From the Archives: For Kevin Brosseau, public service in RCMP finally trumped law career

Kevin Brosseau, a former senior RCMP officer was named Canada’s ‘fentanyl czar’ on Feb. 11. From 2012-2016 he was a commanding officer with the RCMP and from 2016-2019 he was deputy commissioner. He grew up in Alberta and studied at the U of A. This article, written by Codi Wilson, was originally published in 2011.

Kevin Brosseau was a long way from the farm he grew up on in Bonnyville as he walked through the halls of Harvard University’s law school.

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After taking a leave of absence from his job with the RCMP, remortgaging his home and saying goodbye to his wife in Canada, Brosseau was ready to see his childhood dream come true.

He always had a fascination with the law and said he didn’t want to have any ‘what ifs’ in his life. At 35, he had graduated from the law program at the University of Alberta and decided to apply to the Ivy League institution.

“I had applied on the advice of a professor at the law school. not thinking I would get accepted,” Brosseau said. “I just threw caution to the wind and gave it a whirl.”

Brosseau was inspired by the atmosphere at Harvard. He said it was a mosaic of international students. In his class, there were 60 countries represented.

“It was that mindblowing experience. It really expanded my worldview,” he said.

A stipulation of the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship he received was that he return home after he completed his one-year master’s degree. When he came back to Canada in 2003, he went back to the RCMP for two years. But Brosseau wanted to give his law career a chance so he and his wife moved to Manhattan in 2005. The couple got a place in the east village and he worked at Sherman and Sterling, a corporate, international law firm in the heart of New York City, for three years.

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“It was an amazing experience,” he said. “You are having lunch with somebody who two weeks before was working in Shanghai.”

Brosseau said New York wasn’t like he had imagined it.

“You think it’s a huge city, with all the millions of people and very impersonal, but it’s really a city of neighbourhoods,” he said. “People know each other by name and the grocer delivers your groceries to the door.”

But the big city lifestyle wasn’t so easy for Brosseau and his wife when their son, Nicholas, was born in 2006.

“Life in New York is life in a small apartment. In the city. it’s fantastic as a young couple. When you have a young child and family staying with you, a two-bedroom apartment doesn’t quite cut it for space.”

The couple came back to Canada to live in Ottawa, near Brosseau’s wife’s family, in 2008. Brosseau, again, went back to the RCMP full time.

Leaving behind the cosmopolitan lifestyle in New York wasn’t easy.

“Some of my classmates shake their head,” Brosseau said with a laugh. “Although there is a side of me that is interested in law, ultimately it was public service that was most important to me. The opportunity to come back to the RCMP was a real blessing.”

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He worked as the senior director of operations in the public complaints department and was later promoted to director general, contract and aboriginal policing in 2010.

In a May 2011 Toronto Star article, it was reported that Edmonton Police Chief Rod Knecht named Brosseau as one of the candidates who could be shortlisted for the RCMP’s new commissioner. But Brosseau said he thinks that position is a long way off.

“If there is anything I’ve learned … being back at the RCMP, it’s how much more I need to learn,” he said. “Long-term, who knows where this journey will take me.”

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