By Tim Sargent, November 11, 2025
In a departure from past practice, Prime Minister Carney has decided not to issue individual mandate letters to his ministers, leaving each to determine on their own how best to contribute to the government’s agenda and fulfill their responsibilities. In Letter to a minister, The Hub’s new series in collaboration with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, we will provide each minister with a policy agenda that is bold enough to address the grave challenges that the country faces, but manageable enough to be implemented in a realistic time frame.
The series continues this week with a letter to the minister of public safety.
The Honourable Gary Anandasangaree, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Public Safety
House of Commons,
Ottawa, Ontario
Dear minister,
Congratulations on your appointment as the minister of public safety. You have been entrusted with the job of making our streets safer, ensuring our national borders are strong and protected, and decisively addressing national security threats. At any time in our history, this would be a daunting challenge. Today, the key institutions in your purview, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Corrections Canada, and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), are overstretched, under-equipped, and misaligned with the complex demands of modern enforcement. These organizations face an unprecedented need for change.
Expectations are high. Canadians are worried about public safety. Crime—especially violent crime—is up. And with issues such as border security and financial crime now being linked to the broader Canadian economy through a trade war with the United States, Canadians are more aware of and worried about these issues than ever. At a time when global instability and shifting geopolitical relationships have brought national security into sharper focus, both at home and among our international partners, your leadership will be critical.
In his mandate letter, the prime minister has tasked you with working alongside your colleagues to “protect Canadian sovereignty and safety.” In this letter, I offer concrete recommendations to help you meet this critical and complex challenge.
Modernize the RCMP
More than 150 years after their founding, the RCMP remain a powerful symbol of Canadian identity. However, the past decade has witnessed an increase in calls for reform to be undertaken to preserve the integrity of the institution. Yet the force faces mounting challenges that underscore the urgent need to evolve. From recruitment models that prepare officers for traditional policing but not complex financial or cyber investigations, to an overstretched mandate that spans community policing, federal enforcement, and national security, the RCMP is being asked to do too much with too little. Organized crime, money laundering, and digital threats require specialized, modern responses—ones that demand focused training, strategic resourcing, and a recalibration of priorities. To remain effective and credible, the RCMP must transition from a legacy model to a forward-looking institution equipped for the realities of 21st-century policing. To achieve this, bold action is required in two areas:
First, it is time to phase out the RCMP’s community policing role and concentrate its efforts on national priorities. Although the current Police Services Agreements with the provinces and territories do not expire until 2032, the agreements can be terminated earlier as long as two years’ notice is given. The federal government should therefore immediately signal that it intends the RCMP to exit contract policing by the end of 2027. An announcement now gives time to work out the transition with the provinces, including required transitional funding.
The RCMP should continue to provide community policing in the territories, protective services, and policing of Indigenous communities where that is the desire of the community. Further, the federal government will need to maintain some key national infrastructure, such as the National Forensic Laboratory Service and the RCMP Academy (the “Depot”).
The RCMP could then be reoriented towards national priorities, with a clear mandate to address organized crime, money laundering, and cyber threats. In the short term, this shift will require enhanced resourcing and operational clarity. A dedicated white-collar crime unit and the forthcoming Financial Crimes Agency—slated for launch by the spring of 2026—will be critical components of this transition, and I urge you to meet, or beat, that timeline.
This leads to the second critical change required. A fundamental flaw in the RCMP’s current recruitment model is its emphasis on “boots on the ground” for local and community policing, while simultaneously drawing from this same pool to staff highly specialized units tackling complex white-collar crime. This approach is unsustainable. A modern RCMP must be equipped with dedicated forensic accountants, cybercrime analysts, legal and regulatory experts, and data scientists—professionals whose expertise cannot be improvised through generalist training. To build and sustain this capacity, resources must be deliberately reallocated toward attracting, developing, and retaining a higher-skilled labour force capable of meeting the demands of modern policing.
Champion rehabilitation and reintegration in Canada’s corrections system
Corrections Canada faces mounting challenges in managing overcrowded facilities, staffing shortages, aging infrastructure, and the complex demands of rehabilitation in a rapidly changing social and legal landscape. Canadians’ increasing concerns around the increase in violent crime and the resulting proposals to reform the bail system will put additional pressure on correctional services.
It is notable that, in stark contrast with many other federal organizations, Corrections Canada has been underfunded over the past decade, with total expenditures increasing by just over 40 percent since 2015 (compare this to your department, public safety, which grew by more than 160 percent)—essentially just keeping up with inflation and population growth. This is not sustainable, and you will need to reallocate resources towards the corrections system, particularly to support a significant investment in rehabilitation, which is the most effective way to achieve sustainable reintegration and crime reduction.
To do so, you will need better information regarding program effectiveness and should continue to work with the provinces to close the gaps in information quality by establishing consistency in the definitions used across the country for things like recidivism. At present, there is no publicly available information to assess the return on investment of taxpayer dollars on offender rehabilitation programming and related investments. A review of government transfer payment recipients and a framework that tracks and requires results is a good place to start.
A new approach to incarceration is required. Canada’s corrections system has multiple objectives—public safety, retribution, rehabilitation, and justice. While in-custody incarceration meets some of these goals, it fails to reduce recidivism or overall crime and accomplishes little for rehabilitation. More emphasis must be given to such things as skills training, and—more importantly—mentoring and guidance with a pathway to realistic, attractive employment opportunities in the skilled trades, construction, and the tech sector. You must work with your provincial and territorial colleagues towards incorporating these concepts into the Canadian corrections system.
Further, and as I outlined last week in my letter to your colleague, the minister of justice and attorney general for Canada, greater use must be made of technologies such as ankle bracelets to effectively track those most at risk of reoffending, but also to reduce the pressures on our corrections system.
Modernize North American border security partnerships
Canadians have long benefited from the relative peace and stability of the North American context—surrounded by friendly neighbours and far from many global conflicts. But this regional calm has fostered complacency and obscured the fact that border security remains essential in a world where instability, trafficking, and transnational threats persist.
The past 10 months have served as a sobering reminder to Canadians that strong national borders remain essential. Far from being mere symbolic lines, borders are active zones of governance—reinforcing territorial integrity, regulating immigration, and deterring illegal activities such as smuggling and trafficking. They also serve as critical infrastructure for customs, security, and public health, enabling effective surveillance and screening at key points of entry.
Your government has taken some positive steps with the recent tabling of Bill C-12, the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, which, among other things, will expand CBSA’s authority at ports of entry and enable the Canadian Coast Guard to conduct security patrols and gather intelligence.
However, while this may go some distance toward reassuring the Trump administration that Canada takes its border seriously, more needs to be done on the ground.
- Bill C-12 has removed two important elements from previous draft legislation (Bill C-2: Strong Borders Act). The newly proposed law does not contain a “lawful-access regime” allowing police and CSIS to compel basic subscriber information from internet or email service providers. It also sets aside expanded Canada Post inspection powers. Both of these should be reinstituted in the current bill, ensuring proper safeguards are in place.
- Currently, two agencies guard Canada’s side of the border. While the CBSA is responsible for security at official points of entry, including border crossings and airports, the RCMP is charged with monitoring the long stretches in between—which means watching for the unauthorized entry of drugs, weapons, and people. Communications on border security between the U.S. and Canada are complicated by the overlapping relationship between the RCMP and CBSA, and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has indicated it can be challenging to work with Canada, given the unclear division of duties. Canada’s border strategy should have one main player, and that player should be the CBSA, leaving the RCMP to focus on combating issues such as organized crime and terrorism.
- The government has signaled strong support for integrating drones and artificial intelligence into Canada’s border security and national defence strategy through the defence modernization package announced in June 2025. These investments in unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and next-generation technologies to enhance surveillance, interoperability, and Arctic sovereignty are critical. Given that underinvestment in the use of drones for border security is an irritant raised by the U.S. and given the usefulness and relative cost-effectiveness of drone technology, you will want to ensure that the commitments made result in equipment upgrades at CBSA as well as Canada’s military.
Emergency assistance
A recurring theme of this letter series is the importance of respecting our constitutional arrangements with the provinces and territories. While there is a clear rationale for federal support in response to large-scale natural disasters—particularly those that damage or destroy national infrastructure—the provinces and territories must assume greater responsibility for more localized events. This includes funding a larger share, if not the entirety, of costs associated with repairing or replacing local or regional infrastructure.
The current Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements (DFAA) provides financial assistance to provincial/territorial governments, not individual Canadians or organizations, for disaster response and recovery costs from large natural disasters. This federal program has existed since 1972 and has always been generous to our provincial/territorial partners. This generosity, coupled with the increasing number and size of eligible disasters, has made this program very expensive for the federal government—60 percent of federal transfers under this program have happened in the last decade. This includes 88 provincial disasters that have been declared eligible for DFAA assistance at a potential cost of $5.5 billion to the federal government.
Despite a review of the DFAA in 2022 and the implementation of new program guidelines this year, the government should rethink this program with an objective of revisiting the cost-sharing parameters to increase the provincial and territorial shares of regional disasters, as well as increasing the threshold for being eligible for DFAA support.
Reduce and refocus spending
Canadians expect the government to invest in their safety and security. And for that reason, it is reasonable to allow overall portfolio expenditures to grow over the next few years as the government invests in the RCMP, Corrections Canada, and CBSA. And while the department of public safety is required to play a secretariat function that supports these agencies, its growth has been unsustainable. A reallocation of funding across the portfolio is required and should come from two specific actions:
- Reduce the size of the department: its HR complement has grown by over 60 percent since 2015, an unsustainable increase that far exceeds the growth of the operating agencies you oversee. A reduction of 25 percent could create annual savings of $51.8 million to be reallocated to other public safety priorities.
- As discussed above, reduce payments to provinces for assistance related to natural disasters.
Concluding remarks
Over 20 years ago, Canada’s National Security Policy stated, “there can be no greater role, no more important obligation for a government, than the protection and safety of its citizens.” This remains true today as it was then. While the previous government was not shy about intervening in areas of exclusive provincial competence, such as health care and the environment, it neglected the core federal responsibility of protecting our borders and our communities from nationwide threats such as drug-trafficking, money-laundering, and organized crime. That must change, and the safety of Canadians must once again be one of the main priorities of the federal government.
Tim Sargent is a contributor to Project Ontario and the director of the Domestic Policy Program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
