Canadian Coast Guard Long-Term Strategy Discussion Paper: People pillar: Who delivers our services

As of September 2, 2025, the Canadian Coast Guard has moved to the Department of National Defence. The text below was drafted while the Canadian Coast Guard was part of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

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Our most valuable resource is our employees. Without them, we cannot succeed, meet our mandate, or deliver our essential services. The Canadian Coast Guard employs people with a wide range of skills and capabilities, such as:

Ship captains
Engineers
Deckhands
Cooks
Marine communications and traffic service officers
Search and rescue specialists
Pollution response officers
Trades specialists (e.g., carpenters, welders, painters)
Instructors and learning developers
Analysts and project managers
Administrative support staff and contracting specialists

The Canadian Coast Guard also has many interesting workplaces, including:

Vessels on-the-water
Bases and stations on all 3 coasts, the Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence waterway
Multi-department operation centres
The Canadian Coast Guard College in Sydney, Nova Scotia
Headquarters in our nation’s capital

Our long-term goals

Every day, our people are on the water, in the air, and at their workstations serving Canadians. They help save lives and protect the environment. The Canadian Coast Guard is committed to supporting our employees. This means increasing workplace flexibility and expanding opportunities for training and career development for all employees. To foster a workforce that has the training, education, and leadership it needs, the Canadian Coast Guard is exploring approaches to:

Improve our human resource practices to ensure the highest possible levels of service
Develop and deliver training programs by the Canadian Coast Guard College that will evolve and modernize along with the organization
Provide a safe workplace that fosters employee well-being
Solidify the Canadian Coast Guard as a world leader in maritime education by providing continuous training and development opportunities
Remove barriers that impact hiring and the retention of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people
Encourage innovation, engagement, and continuous learning
Foster inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility

The course to get there

It is clear the Canadian Coast Guard needs to renew its workforce. We will have a wave of retirements across the Canadian Coast Guard in the late 2020s. There is also a smaller employment market to pull from. We need to better represent the Canadians we serve, and we need to upgrade our skills and leadership capabilities.

Impacts of staff shortage

The lack of qualified workers will impact our operations, the readiness of our assets, and our ability to deliver important essential services. Many Canadian Coast Guard employees also spend a lot of time at sea, sometimes in harsh conditions. This creates unique challenges for employees to balance work, learning, and family. And this, in turn, affects our ability to recruit and retain skilled staff. Soon, the Canadian Coast Guard will likely experience staff shortages for many of its key positions.

In the face of these staffing challenges, we will need to regularly review our human resources tools and practices so we can be flexible and continue to meet our mandate. We will also have to be highly competitive to recruit and retain skilled employees to work on our ships and in our bases and regional offices.

As an organization that has workplaces across the country and is also part of the federal public service, we will be affected by broader trends that shape people management. This includes policies, legislation, and collective agreements that govern people management, which will evolve over time.

Training a skilled workforce

Technological change is affecting how we work, from marine communications and shore infrastructure, to marine engineering and aids to navigation. The Canadian Coast Guard will need to grow our employees’ skills, teaching them how to operate and maintain:

New vessels with enhanced communications technology
New propulsion systems and engines
New spill response measures
New digital aids to navigation

For years to come, these new tools will continue to work alongside our older fleet and assets. But they will still help us make informed decisions as we work towards a more data-rich working environment, both at sea and ashore.

Intercultural competency

It will become more important for Canadian Coast Guard personnel to have skills in collaboration, partnership, and community engagement with Indigenous partners. The Canadian Coast Guard is committed to renewing its relationships with Indigenous partners and improving how we work together.

Leadership for the future

Our ability to make good decisions when it comes to our leadership and management will be essential to our success. It will ensure we can deliver our mandate and have the kind of workplace we aspire to have. It will mean having an equitable and inclusive workforce that reflects the diversity of Canadians. It will also involve maintaining the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector so that we keep the trust and confidence of the Canadians we serve every day. We will invest in continuous learning and leadership opportunities across our organization, building on what we already have in place with the Canadian Coast Guard College.

Taking action

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many aspects of the Canadian Coast Guard’s operations. But it also taught us about the potential of digital platforms for learning, communications, and more. The pandemic, as well as staff shortages, also made us identify key positions needed within our organization to grow into the future.

We will work with our employees to regularly review our human resource tools and practices. We will continue to make use of the Public Service Employee Survey. We will also continue to look into other ways of gathering feedback from our employees to identify any issues and see how we can resolve them.

There are many ways to achieve the Canadian Coast Guard’s long-term goals for People. This includes key actions such as:

Implementing effective strategies and practices for hiring and developing our employees, from recruitment and onboarding, to recognition and retention
Promoting joint activities with our partners in Canada’s maritime sector to help increase the number of qualified mariners
Working with unions and central agencies to update our human resource practices to meet the future needs of our employees
Using new digital tools, including the OnCourse Learning Management System, and the Canadian Coast Guard College’s regional learning centres, to empower our employees across Canada to continue their learning and development
Continuing to deliver an ambitious National Recruitment Strategy, as well as other regional recruitment strategies
Ensuring that our recruitment efforts take into account the needs of the workforce, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people, and other equity-seeking communities
Increasing Indigenous representation in all positions and at all levels of the Canadian Coast Guard
Continuing to expand the role of the Canadian Coast Guard College as our organization’s centre for learning and development
Engaging with staff to explore how we can increase retention within the Canadian Coast Guard
Using the expertise of our most experienced employees to inform our decisions and to identify new ways for them to grow their careers
Deepening our support of our employees’ overall health and morale, from occupational health and safety to physical and mental health
Continuing the work to implement the Clerk of the Privy Council’s 2021 Call to Action on Anti-Racism, Equity and Inclusion

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2026-02-26