Politicians who outbid the police force they would add to fight gun violence in Montreal risk coming up against a solid obstacle: the number of graduates from the Quebec National Police School may be insufficient for that they achieve their ends.
For 10 years, the establishment of Nicolet has seen a general decline in both its number of admissions and its number of graduates.
At the end of August, shortly after a Tuesday that saw two men shot dead in broad daylight, the Quebec government and the administration of the metropolis unveiled their plan to add 450 officers to the staff of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal ( SPVM) within five years, among other planned measures, which also include preventive measures. These are not hirings, but rather increasing the net number of police officers by 450 over this period. Quebec has promised to pay 45 million dollars to the metropolis for this purpose.
The Parti Québécois has promised to hire a total of 100 additional police officers for the SPVM, while the Conservative Party of Quebec is considering 400.
But if having the money to hire police officers is very useful, there must still be enough candidates to hire. And unless you convince those already employed by another police force to join the SPVM, you have to go to the source, that is to say recruit graduates from the National Police School of Nicolet, the only one to qualify the police in Quebec.
Having foreseen the blow of critics who brandished the shortage of police officers as an obstacle to its plan of 450 hirings, the government of François Legault argued that it had agreed with the school of Nicolet so that it welcomes 72 recruits from especially for the SPVM. There may therefore be 828 future police officers on the school benches rather than 756.
Except that there were only 714 applications for admission for the school year which begins. And that number is likely to drop as applications are reviewed — and discarded, in some cases.
The École nationale de police du Québec also seems less popular than before: while there were 1,018 applications for admission for the 2013-2014 school year, this number fell to 770 in 2018-2019. Applications saw a slight upturn from 2019-20, with around 800 applicants, before plunging this year.
We have to go back to the 2015-2016 school year to find a cohort of successful candidates that would make it possible to reach the hoped-for number of 828 police officers on the school benches.
Shortage at source
Believing that you can solve the problem by increasing the number of places at the Nicolet school, “it’s a bit of magical thinking”, judges also the associate professor at the School of Criminology of the University of Montreal Rémi Bovine.
Because going from 756 places to 828 when there were only 680 candidates selected during the last year, that does not change much, he says. Moreover, in the last decade, the number of graduates has dropped from 642 in 2013-2014 to 486 in 2020-2021. However, a hundred more candidates graduated last year.
But originally, admission was not decided by the National Police School of Quebec, but by the CEGEPs, recalls Professor Boivin, a former analyst at the SPVM.
If we look in this direction — 13 CEGEPs offer the police techniques program necessary for admission to Nicolet — we also see that the number of graduates is down. According to data from the Ministry of Higher Education, 693 students graduated in 2021. Over the past five years, the number has fluctuated between 690 and 817.
So, even “if all CEGEP graduates go to the Police Academy, we are already below the number [de 828] “. And some will change careers or work elsewhere, he adds.
The police forces, no more than the National Police School, have no control over the number of admissions in police techniques to CEGEP, underlines Professor Boivin. He believes that it is there, at the source, that the efforts should be put.
Courted graduates
Montreal says it is sparing no effort in recruiting: between November 2021 and August 2022, 152 hires were made within the SPVM, and 130 others should be made by the end of December. The City, however, did not reveal the number of vacancies.
Mayor Valérie Plante recently declared that 30% of graduates from the National Police Academy join the SPVM. The establishment could not confirm this information, saying it did not compile this data: “we do not deal with recruitment”, explains a communications manager, Andrée Doré.
On the other hand, she says, graduates are courted: they receive two, three or even four job offers.
To convince them to choose Montreal, there are obstacles there too, because other police forces offer higher salaries – the SQ pays its recruits up to $48,386, compared to $41,694 for the SPVM, for example.
And while some police officers are less concerned with money than with working conditions, there may be other challenges to overcome, notes Professor Boivin. The more intense pace of work and the more common overtime in the metropolis, as well as “the great visibility of the SPVM in the media”, put some people off, he gives as an example.
The difficulties encountered by police officers in the field diminish the attractiveness of the profession, had confided to the To have to in January Dominic Ricard, president of the Quebec Provincial Police Association. So much so that the Association of Quebec Police Directors deemed it necessary to launch an advertising campaign last spring to promote the profession.