Dominion Police
The Dominion Police, although the federal police of Canada, was mainly active in the Eastern Canada region, while the Royal Northwest Mounted Police handled the expansive and sparsely populated Northwest Territories of Western Canada. In May 1918, the 969-member Dominion Police was reassigned under the Department of Militia and Defence and became a civilian wing of the Canadian Military Police Corps (CMPC). In the early 1900s, the Royal Northwest Mounted Police had declined as the Northwest Territories was divided into new provinces and territories, and due to the general unpopularity of the force for conduct during industrial disputes such as the Winnipeg General Strike. On 1 February 1920, the civilian members of the CMPC, including the Dominion Police, were merged with the Royal Northwest Mounted Police to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the new federal police force of Canada, and the CMPC was disbanded on 1 December 1920.
English Canadians
Macdonald was also instrumental in the founding of the North-West Mounted Police in 1875, forerunners of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Canada's iconic national police force. The RCMP itself, established to "subdue the West", i.e. the newly acquired Northwest Territories, formerly the HBC's Rupert's Land, as declared in the preamble to its charter. The RCMP, long since eulogized into a moral, symbolic image of Canadian authority, far from its true nature as a paramilitary force commissioned with bringing First Nations and Métis to heel, plays a role in English Canada's perception of itself as a nation of essentially law-abiding citizens that confederated in 1867 for the purposes of establishing peace, order and good government.