Kelowna RCMP short 50 officers as demands for service increase

Getting more officers out on the street in Kelowna has been a topic of concern around dealing with crime downtown, but the Kelowna RCMP is operating with fewer members than it could have.

Kelowna RCMP has an authorized strength of 251 officers, as of Dec. 31, 2025, which means it’s allowed to have a total of 251 regular officers. It currently has around 197 actual regular officers, according to the City of Kelowna.

Its authorized strength is up from 244 officers in 2024, and it had around 190 regular officers at that time.

Kelowna RCMP’s officer in charge Supt. Chris Goebel gave a presentation to council on Feb. 9 and he said the detachment needs 32 more officers to meet the city’s needs.

“We require more police officers to meet the service levels that’s expected from the community,” he said. “To meet the summer call response, as well as the frontline call response and to add sufficient foot patrols… about 32 officers.”

The current cost per RCMP office is around $250,000 a year, so an additional 32 officers would cost around $8 million.

“Full‑time equivalents fluctuate day to day based on normal staffing factors such as parental leave, injuries, illness, training, and temporary assignments. These variances occur in every police agency,” Kelowna RCMP Cpl. Steven Lang said in an email.

“Although the full-time equivalent count may appear lower at certain points in time, those positions are filled, they are simply occupied by members who are temporarily away for legitimate and expected reasons.”

Kelowna RCMP responded to 60,176 calls for service in 2025 and had a response time of eight minutes for high priority calls.

“Kelowna is a very, very, very busy city with a number of complex problems,” Supt. Goebel said.

The RCMP officer shortage isn’t a problem that’s unique to Kelowna.

The National Police Federation’s report released in 2025 said recruitment and training has been a problem for years.

“RCMP (regular member) staffing has remained virtually stagnant over the past fifteen years, about 19,500 today compared to 18,989 in 2009. Meanwhile, the operational demands on the RCMP have increased exponentially,” the report reads.

The federation said it’s important to make it easier to apply to the force and the applications need to be processed more quickly. There were 20,500 applications in the 2024/25 fiscal year and there is only the capacity to train 1,280 each year.

The report said that staffing shortages are a cycle that leads to more officers leaving the job.

“Staffing shortages are leaving fewer officers to do more work, contributing to burnout, reduced time off, poor work-life balance, and increased rates of leave, and attrition,” the report reads.

Supt. Goebel said the most impactful thing to advocate for is more officers.

“That would be the biggest impact that we could have as well as the advocacy that is happening. . . with the federal and provincial government,” he said.