For RCMP members

The rotation

The starting point is the national agreement between the Treasury Board and the RCMP's bargaining agent, and it is worth knowing what it actually says, because it is not what most detachments run. The default there is forty (40) hours from Monday to Friday inclusively, with a workday of a minimum of eight (8) consecutive hours. Separate articles for variable work and shift work are what take a member off that default and onto a watch — and in practice detachment rosters run anywhere from eight to twelve hours.

One clause is worth reading before you assume a new roster is worth more money: the agreement states that the implementation of any variation in hours shall not result in any additional overtime. Rearranging when you work is not, by itself, a pay rise.

Checked 7 August 2026. Quoted from the Regular Members agreement published by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Article numbers cited here are 21.04, 21.06, 21.07 and 21.10. Collective agreements are renegotiated on a cycle — confirm the current term and article numbering against the published agreement before relying on any provision.

The other thing that sets the RCMP apart from every other service in this country: one agreement covers the whole force. A member in Iqaluit and a member in Surrey work under the same document. Provincial employment standards — Ontario's 44-hour overtime trigger, British Columbia's daily one, Quebec's staggering rules — do not reach you. That is simpler in one way and harder in another: there is no provincial floor underneath you to fall back on, so the agreement is the whole answer.

Detachment watches are usually twelve hours on a compressed cycle, and the cycle is set locally rather than nationally. Two detachments in the same division can run different patterns.

That is the argument for saving your own shift schedule rather than relying on a posted roster: yours is the one you actually work, and it stays with you when the roster changes.

Transfers

Few things in policing move an officer as often as the RCMP does. A transfer means a new detachment, a new pattern, sometimes a new province — and a calendar that has to be rebuilt from nothing.

Save the new pattern, tell the app the day the cycle starts, and the year fills itself in. What you keep is the record: the paid duty you have worked, what it paid, and the contacts you gathered at the last posting.

Paid duty

Where your service arranges paid duty, the money is employment income and the force withholds from it. The record still matters — the hours you actually worked against the hours you were paid for, and the assignments still outstanding.

Court and training

Court dates and training land in the middle of a rotation and are the two things most likely to be missed. Both sit in their own category, with alerts before the day.

What stays on the device

Everything, unless you send it. There is no account, no detachment login, and nothing that reports back to the force.