five times and died.
Somebody caught the whole incident on camera, and the police took the camera, promising to give the film back, but they didn’t and the guy had to sue to get his video back. When he did and it was released to the media, it turned out that the video contradicted some of the statements the mounties had made about the case, and there are currently inquiries about the potential of police misconduct.
I was taking part in a demonstration once that was broken up by mounted cops. I can personally testify to how terrifying it is to have an armed man on a big horse bearing down on you.
(Of course, the newspapers reported it as evil demonstrators attacking the mounted cops, which is laughable. Mounted cops are extremely intimidating, there’s no way in the world unarmed and untrained people are going to attack mounted cops wielding clubs.)
The experience gave me great admiration for the courage of the infantry of the past who stood up to cavalry attacks. My instinctive reaction, and the instinctive reaction of everyone else in the crowd, was to get the hell away from the big scary guys on the bigger and scarier animals. It’s fortunate that more people weren’t injured in the scramble to get away… and yet, “evil unwashed hippies attack poor harmless mounted cops”.
So, yeah, do not underestimate the usefulness of mounted cops when it comes to crowd control. Also do not trust news reports about who starts the violence in demonstrations.
While it’s correct that the criminal law is federal and uniform across Canada, it’s not correct that municipal and provincial police officers have authority throughout Canada.
The federal Criminal Code provides that if someone is a peace officer, they have the various powers set out in the Code for peace officers. However, provincial and municipal police officers gain their status as peace officers from the provincial law constituting provincial and municipal police forces. Since provincial laws only apply only within the province that passed them, if municipal or provincial police officers leave the province, they do not have the status of a peace officer, and therefore no longer have the authority of a peace officer under the Criminal Code.
It depends which aspect of the federal-provincial division of powers you’re comparing to the US system of federalism. Yes, criminal law is a national matter in Canada, but it is enforced by the provinces, not the federal government. Provincial prosecutors try all cases under the Criminal Code, not the federal Crowns.
As well, if you start looking at other areas, you find that the provinces have a stronger position.
For example, the federal Parliament’s jurisdiction over commerce is much less than the corresponding federal power of Congress under the US commerce clause.
Nor does Parliament have the power to pass civil rights or voting rights statutes that apply to the provinces, nor to pass unfunded mandates.
As well, the Federal Court of Canada does not have any supervisory jurisdiction over the provincial courts, and Parliament does not have the authority to give the Federal Court that power.
Overall, I would argue that the provinces in Canada have a much stronger position vis-à-vis the federal government than do the states in the US.
There was a thread about it that I started after Cecil’s article about tasers.
Ah, thanks.
We learned in History class back in the Good Old Days, that the British parliament did not want to build large strong competition out of the colonies. They therefore produced a list of jurisdictions such as international waterways, defence, criminal code, etc. that were federal and everything else was provincial.
However, the feds here have stolen the idea from the US feds - he who has the wallet calls the shots. So, for example health care is a provincial matter, run by each province; but the feds provide a decent amount of the money needs and hence set the standards to prevent service from being so poor or coverage lacking. You get almost the same (full) coverage in any province, and despite what the Fox Bozos say, I’ll take it over the US system - as would about 70% or 80% of Canadians.
So the criminal law is set federally but the provinces run the courts and prosecutors. This results in the occasional tiff, such as rural western provinces refusing to enforce the feds’ “Long Gun Registry”. Very much politics in Canada is as much about negotiation as about fiat; but instead of negotiations like in Congress, where you have to persuade 300+ independently purchased “politicians”, the negotiations are more between parties and between feds and provinces.
Canada has some things that the US should learn from - bills are written by the minister’s department, usually (rules allow for some private members’ bills). The committees can amend, but not beyond the original scope of the bill - i.e. you can’t add a provision to build a Bridge to Nowhere onto an agricultural or communications bill, it would have to be a highway bill. Most pork is inserted at the ministerial level, and nowhere near as blatant as in Congress unless the politicians are from Quebec.
Most members are elected based on party affiliation rather than personal charm, so while a revolt of the members is possible if the leader goes too far ( think Tony Blair in Iraq) it is pretty close to political suicide.
As I understand it, it’s the opposite: there are a list of competences that are provincial, but the rest is federal.
Can I have an example of what you’d consider “blatant pork” from politicians from Quebec?
Chiming in to echo what’s already been said - RCMP’s pretty much non-mounted at this point, except for ceremonial duties, but there’s a definite mounted presence in major cities - I’ve seen some fearsome-looking horses in downtown Toronto doing general police work, but you notice them most during events for crowd control - they were out in full force for the recent Tamil protests.
The mountie talk reminded me of Obama’s recent visit to Ottawa. I thought that the mountie was a fairly universal and well-recognized symbol (thank Disney for that one!) but here’s a nugget from a wrap of the American coverage of the visit:
Oh, those Canadian troops!
