The Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s own plan for fixing its officer shortage sets a graduation target that would leave the force short of the number of recruits its planners say it needs, and well short of the figure the auditor general counted, according to a comparison of three federal documents published within days of each other this spring.
The Office of the Auditor General tabled its audit, Recruiting for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, on March 23, 2026. Drawing on RCMP data, it found the force needed 3,413 new front-line officers in the 2025-26 fiscal year, against a recruitment target of 1,195, and concluded that at least 3,400 additional police officers were needed as of September 2025. The audit’s central criticism was that the force “did not accurately identify the total number of police officers it needed to fully staff the force.”
Three days earlier, on March 20, the RCMP posted the current version of its National Recruitment Strategy 2026-2029. That document gives a different number for the same period, citing “hiring on average 900 people to Depot in recent years, resulting in a current Regular Member demand of 2,213 (2025-26).” Neither document defines its terms in a way that reconciles the two figures, and the gap between them is roughly 1,200 officers.
The strategy’s performance measures, set out in its appendix, commit the force to loading 50 troops of 32 cadets, or 1,600 cadets, at the Regina training academy in 2026-27 “and ongoing,” and to graduating 1,360 cadets a year by 2028-29. The 1,360 figure appears to respond directly to one of the auditor general’s recommendations, that recruitment targets “should account for the fact that not all cadets graduate from the Cadet Training Program.” But 1,360 graduates a year is 853 below the 2,213 annual demand the strategy itself names, and roughly 2,000 below the 3,413 the auditor general counted for 2025-26.
The strategy’s headline measure is more modest still. Its first listed performance target is a “ratio of graduating cadets to member attrition” of “greater than 1:1 by 2028-2029.” On the force’s own benchmark, in other words, the goal three years out is for the RCMP to stop shrinking, not to refill the positions already vacant.
There is also a capacity problem stated inside the same document. Under its commitment to hire the right people, the strategy says that “each year, the program produces at most 1,200 cadets to the RCMP Training Academy, Depot.” That ceiling sits 400 below the strategy’s own 1,600-cadet intake target for 2026-27. The strategy does not explain how the distance between the stated maximum and the target will be bridged.
The auditor general recommended that the RCMP “determine how to increase the capacity needed at Depot to train enough cadets to meet operational requirements and implement those changes.” In a statement issued the day the audit was tabled, Commissioner Mike Duheme said the RCMP “accepts all findings and recommendations contained in the report,” and that the force would continue “to assess opportunities to expand training capacity at Depot through more efficient scheduling, curriculum review, and enhanced support for cadets and instructors.” The statement described a Management Action Plan as being finalized rather than complete, and set out no capacity figure.
Filling the classes that already exist has itself been a problem. The audit found the RCMP filled only 18 per cent of cadet training classes to capacity, missed its target processing time for 97 per cent of applications, and took an average of 330 days to process applications from successful applicants between April 2023 and September 2025, 35 days longer than in 2023. The RCMP’s strategy measures a longer stretch of the same pipeline and reports a longer number, stating that “on average, it takes a successful applicant 446 days before they are given an offer of a position in a troop at Depot.” The strategy aims to cut processing time to six months by 2028-29.
The shortages are concentrated. The audit found that as of September 2025, nine of the 11 divisions where the RCMP provides front-line contract and Indigenous policing had vacancy rates above the force’s critical threshold of seven per cent, led by the Northwest Territories at 22.9 per cent, Nunavut at 21.5 per cent, Manitoba at 17.5 per cent and Saskatchewan at 13.5 per cent. Prince Edward Island was the only jurisdiction with a surplus of officers.
The sums involved are substantial. The auditor general put the RCMP’s average cost to attract and train one new police officer across the 2023-24 and 2024-25 fiscal years at roughly $247,000. Applied to the 3,413 front-line officers the audit says were needed in 2025-26, that arithmetic yields about $843 million, a calculation the audit does not itself make.
Meanwhile the force’s 2026-27 Departmental Plan, which sets total planned spending at $6.29 billion and planned staff at 33,834 full-time equivalents, lists reductions under the government’s Comprehensive Expenditure Review of $39.2 million in 2026-27 rising to $50.8 million in 2028-29, and says those reductions are anticipated to involve “a decrease of 173 full-time equivalents by 2028-29.” The plan attributes those cuts to centralizing and right-sizing administrative functions at National Headquarters, reduced medical cannabis benefit costs and a change to the disability pension escalation formula, not to front-line policing. The same plan promises the RCMP will “take bold steps to strengthen its recruitment and training capacity by graduating more cadets and expanding troops,” and says 1,000 new personnel will be added beginning in 2026-27 for federal policing work on borders, financial crime and cybercrime.
What none of the three documents does is show the arithmetic by which the published targets close the published gap. That remains an open question rather than a settled finding. The Management Action Plan responding to the audit had not been published when the strategy and the departmental plan went online, and it is that plan, by the commissioner’s own account, that will set out “the concrete steps, timelines, and accountabilities” required to answer each of the auditor general’s recommendations.
