During the first nine months of this fiscal year, the RCMP spent $2.5 million on security for MPs. If spending continues at the same pace, the cost of MPs’ security for this fiscal year could hit $3.4 million — almost double what it cost a year earlier.
Over fiscal 2022/23, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) spent $1.8 million to protect MPs, up from $1.3 million the year before.
The figures obtained from the RCMP do not include the cost of protecting the prime minister. They also don’t include spending by other bodies that also provide protection for Canada’s 338 members of Parliament, such as local police services, the Parliamentary Protective Service and the House of Commons.
The House of Commons has also taken steps to increase security for MPs but has not said how much it has cost.
While the cost of protecting MPs has been rising, it’s still a fraction of the more than $30 million a year it has cost to protect Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family over the previous two fiscal years.
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Former public safety minister Marco Mendicino said the rising price tag reflects a change in the “threat environment” since the pandemic and the Ottawa convoy protest.
In August 2022, after Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was verbally harassed during an event in Grande Prairie, Alta., Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said that he had arranged for private security for his family.
“My wife has received so much horrific material directly to her social media account that we have had to hire a private security firm to protect our family against all of that abuse,” Poilievre said during a leadership campaign stop.
“Mr. Blanchet has occasionally benefited from RCMP services, notably during the 2021 election campaign,” she said, adding that most of the party’s “specific” requests for security protection “are refused.”
He pointed to a recent incident which saw protesters upset with Canada’s position on the Israel-Hamas war gather outside Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly’s home in Montreal.
Pierre-Yves Bourduas, a former deputy commissioner of the RCMP and president of P-Y Safety Management, said Mounties are dealing with a threat environment very different from the one that existed only a few years ago.
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