Auditor general says RCMP’s staff shortage got worse in recent years

Members of the RCMP march during the Calgary Stampede parade in Calgary on Friday, July 5, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

OTTAWA -- Royal Canadian Mounted Police staff shortages worsened after officials bet wrong on their recruitment needs and let rookie officers choose the locations of their first assignments, the auditor general said on Monday.

Auditor General Karen Hogan said Monday the force first set targets that fell far short of its own needs, then failed to recruit as many officers as planned, despite a flood of applicants.

The audit found the federal police force was short about 3,400 front-line officers in fall 2025.

Hogan also said a flexible posting policy introduced to boost recruitment produced uneven staffing levels across the country and worsened shortages in the North, the Prairies and some Atlantic provinces.

“Without fundamental changes, the RCMP will not be able to hire enough new police officers to meet operational demand,” Hogan’s report said, adding that the chronic shortages mean front-line officers “face a higher risk of police officer absences and burnout.”

Missed recruitment targets

In 2023, the RCMP stopped including key details in its workforce planning, such as up-to-date head counts, the number of vacancies and the overall need for officers outside of community policing.

The force never told the auditor general’s office why it made the change, Hogan’s report said, but she singled it out as a key factor responsible for sagging intake.

She said because of that change, the RCMP failed to establish how many new police officers it actually needed and didn’t factor in important considerations, such as attrition.

Instead of using human resources data to set its recruitment targets, the RCMP set the target based on the amount of funding it had to graduate 1,280 new police officers per year, the audit said.

The report said that target was “less than half of the number of new front-line police officers needed” -- and recruitment fell short even of that target.

In 2025 -- when the RCMP actually needed 2,700 new officers -- it failed to hit the 1,280 target and only hired 892.

Applicants drop out

The RCMP is a federal police force that also carries out provincial law enforcement under contract everywhere but in Ontario and Quebec.

It also covers some 150 municipalities and 600 Indigenous communities. New recruits tend to begin in contract and Indigenous policing roles.

The RCMP introduced a new flexible posting policy in 2023 which let new officers choose the provinces or territories where they would carry out their first assignments. The idea was to attract more applicants -- and it worked.

The RCMP received thousands more resumes than the brass anticipated -- 46,000 over the 30-month audit period that ran from April 2023 to September 2025. The RCMP’s recruitment target at the time was 12,000 per year.

But bureaucratic delays prompted many applicants to drop out, Hogan’s report said. Just over three-quarters of applicants who were processed dropped out or were rejected by the force.

The audit said the force fell behind on processing times and observed that “many files were delayed because they were waiting to be assigned to a recruiting analyst” or another type of reviewer.

The force was not taking in enough cadets, Hogan’s report said. It couldn’t fill most of its training classes and even had to cancel some because it didn’t have enough bodies to fill seats.

On average, it took 330 days to process applicants who received an offer to attend the cadet training program.

The flexible posting policy, meanwhile, produced problems officials hadn’t fully thought through, Hogan said.

After just four months of the policy, her report said, the RCMP started to realize it was producing uneven staffing levels across the country, though it did nothing to course-correct.

‘Critical shortage’

Hogan found nine provinces and territories saw vacancy rates higher than seven per cent in contract and Indigenous policing.

Out of 11 divisions, all but two suffer from a “critical shortage” of front‑line officers, leading to “chronic” understaffing in some areas, she said.

“These high vacancy rates pose a clear risk to the RCMP’s ability to maintain capacity,” Hogan told a Monday news conference.

Based on demand, B.C. wound up with 110 more new officers than required, while Alberta was short 63 and Saskatchewan was short 39.

The highest vacancy rates were in Northwest Territories, at 22.9 per cent, Nunavut at 21.5 per cent and Manitoba at 17.5 per cent. Prince Edward Island was the only province with a surplus -- it reported one more front-line officer than it needed.

The RCMP started to phase out its flexible posting policy last July. The force has not said when it will fully end flexible posting across all its divisions.

Hogan said early results suggest ending the policy has started to lower vacancy rates, but the RCMP still needs to speed up the process of hiring of new police officers.

‘Broken promise

The Conservatives accused the government in question period Monday of breaking an election promise to add 1,000 new RCMP officers.

“Talk about a broken promise,” Conservative MP Frank Caputo said. “Today we learned not only have they not hired those 1,000 officers, they’re down 3,400 police officers.”

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree replied the government has “already started” on the process to add 1,000 new hires and will be “rolling out the first cohort” in the weeks to come as the new fiscal year begins.

Federal plans for 1,000 new RCMP personnel go beyond the front-line officer positions the audit examined exclusively, Hogan noted.

The head of the union representing Mounties said the report confirms what they have been saying for years.

“The issue is not attracting people; it’s getting them through the process and into uniform in a reasonable amount of time,” Brian Sauve, president and CEO of the National Police Federation, said in a statement.

RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme said the organization is finalizing a “comprehensive management action plan” that will set out “concrete steps, timelines, and accountabilities” to respond to the auditor general’s recommendations.

By Kyle Duggan

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2026.