Well, for one thing, the Supreme Court has held that when they act as the provincial police force in New Brunwsick, they have to comply with the more generous language requirements that apply to New Brunswick. Under the Charter, s. 20(1), the federal government is required to provide bilingual services in areas where demand reqches a particular point. New Brunswick, on the other hand, is required to provide bilingual services throughout the province. The Court held, in Société des acadiens et acadiennes, that when acting as the provincial police force in New Brunswick, the RCMP were bound by s. 16(2) and had to provide bilingual services throughout.
seems like 20 states in the USA have state military forces other than guard units, some maybe inactive or small.
Nope. In Canada, Parliament has exclusive jurisdiction to enact criminal law, and has done so by enacting the Criminal Code. However, as a matter of policy, Parliament has decentralised the enforcement of the criminal law, by providing that the administration of the Criminal Code is left to the Provinces. As well, the *Criminal Code *recognizes any peace officer under provincial law as a peace officer for the enforcement of the Code.
So, provincial and municipal police officers are the ones who enforce the Criminal Code. The RCMP enforces the Criminal Code in those provinces where the RCMP is the provincial police force (and in the three territories). The Ontario Provincial Police and the Sûreté du Québec enforce it in those two provinces. In Ontario and Quebec, the RCMP only enforce federal laws other than the Criminal Code (drug laws, income tax, smuggling, national security, etc.).
Sorry - forgot to include the link: Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick Inc. v. Canada, 2008 SCC 15, [2008] 1 S.C.R. 383.
Only if the National Guard units in question are called into federal service. Possibly useful Staff Report.
One of my friend’s father quit the Arkansas National Guard because there was a possibility that his unit would be nationalized and sent to Vietnam.
Is that a constitutional limitation or a statutory one? For example could Congress simply pass a law saying all state guards/militias are liable to be federalized and have it stand up in court?
Oh, and just to round it out - in those provinces where the RCMP acts as the provincial police force, they also enforce provincial laws, such as highway traffic laws.
I don’t know offhand, but I imagine there’d definitely be a strong challenge, as that’d be seen as intruding on state sovereignty with precedents going all the way back to 1789. What’s next, Congress confiscating state budgets or demanding state judges become federal employees?
Hey, we lost a war about that. 
Another thing is that promotion and officer appointments are done by the state, not by the DoD. States run their own officer candidate schools, and the highest state military officers are appointed to their posts by the Governor.
The feds can federalize the Guard units, and help equip them, but in general, they’re state forces, not federal forces.
Quoth friedo:
If the President can call them up at will, in what sense are they not always federal troops? Just because the federal government usually delegates them to the states, doesn’t mean that they’re under state control.
States are still sovereign entitites, I believe. They have to honor the contract they entered upon joining the Union, including limitations they agreed on their own sovereign powers, and can’t just leave it at will without consent of their other contract partners. But that doesn’t mean (say) Arnold Schartzenegger takes orders from either the president or Congress in any way whatsoever.
He does if he wants the US freeways going through Kalifornia repaired.
California theoretically could choose to decline federal highway funds and other federal disbursments. Nobody in the state government, from Schwartzenegger on down, could be fired, reprimanded or sanctioned by the feds if that’s what they chose to do.
Of course not, but they would be in worse financial trouble than they are now
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I believe it’s a statutory distinction that goes back to one of the Militia Acts (there have been several.)
Every able-bodied male between certain ages is subject to conscription, whether you’re in a National Guard unit or not. Tweak the statute a bit and you can make that every person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. By this definition, everyone in the country is a federal troop.
. . . who is hereby ordered by their national Commander in Chief to purchase health insurance from an approved provider. (sorry, did I say that out loud?)
The US Army was much less centralized back then, though, too. During the Civil War, some (all?) regiments were raised by individual states and comprised of citizens of those states.