The federal police force is short of its targeted number of officers by nearly 10 percent despite multiple measures intended to increase recruitment and retention, according to a report.
In a report recently submitted to the Senate Standing Committee on National Finance and obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter, the RCMP said that it has around 18,480 members—which is more than 500 short of its target of 19,000 members.
The RCMP added in the report that 1,295 out of the total 18,483 funded regular member positions in the RCMP are currently vacant.
The federal police member shortage and hiring shortfall come despite the RCMP now accepting immigrants as volunteers, said the report submitted to the Senate committee.
“Last fiscal year, 152 permanent residents applied to our regular member cadet program,” it said while adding that over half of those permanent residents (79) dropped out or were rejected.
Bryan Larkin, the RCMP’s Deputy Commissioner of Specialized Policing Services told the committee in April that police recruiting is a “global” challenge.
He added at the time that the RCMP has launched a research project and is also conducting polling across Canada to identify “characteristics” of the issue to see how the federal police force “can actually modernize our recruitment process to attract more regular members into policing.”
“We’re looking at mobility across the country,” Larkin said. “We’re looking, obviously, at diversifying our workforce. That includes heavily specific efforts around Indigenous and representation as a part of our systemic culture change.”
Chamberland said in February that RCMP retention is high for regular members and attrition is slightly higher for new officers, who may be leaving the RCMP for other police services or careers.
Data provided to The Epoch Times showed that the RCMP’s attrition rate was 4.54 percent in the fiscal year 2021–2022, which was up from 3.55 percent in 2020–2021.
