Royal Canadian Gendarmerie

The Royal Canadian Gendarmerie (RCG; French: Gendarmerie royale canadienne, GRC) is one of four active-duty service branches of the Canadian Armed Forces. A semi-civilian law enforcement agency responsible for both provost duties (military policing; ie. enforcement of military law amongst military personnel), as well as limited law enforcement matters within the civilian population (primarily extremely rural/remote law enforcement patrols and operations not reachable by other agencies, policing of civilian military personnel within the DND, and enhanced public support of regular civilian police during major national and international events, or especially during political crises such as violent unrest and domestic terrorism and/or armed conflict), the RCG is the smallest of the four main service branches, consisting of 165,880 personnel. Unlike the other three service branches of the Canadian Forces, the Gendarmerie does not have a complimentary reserve force.

The RCG is a real gendarmerie, in that its policing authority extends beyond armed forces personnel to the civilian realm, albeit less commonly. The RCG uses an identical ranking system to that of the Canadian Army. It has been known to provide assistance to the federal civilian Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada Sheriff Service during major investigations and operations, such as nationwide manhunts and counterterrorism operations, as well as to the civilian police of foreign states during Canadian Forces deployments centred on training and support missions and less commonly full-scale military intervention. The RCG answers directly to and is considered entirely an agency of the DND in wartime; in peacetime, however, all civilian law enforcement corps, such as the Border Security Corps and National Security Corps, instead answer to Public Security Canada, a civilian executive department responsible for the supervision of most federal law enforcement agencies.