Trouble in the ring at the RCMP's Musical Ride
Officers in the saddle are unhappy and want out: internal review
There’s trouble in the ring at the RCMP’s iconic Musical Ride, where the horses are well cared for but their riders in red serge are feeling neglected and skittish.
An internal review of the show, which features synchronized equestrians, found overworked officers in the saddle with “significant” morale problems, many of whom just want to leave the unit.
Standard three-year postings to the Musical Ride are lasting longer because of chronic understaffing, exposing the riders to more injuries and hijacking their career plans. The unit is supposed to have 52 officer members but only 37 spots are filled because of recruitment problems.
“Riders are often having to stay longer than their normal three-year posting, when in many cases their preference would be to move on to their next posting,” says the review, obtained under the Access to Information Act.
“The Musical Ride is a physically demanding job that leads to an above-average number of injuries to riders; the longer they stay, the higher the likelihood of being injured.”
The RCMP was once an entire police force on horseback, patrolling the vast Canadian West. Until 1966, all cadets were required to learn horsemanship, even though the RCMP ended its patrols on horseback almost three decades earlier, in 1938.
The first official Musical Ride was performed in 1887, and it became a permanent RCMP unit in 1960, based at Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park. Today, the unit costs about $11.7 million to operate each year, most of that for salaries, a small fraction of the RCMP’s $5-billion budget.
The Musical Ride travels across Canada each year between May and September, appearing in up to 50 communities to give a 30-minute performance set to music. The unit made a special appearance at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in 2022 and at King Charles’ coronation the following year. One of the horses, Noble, was given to the king as a gift from Canada.
A saddler, two farriers and 11 stable hands take care of the group’s 40 or more horses, which are bred and stabled at an RCMP farm in Pakenham, Ont. Another 17 civilians support the unit. The review found the horses to be in good hands, and the operation efficiently run.
The reviewers noted that the Musical Ride is intended as an “enduring symbol of Canada” and as a recruiting tool to encourage young Canadians to become members of the RCMP. But it said the Mounties are not measuring their success in these areas.
“There is no evidence the Musical Ride is measuring its performance against these objectives,” the 2022-2023 review found. “That said, the outcomes are by nature largely intangible and difficult to quantify.”
Some RCMP recruiters raised doubts about whether the Musical Ride really is an effective recruiting mechanism, because “the demographic that attends the performances tend to lean heavily toward senior citizens and children.”
Overall, the biggest challenge is “the limited availability of new riders [which] is a significant threat to its sustainability,” the review concluded.
A survey of riders, past and present, found high levels of dissatisfaction, especially among new members. Asked whether they had received adequate support for their mental well-being while working on the Musical Ride, almost half disagreed – a level that grew to 70 per cent among newer recruits.
And more than three-quarters of officers who joined between 2018 and 2021 disagreed that “the Musical Ride does a good job of supporting employee career development.”
The RCMP, which marked its sesquicentennial last year, has had severe recruitment problems generally, leading to understaffing at units across the country. Among other things, the review recommended finding ways to improve workplace culture and employee relations, and to establish mechanisms to increase rider numbers, though with no specific details.
RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme approved the report and action plan last November.
The Musical Ride cancelled two of its seasons, in 2020 and 2021, because of the pandemic.
You make a lot of sense Donald Mitchell, and have convinced me. These entities should not be draining resources away from the RCAF or RCMP.
Like the RCAF Snowbirds there has been no study on how effective these entities who serve no operational utility on recruiting. But if the GoC thinks these are crucial cultural icons that must be nurtured then staff the units with people who want to be there. The musical ride? There are thousands of horse crazy 20 year olds who’d love a couple of years doing the ride. The Snowbirds? There are a lot of retired RCAF folks who’d do the job flying ancient jets in formation for a couple of years. Fund these entities from general revenues and divorce them from the RCMP and RCAF.