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       Brian Sauvé, president of the National Police Federation, at the RCMP Pacific Region Training Centre in Chilliwack, B.C., on Nov. 15, 2019.

       Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail

       The RCMP’s new union has reached a tentative deal with the federal government – a bargain that sets the stage for raises for 20,000 Mounties stationed across Canada.

       While the force’s first contract is expected to be welcomed by front-line Mounties, it could induce sticker shock for local governments that contract their services. Municipal associations are warning that officer salaries could spike by up to 30 per cent in the near term, raising the prospect of tax hikes and questions about the local-policing future of the Mounties.

       Officers in the RCMP, which unionized in 2019, have long been paid at rates that are among the lowest in the country for police officers. For years, they have argued annual salaries lag those of officers at comparable Canadian forces by at least $10,000 to $20,000.

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       Negotiations for the contract, which binds jurisdictions that use Mounties across Canada, started last year with the federal Treasury Board Secretariat. The Treasuary Board declined to comment on the status of negotiations, but the National Police Federation – the RCMP’s union – said Friday that a bargain has been struck.

       “Yes we have reached a tentative agreement with Treasury Board. And it’s moving towards ratification with the membership,” Brian Sauvé, president of the National Police Federation, told The Globe and Mail.

       Mr. Sauvé would not reveal details of the agreement and said his organization would put out a statement on Monday.

       The RCMP is administered out of Ottawa. Federal officials sign contracts with provinces who want to hire Mounties to act as local police. These federally subsidized policing arrangements have existed for decades, and have served to spread Mounties out to Canada’s Far North, the East Coast, and Western Canada.

       For decades, federal laws prevented the RCMP from unionizing. But that changed in 2015 when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the laws were unconstitutional.

       Since then, the union ratification processes and collective-bargaining arrangements have slowly played out. This has served to keep Mountie salaries stuck in neutral even as wages at police forces across Canada continued to speed ahead.

       More than 40 per cent of all Mounties are clustered in British Columbia. The province’s Solicitor-General, Mike Farnworth, says his government is prepared to pay added costs for the RCMP.

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       “They won the case to be able to unionize, and once that happened then it became, ‘Okay, you know what? They’re not going to sit back and watch while other police forces and protective services see their pay increase,’ ” Mr. Farnworth said in an interview Friday. “And they’re not, particularly here in B.C.”

       Cities too, will see RCMP rates rise. That’s why the Union of B.C. Municipalities has been warning city administrators to put aside money for after a collective bargain is struck.

       “For those communities that had listened to some of the words that UBCM had put forth … they’re probably a little bit better prepared than maybe some that didn’t listen so much,” said Brian Frenkel, the group’s president. He said the UBCM has been telling its members to prepare for an RCMP wage hike of 15 to 30 per cent.

       “It has been almost five years in a wage freeze,” Mr. Sauvé said.

       Without elaborating on what the union has negotiated for its members, he said that many Mounties have been awaiting this deal

       “Whatever it ends up being,” he said, “they earned it.”

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