How the CBMF is supporting modern policing for small services
By Natalie Fournier
Small police services across Canada play an essential role in keeping their communities safe, yet they face unique challenges when it comes to training, competency tracking, and maintaining consistent operational standards.
Limited access to eLearning, budget constraints, and the absence of dedicated training units often mean members must balance frontline demands with professional development. Many services rely on outdated performance evaluation structures and competency frameworks, and, in some cases, human resource support is minimal or nonexistent, making it difficult to track competencies or maintain current training resources.
To help address these gaps, the Canadian Police Knowledge Network (CPKN) released the updated Competency-Based Management Framework (CBMF), in collaboration with its National Advisory Committee, and Competencies Subcommittee, to ensure it reflects today’s realities of policing. The new CBMF provides a modern, evidence-informed structure designed to support services of all sizes, but it is particularly impactful for smaller agencies.
The framework’s clarity and adaptability, paired with CPKN’s guidance, ensure even small services with limited resources can align their practices with contemporary policing standards.
Services like Kennebecasis Regional Police Force in New Brunswick and Tyendinaga Police Service in Ontario, are adopting the CBMF as an opportunity to strengthen consistency in training and reinforce professionalism across their organizations.
“Since 2020, we’ve been intentionally shifting toward a competency-based management approach to strengthen fairness, transparency, and organizational consistency,” says Laurie Young, Manager, Human Resources, Kennebecasis Regional Police Force. “Exploring the CBMF is a natural next step and allows us to revisit our profiles and processes while aligning our internal work with a modern, sector wide framework to ensure we’re keeping pace with national standards.”
Both Tyendinaga and Kennebecasis will use the CBMF to support evidence-informed hiring, most notably, the recruitment of Tyendinaga’s incoming police chief. The CBMF brings clarity and consistency to a services’ hiring processes, from recruitment to promotion to day-to-day leadership, enhancing transparency, fairness, and community trust.
“Quite simply, you’ll have a structure in place,” says David Whitlow, Transition Lead, Tyendinaga Police Service Development. “National standards support this work, and this framework complements our mission, vision, and values by clarifying what the job requires. It gives us a solid foundation—and we plan to build it into our performance management.”
While it provides smaller services with guidance and clarity, the CBMF is equally adaptable for larger organizations, making it a practical, national framework for police services of any size.
“Small agencies don’t need to start from scratch. There is support available through CPKN, existing sector resources, consultants, and other small agencies that are more than willing to share their experience,” says Young. “The key is simply to start; even small steps can create meaningful change.”
To learn more about how the CBMF can help your service improve its human resource practices, training, and development needs, email cbmf@cpkn.ca.
