On June 9, as part of the USJE’s National RCMP Campaign, National President David Neufeld, National Vice-President Lynette Robinson and members of the USJE communications team began a tour of RCMP sites across the Atlantic Region.
The first stop was to the Amherst, NS detachment in Cumberland County. The county previously considered moving away from the RCMP for their policing contract, but decided to continue with the service in 2023. The group met with two USJE members and learned about the preventative and reactive work done to address Intimate Partner Violence issues in the region.
On June 10, the group visited USJE members from Local 60001 at the Firearms Program in Miramichi, NB. The work site moved in 2024 from a legacy building to a new, deceptively large and modern facility tucked unobtrusively into a local strip mall.
The Firearms Program employs more than 200 USJE members—the most at any RCMP site in New Brunswick. The team received an extensive tour of the facility and learned about the important work that USJE members do at the site, including the mail room, data entry and correction, card production, contact call centre, training, strategic planning, and more. The team even got to see the $2 million specialty laser card printer—operated by USJE members—that prints all gun licenses and RCMP ID cards in Canada.
Over the first two days of the tour, the communications team collected 10 interviews from USJE members. Thank you to everyone who participated. USJE also thanks Local 60001 Vice-president Ryley Hallehan and Director Madeleine Doucet for the warm welcome and informative tour of the Firearms Program.