VANCOUVER—A drill instructor gets in the face of a cadet, telling him he needs to pipe up when answering her. “There’s no room for meek or mild in this job,” she tells him.

Later, cadets march in unison in the “drill hall.” During role-playing scenarios, they learn how to wrestle a suspect into submission and what commands to yell at someone wielding a knife.

The scenes are from a new video promoted this week on the RCMP’s social media channels. The 20-minute video, produced by a U.S.-based business news website, offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look at life inside the force’s 26-week training academy in Regina.

But critics say that if the video reflects the RCMP’s focus in the year 2020, the national police force is in trouble.

Sherry Benson-Podolchuk, who spent 20 years on the force and is now a workplace consultant, said while the video accurately depicts the rough-and-tumble aspects of training that cadets have to go through, there is no mention of what the force has done to address systemic bullying and harassment.

We got an inside look at the intense 26-week training program that all future Mounties must endure before officially joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Senior video correspondent Graham Flanagan spent five days at the RCMP Academy, Depot Division in Regina, Saskatchewan where he observed different troops at various stages of training. The training is focused on mastering police procedure, but cadets are also put through intense physical challenges, such as entering a gas chamber and enduring a “uniform run” with a dog handler in sub-zero temperatures. Male and female cadets train together at Depot, and even square off against each other in Police Defensive Tactics training. The future Mounties also learn about RCMP customs and traditions dating back to the 19th century, culminating with the Regimental Dinner — a ceremony that, according to the RCMP, media had not been allowed to attend before this film shoot.

“If you want to change the mindset of how society looks at the RCMP, then the RCMP has to be willing to say, ‘Hey, this is what we did, it didn’t work. We still want you to join and these are the things we’re doing to make it a better, respectful, healthy workplace,” she told the Star.

“By not addressing the issues that have been plaguing the force … they’re missing out on some really good people.”

Benson-Podolchuk, who settled a harassment complaint against the RCMP in 2009, provided advice in a subsequent class-action lawsuit brought forward by women who claimed pervasive sexual harassment and discrimination in the force. The federal government settled the lawsuit in 2016, setting aside more than $100 million in compensation.

Assistant Commissioner Jasmin Breton, commanding officer of RCMP Depot Division in Regina, said this week the RCMP did not pay for the video, had no control over its content, and that it does not capture the full picture of the training program.

RCMP spokeswoman Catherine Fortin later added in an email that producers chose to “focus on eye-catching images, favouring high action over classroom learning” where cadets learn about community relationships, mental health, the Criminal Code and other topics. And while the academy does retain some traditional aspects, the drill and deportment training has been modernized and “many elements have moved away from the paramilitary training in the past.”

But RCMP officials were apparently happy enough with the final product; the force promoted the video on its Twitter and Facebook accounts on Monday alongside links to its recruitment page.

Graham Flanagan, the Business Insider video correspondent who was given unprecedented access to various stages of Mountie training last December, said in an email the story speaks for itself. “We believe it’s a fair and accurate account of what we observed during our time at the Academy.”

Viewers are taken through various aspects of training: how to make an arrest, how to defend yourself against an assailant, what it feels like to be exposed to pepper spray and how to shoot a gun.

The video also captures various rituals, including the inspection of troop barracks and marching drills.

Toward the end of the video, viewers are taken inside the officers’ mess where a regimental dinner is held for cadets before graduation. At one point, they raise their glasses in a toast “To the Queen.”

“We adhere to some very old traditions that we’ve inherited from the British army and the Canadian army — that we’ve made our own,” Sgt. Maj. Mike McGinley says in the video.

Historian Steve Hewitt, who has written extensively on the RCMP, said he was struck by the RCMP’s adherence to old traditions depicted in the video.

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“That military style discipline … does seem surprising given the problems the RCMP is having recruiting women and visible minorities,” he wrote in an email from Britain, where he is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham.

“I’ve often said that the RCMP is a prisoner to its past and that this mythic past doesn’t necessarily serve it well in the present.”

While acknowledging that a 20-minute video can’t capture the entire training program, Hewitt said he was also struck by the emphasis on the “physicality of policing but nothing in the way of an intellectual approach to policing that might include psychological efforts at de-escalation of tensions.”

“It’s hard to imagine hierarchy, military-style discipline, and an emphasis on physicality attracting many (new recruits) beyond white males,” he wrote.

A number of reports over the years have been highly critical of the RCMP’s inability to bring about cultural change.

The RCMP watchdog, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, issued a report on workplace harassment that said the force’s paramilitary history and structure had resulted in a “culture of obedience to higher command and top-down control by RCMP leaders.” Because of the strict hierarchical structure, senior officers were too often “disconnected from the experiences of those on the front lines.”

A separate and ongoing class-action lawsuit brought forward by Mounties not covered by the previous settlement alleges that bullying and intimidation were allowed to fester because of the force’s paramilitary structure and chain of command.

The RCMP, currently helmed by Commissioner Brenda Lucki, has introduced measures in recent years to try to modernize the force, including the creation last year of a civilian management advisory board.

In the video, Breton says: “Are we a kinder police organization? That is a comment we actually verbally say out loud now. We’re in the service industry. We’re out there to serve the Canadian public.”

But Benson-Podolchuk said it would’ve been nice if the RCMP showed prospective recruits, especially those on the fence about whether to join, how the force is achieving that goal.

“First thing I noticed (in the video), it’s all about uniformed marching and training. … After all these years of people speaking up and the lawsuits and millions of dollars, there’s nothing saying, ‘We are making changes because some of the traditions weren’t working,’” she said.

“It’s like a glacial shift to a new mindset.”

Updated: Feb. 28, 2020 — This story has been updated to include a comment from RCMP spokeswoman Catherine Fortin.

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