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Backgrounder - Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Office of the Commissioner's Audit of Direct Health Care Services

The Office of the Commissioner interviewed the managers in charge of the occupational health and safety sector at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) head office in the National Capital Region. An on-site audit was conducted in September 2005 at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy (also called Depot Division) in Regina, Saskatchewan. We met with the staff of the Medical Treatment Centre and 20 Francophone cadets and reviewed the internal policies of the RCMP regarding the application of the Official Languages Act, organizational structure, agreements and other documents provided by the institution.

FINDINGS

Strengths:

• The RCMP complies with regulatory and administrative provisions in relation to identifying its clientele and measuring demand.
• The language requirements of the positions at the Regina Medical Treatment Centre are appropriate, and the language skills of all incumbents, with the exception of one, are sufficient.

Opportunities for improvement:

• Managers and employees are not sufficiently informed of their linguistic obligations, and there is no monitoring mechanism in place to ensure the provision of bilingual health care services.
• The language preference of cadets is not indicated in their medical records.
• The RCMP must give clear instructions and specific information to the Medical Treatment Centre staff concerning the concept of active offer of service.
• The Medical Treatment Centre must also insert a language clause in the service contracts that it signs with health professionals and create a bilingual human resources data bank for the health field in order to respect its patients’ language of choice at all times.

In order to ensure the delivery of health care to the RCMP’s official language minority clientele in their language of choice, the Commissioner has made six recommendations:

• Recommendation: That the RCMP take measures to distribute its official language policies and directives with regard to service to the public in both official languages to the manager and staff members of the Medical Treatment Centre at the Depot Division in Regina.
• Recommendation: That the RCMP ensure staff members at the Medical Treatment Centre fully comply with the requirements of section 28 of the Official Languages Act concerning active offer in person, on the telephone and on voice mail.
• Recommendation: That the RCMP indicate the preferred official language of cadets in their medical records.
• Recommendation: That the RCMP take the necessary measures to ensure that the psychological tests administered to cadets by the Regina Medical Treatment Centre are in the cadets’ official language of choice.
• Recommendation: That the RCMP implement a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the Regina Medical Treatment Centre provides effective health care in both official languages.
• Recommendation: That the RCMP include a language clause in all of the Regina Medical Treatment Centre’s service contracts with health professionals and create a bilingual human resources bank for the health field in order to ensure that the language rights of the Centre’s patients are respected at all times.