Auditor General reports
RCMP failed to recruit enough police officers to meet operational needs
Recruiting for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Report metadata
- Tabling date:
- Audited entities:
- Royal Canadian Mounted Police
- Topics:
- Safety and Security
- Employment
- Report type
- Auditor General reports
At a glance
Overall, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) did not recruit and post new police officers in their first assignments in a timely and effective way to meet operational needs.
Since 2018, the RCMP has identified recruitment as a top priority. However, it did not accurately identify the total number of police officers it needed to fully staff the force. The RCMP set and reported recruitment targets that fell well short of its actual staffing needs, and it did not recruit as many police officers as planned. Our analysis of RCMP data found that the shortage of police officers has gotten worse in the last 2 years, with at least 3,400 additional police officers needed as of September 2025.
Police officer shortages in front-line Contract and Indigenous Policing were widespread across Canada. As of September 2025, 9 of the 11 divisions had vacancy rates above the RCMP’s critical threshold of 7%, despite the RCMP’s long-standing target of maintaining a much lower vacancy rate. These high vacancy rates pose a clear risk to the RCMP’s ability to maintain operational capacity and deliver policing services in all business lines.
The RCMP did not meet its target processing time for 97% of applications, which made it harder to fill training classes with enough cadets. As a result, some classes were cancelled, and the RCMP trained fewer cadets than expected. This was one of the main reasons that vacancies have continued to increase since 2023. In a survey by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, both successful and unsuccessful applicants often identified the length of the application process as their biggest frustration.
In order to attract more applicants, in 2023 the RCMP changed its approach by allowing new police officers to choose the division for their first assignment, as long as there was a vacancy. In the first year, this change worked as intended: The RCMP received about 6,000 more applications than in the previous year and surpassed its planned application numbers. However, the change also led to an unintended outcome—chronic vacancies in some divisions increased. In July 2025, the RCMP reversed course and returned to assigning new police officers to divisions according to operational needs. Given the high number of vacancies, it will take many years to fully reverse the impacts of the temporary approach.
As a result of chronic shortages of front-line police officers, the RCMP faces a higher risk of police officer absences and burnout, which could make it more challenging for the force to prevent and investigate crime, maintain peace and order, and contribute to national security.
At a glance
Key facts and findings
- The RCMP did limited workforce planning and did not know how many new police officers it needed to hire to fully staff the force, including shortages in its Specialized Policing Services and its Federal Policing business lines.
- Despite efforts to reduce the average time to process applications for successful applicants, it increased by 35 days (11%) between April 2023 and September 2025, taking on average 330 days to process.
- The RCMP’s Flexible Posting Plan succeeded in attracting more applicants: receiving more than 46,000 applications for the National Recruiting Program during the 30-month audit period and surpassing by several thousand the RCMP’s annual goal of 12,000 applications in the 2023–24 and 2024–25 fiscal years.
- Of the applications that the RCMP processed during the audit period, only 6% resulted in an offer to be trained as a police officer because the remaining applicants dropped out of the process (15%), they stopped communicating with the RCMP (24%), they were deemed unsuitable by the RCMP (37%), or their application was still being processed (18%).
- The RCMP filled only 18% of all cadet training classes to capacity.
- The RCMP’s average cost across the 2023–24 and 2024–25 fiscal years to attract and train a new police officer was roughly $247,000.
Why we did this audit
- It is important that the RCMP have the right number of police officers posted throughout the country to provide community-based police services and to serve in other roles, such as those that support national security.
- It is critical that the RCMP have an accurate and up-to-date understanding of gaps in its workforce so that it can effectively plan recruitment efforts and bring the force up to full strength.
- Timely and efficient processing of applications are critical to the RCMP’s ability to maximize the number of cadets it can train at Depot to help attain the number of new police officers it needs.
Highlights of our recommendations
- To ensure that its workforce planning can provide a comprehensive basis for recruitment, the RCMP should determine the number of police officers it needs to fully staff all business lines of the force to meet operational requirements.
- The RCMP should align its recruitment targets with the number of police officers required to fully staff all business lines of the force to meet operational needs. These targets should account for the fact that not all cadets graduate from the Cadet Training Program.
- The RCMP should determine how to increase the capacity needed at Depot to train enough cadets to meet operational requirements and implement those changes to bring the force up to full operational strength.
Please see the full report to read our complete findings, analysis, recommendations and the audited
organizations’ responses.
Exhibit Highlights
Exhibit 1—Breakdown of the number of police officers employed across the RCMP as of September 2025
Text version
Exhibit 1—Breakdown of the number of police officers employed across the RCMP as of September 2025
This donut chart shows that 19,091 police officers were employed in the RCMP as of September 2025 and that they were employed in 4 areas of the RCMP: Contract and Indigenous Policing, Federal Policing, Specialized Policing Services, and internal services.
Most RCMP officers were employed in Contract and Indigenous Policing: 74% or 13,911 out of 19,091 officers. In this police service, most were front‑line officers (68% or 12,879 officers), and 6% or 1,032 were non‑front‑line officers.
The second‑largest number, 18% or 3,480 out of 19,091 RCMP officers, were employed in Federal Policing.
Specialized Policing Services employed 4% or 767 RCMP officers out of the total of 19,091 officers.
The remaining 4% or 703 employees were employed in internal services.
Note: Not depicted in the graph above are 230 police officers whose positions we were not able to determine.
Source: Based on data from the RCMP
Exhibit 3—Recruitment targets for the number of new police officers were not based on actual needs
Text version
Exhibit 3—Recruitment targets for the number of new police officers were not based on actual needs
This bar chart compares 3 sets of numbers for 3 fiscal years from 2023–24 to 2025–26. It compares the recruitment targets with the number of new front-line police officers needed and with the number of police officers hired, including projections for the second half of the 2025–26 fiscal year.
Overall, the recruitment targets were less than half of the number of new front-line police officers needed in the 2023–24 and the 2024–25 fiscal years and a little more than one third of the number needed in the 2025–26 fiscal year. Similarly, the number of new police officers hired was much lower than the recruitment targets. The details follow.
In the 2023–24 fiscal year, the recruitment target was 1,280 new police officers. The number of new front-line police officers needed was 2,626, more than twice the target. The number of police officers hired was 541, less than half of the target number.
In the 2024–25 fiscal year, the recruitment target was 1,280 new police officers. The number of new front-line police officers needed was 2,700, more than twice the target. The number of police officers hired was 892, which was a little more than two thirds of the target number.
In the 2025–26 fiscal year, the recruitment target was 1,195 new police officers. The number of new front-line police officers needed was 3,413, almost 3 times more than the target. For the 2025–26 fiscal year, the number of new front-line police officers needed was based on demand as of September 30, 2025, and the projected number of new police officers hired from October 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, was based on 378 actual hires as of September 30, 2025. This combined total of the number hired and projected was less than two thirds of the recruitment target.
Source: Based on data from the RCMP
Exhibit 5—All divisions but 2 had a critical shortage of front-line police officers for Contract and Indigenous Policing, as of September 2025
Text version
Exhibit 5—All divisions but 2 had a critical shortage of front‑line police officers for Contract and Indigenous Policing, as of September 2025
This map of Canada shows the vacancy rates of police officer positions in all provinces and territories except for Ontario and Quebec, where there is no data because the RCMP does not provide front‑line Contract and Indigenous Policing in those divisions.
The vacancy rate is the percentage of unfilled positions out of the total number of funded police officer positions necessary to maintain operational requirements. Negative vacancy rates indicate a surplus of police officers, while positive vacancy rates indicate a deficit.
The vacancy rate, if there is one, is shown as either above or below 2.6% as of September 2025. The highest vacancy rates were in 2 of the territories, followed by 2 of the prairie provinces, while there was a surplus of police officers (no vacancies) in 1 province.
The vacancy rates above 2.6% were in the following 9 provinces and territories:
- In the Northwest Territories, the vacancy rate was 22.9%.
- In Nunavut, the vacancy rate was 21.5%.
- In Manitoba, the vacancy rate was 17.5%.
- In Saskatchewan, the vacancy rate was 13.5%.
- In New Brunswick, the vacancy rate was 10.1%.
- In Nova Scotia, the vacancy rate was 9.8%.
- In Alberta, the vacancy rate was 8.6%.
- In the Yukon, the vacancy rate was 7.9%.
- In Newfoundland and Labrador, the vacancy rate was 7.7%.
One province had a vacancy rate below 2.6%: British Columbia had a vacancy rate of 2.4%.
One province had a surplus of police officers: Prince Edward Island had a negative vacancy rate of ‑0.8%.
Source: Based on data from the RCMP
Exhibit 8—The RCMP failed to meet its processing service standards during 6 of the 7 phases of the application process
Text version
Exhibit 8—The RCMP failed to meet its processing service standards during 6 of the 7 phases of the application process
This process illustration shows whether the service standards were met for applications processed between April 2023 and September 2025 for each of the 7 phases of the RCMP’s application process. Overall, the service standards were not met for 6 of the 7 phases, and the average number of days slower than the service standard reached 60 days for 1 of the phases.
In the first phase of the application process, the intake phase, the percentage of files that met the service standard was 14%. The average number of days was 23 days slower than the service standard.
In the second phase of the application process, the applicant selection phase, the percentage of files that met the service standard was 8%. The average number of days was 60 days slower than the service standard.
In the third phase of the application process, the suitability review phase, the percentage of files that met the service standard was 9%. The average number of days was 55 days slower than the service standard.
In the fourth phase of the application process, the psychological screening and the polygraph test phase, the percentage of files that met the service standard was 59%. The average number of days was 3 days slower than the service standard.
In the fifth phase of the application process, the pre‑class preparation phase, the percentage of files that met the service standard was 77%. The average number of days was 3 days slower than the service standard. Pre‑class preparation is the phase during which arrangements are made for the successful applicant to go to Depot to take a space in a class.
In the sixth phase of the application process, the medical clearance phase, the percentage of files that met the service standard was 73%. The average number of days was 6 days faster than the service standard.
In the seventh phase of the application process, the security clearance phase, the percentage of files that met the service standard was 46%. The average number of days was 10 days slower than the service standard.
A successful applicant is offered a spot at Depot to attend the Cadet Training Program.
Source: Based on data from the RCMP about applications processed between April 2023 and September 2025
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