Wave of threats against MPs has RCMP protective unit stretched thin, assistant commissioner says

The head of the RCMP unit responsible for protecting politicians says her division needs to grow in order to address a rising tide of threats and harassment targeting MPs.

Michele Paradis, the RCMP assistant commissioner in charge of protective policing, told CBC News Network’s Power & Politics that the number of MPs asking for protection has almost doubled since 2018.

“That spike has been something we’ve never seen before. Requests for protection have increased exponentially,” she told host David Cochrane on Thursday.

Earlier this week, the Globe and Mail reported that RCMP documents indicate the protective unit urgently needs to fill 235 positions.

Paradis said the unit is fully staffed and the number cited by the Globe and Mail is actually a projection of how much the unit needs to grow over the next five years.

“We need to grow. Right now, our staff is stretched,” she said.

“It’s like an elastic band that’s about to snap and that’s just because of what we’re seeing — an increase in threats.”

The recent assassination attempt targeting former U.S. president Donald Trump has forced the RCMP to examine how it protects Canadian politicians, Paradis said. She drew comparisons to the 2022 murder of former Japanese president Shinzo Abe.

“Every one of these [incidents], unfortunately, leads to us re-examining how we deliver our service, and of course we’re going to be talking to our American counterparts,” she said.

Paradis said the RCMP is also looking to the recent U.K. election for lessons on how to protect politicians on the campaign trail. Canada is scheduled to hold a federal election in the fall of 2025.

“We’re taking all of that in. We’re assessing. We’ll be providing all of the parties with security briefings as we go along, safety briefings. We’re looking at training their drivers, all of this,” she said.

Harassment of MPs jumped 800% in 5 years

Patrick McDonell, House of Commons sergeant-at-arms and corporate security officer, said earlier this year that harassment targeting MPs has jumped almost 800 per cent in the past five years.

“In 2019 there was approximately eight files we opened up on threat behaviours, either direct or in direct threat towards an MP, and in 2023 there was 530 files opened,” McDonnell told a House committee in May.

Former public safety minister Marco Mendicino is calling for the creation of “protective zones” around political constituency offices to protect members of Parliament and their staff from threatening behaviour.

“We have to take parliamentary security more seriously,” the Liberal MP told the Canadian Press. “We need as Canadians to open our eyes and recognize that political violence is not something that just occurs somewhere else, but that it is happening here in our own communities.”

Mendicino said his idea is to impose harsher criminal penalties, up to and including including jail time, on anyone who intimidates or otherwise harasses people within a buffer zone of 50 to 100 metres around an MP’s office.

Montreal police are investigating after a building housing the office of Immigration Minister Marc Miller was vandalized this week.

While Paradis said what happened to Miller’s office is a criminal act, she is concerned about what she called “lawful but awful” activities.

“The rhetoric around those comments that are awful but lawful is what concerns me,” she said.

“If you’re [a politician and you’re] not going to go to an event because you’re starting to hear that, that has an effect on our democracy. So what we want to do is we want to keep people safe, to be able to do their job and stay in politics.”