RCMP recruiting hurt by unrealistic targets, lengthy process, auditor general says

The report comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to grow the RCMP by 1,000 officers, though that four-year, $1.8-billion plan focuses largely on federal policing priorities like money laundering and national security. 

Hogan told reporters that while tackling the bottleneck in the application process will be “essential” to meet current needs, the Mounties will also need to increase training capacity to meet that goal.

She said she found that between April 2023 and September 2025, the time period covered by the audit, the Mounties only grew by 62 officers when accounting for attrition and retirements, even though it hired 2,262 people in that time. “More concerning,” Hogan wrote, is that the RCMP lost 38 net officers in the last six months of the audit. 

There were 19,091 police officers employed by the Mounties in September 2025, Hogan noted.

“The biggest reason would be the slowness at which they process applications that they received,” Hogan told MPs at a committee hearing Monday.

“It isn’t a shortage of interest in the RCMP, but there’s only six per cent of the applications received over the 30 months of our audit that made it to being an offer of going to basic training.”

Despite efforts by the RCMP to speed up the process, Hogan said poor planning, a high volume of applications and shortages in staff that analyze those applications — more than half of those positions were vacant — dampened that work.

In fact, the RCMP received 46,000 applications in the audit period, blowing its 12,000-annual applications targets out of the water. But 97 per cent faced delays, forcing candidates to drop their applications and leaving most training classrooms unfilled.

During the audit period, the time it takes for the RCMP to process applications increased by 35 days to an average of 330 days — more than 100 days over its target.

Another part of the problem was that the RCMP was planning its recruitment targets based on its training capacity and available funding, not its needs, said Hogan. 

“Really it’s about limitations in their workforce planning that resulted in targets that were well below what they needed,” Hogan told reporters.

The RCMP’s academy depot in Saskatchewan, which holds a 26-week mandatory training for new recruits, can only train 1,600 officers at a time — prompting long-standing calls for change. The Mounties can also hire veteran officers from local police forces across the country.

The Mounties accepted the report’s finding and agreed to the auditor general’s recommendations, including improving recruitment targets, increasing training capacity and addressing application delays.

Hogan said RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme appeared “seized” by the issue, but told MPs she hoped for a more detailed plan from the RCMP.

The Mounties released a national recruitment strategy last week that aimed to address the issue, setting a goal of processing 1,600 applications in the next year and eventually reducing the time it takes to process applications to six months.

Brian Sauvé, the head of the National Police Federation, RCMP’s union, told the Star he wasn’t surprised by the report because they have been raising the alarm bells for years. He said he’s happy the police force accepted the auditor general’s findings but “more needs to be done.”

In a statement, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said addressing recruitment challenges is a priority for the national force and it has already begun the work to address it. 

“The work ahead is significant however I am confident in the RCMP’s planning to accelerate this transformation,” he said.

“Our government committed to recruit 1,000 new RCMP personnel and provide law enforcement partners with better resources. I am committed to supporting this work which will result in a stronger, more modern RCMP, and one that reflects the many diverse communities that the RCMP serves.”