On February 15, 2013, we wrote a post about the increase in the number of female Royal Canadian Mounted Police (“RCMP”) who are filing sexual harassment lawsuits

Mounties Vow To Stamp Out Sexual Harassment

We noted that “to their (belated) credit, the Mounties are promising to “stamp out sexual harassment and bullying.”

How have they done?

At the time, the RCMP said that “Harassment has no place in the RCMP. We recognize it may be impossible to prevent entirely, but we will implement a zero tolerance approach. … The RCMP stands little to gain by denying the obvious – and it will not do so. … As long as these cases dominate the public discourse they will undermine public confidence in our institution and consume effort. Where wrong has been committed, it will be made right.”

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The suit was filed by a former RCMP officer who alleged “a number of humiliating incidents” of  bullying and harassment throughout her nearly 20 years tenure. “The alleged incidents described in [her] affidavit range from receiving verbal propositions, to facing gender-based comments challenging her ability to perform her duties, to witnessing differences in how male and female officers were accommodated at her workplace.”

The lead plaintiff was quoted as saying “I’m amazed, actually, that for so many years a lot of us thought we were alone and didn’t say anything, Once we did start talking, we realized that there was quite a group of us … I’m just amazed.”

300 Women Joined The Class In 2013

Four months after our first post, June 12, 2013, we said that “We surmise that the Mounties are not doing such a good job of rooting out sexual harassment since we read today that ‘almost 300 current and former female Mounties have come forward to join a class-action lawsuit alleging harassment within the ranks of the RCMP.'”

More Women Are Joining The Class

That post is now way out of date — we read today in The Globe and Mail that a senior RCMP communications adviser has joined the 336 complainants who have sued alleging sexual harassment.

The class action attorney representing claimants said that “When we hit 100 I was surprised.  As we hit 200, I was less surprised, and then 300 even less, because we were beginning to have a sense of the magnitude of the internal problem at the RCMP with women in the force.”