For immediate release
Today, MP Scott Reid (Lanark-Frontenac, ON) renewed his repeated call for the RCMP to install automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in its vehicles across Canada.
Reid noted that over the next several years, the RCMP will spend up to $24 million to rebrand its vehicles. Installing AEDs in all RCMP cruisers would cost only $17 million, and would save an estimated 300 lives per year. “I don’t want to diminish the value of rebranding RCMP cruisers,” Reid stated. “I just don’t understand why funds are available for this, when they aren’t available to save the lives of the Canadians who rely on the RCMP to be their first responders.”
Installing AEDs in police vehicles is an easy, proven, and inexpensive way to save hundreds of Canadian lives each year. Annually, upwards of 60,000 Canadians experience an out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), and only 10% of those people survive. Using an AED with CPR doubles the SCA survival rate.
Police officers are the most numerous first responders, and they are also often the first arriving responder to out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests. All RCMP officers are required to be trained and recertified in the use of AEDs, along with CPR and first aid certification, every three years. Outside of our largest cities, the RCMP is the local police force for much of Canada. But RCMP vehicles are, with few exceptions, not equipped with AEDs.
Municipal police forces across Canada have been saving lives with AEDs for years. The City of Toronto police and the City of Kingston police have defibrillators. In 2005, I arranged the fundraising drive that allowed defibrillators to be placed in all the vehicles of a much smaller police force, in Smiths Falls, the last independent police force in my constituency. The vehicles of the Ottawa Police Service have had defibrillators for over 20 years, and their example provides the guide to the inexpensive technical solutions required to insulate and maintain police vehicle AEDs in our cold-weather climate.
A January 5, 2026 article from The Investigative Journalism Foundation on the upcoming rebranding of RCMP vehicles with new paint and decal markings following the 2023 report of the Mass Casualty Commission, inadvertently provided more proof that there is no good reason why the RCMP cannot also equip their vehicles with AEDs.
Documents obtained by the IJF under the Access to Information Act show that:
- the RCMP vehicle rebranding will “eventually cost between $19 million and $24 million”, a cost comparable to that of purchasing and installing AEDs and insulated storage cases in the RCMP’s vehicles;
- that “provinces, territories and municipalities can now include their local identifiers” on RCMP vehicles, showing that, despite this government’s previous claims to the contrary when asked about AEDs, it has no problem changing policy when political will is present, even though allowing local identifiers will create numerous small but Canada-wide discontinuities in the appearance of RCMP vehicles between jurisdictions; and
- confirm that the RCMP actively exercises central control, management, and standardization over vehicle and equipment procurement by the RCMP across Canada, something this government has said they could not do for the procurement of AEDs.
Incidentally, the documents also noted that, before the practice was discontinued in 2020, “sales of decommissioned [RCMP] vehicles” provided the RCMP with annual revenue of $13 million.
Statements in the House of Commons by government representatives have, as recently as October 23, 2025, confirmed that the RCMP “has adopted a limited AED program. AEDs have been approved for installation and use in certain facilities, including emergency medical response teams, some protective policing details, the divisional fitness and lifestyles program, and in provinces that require AEDs to be available per provincial policing standards.”
All of these facts together serve to pull the rug out from under the excuses over cost, need, efficacy, and logistics provided by the current Liberal government for their failure to install AEDs in RCMP vehicles over the past 10 years. It is clear that successive Liberal governments simply have a lack of will to take an easy and relatively inexpensive act that would save hundreds of lives every year.
There is no excuse for the federal government’s inaction on this matter. RCMP vehicles should be equipped with AEDs as soon as possible.
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For more information, please contact:
Office of Scott Reid, M.P,
Toll-free: 1-866-277-1577
Scott.Reid@parl.gc.ca
www.scottreid.ca
Notes:
1. Cost of RCMP vehicle rebranding: The Investigative Journalism Foundation, “RCMP cruisers to get makeover for first time in over 30 years”, January 5, 2026, available at: https://theijf.org/article/rcmp-cruiser-rebrand-atip?utm_source=auth&utm_medium=internal&utm_campaign=login.
2. Cost of installing AEDs in RCMP vehicles: Conservative Party of Canada 2025 election platform, “Change”, page 27, April 18, 2025.
3. Out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest figures: Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, https://www.heartandstroke.ca/heart-disease/conditions/cardiac-arrest, accessed 5 January 2025.
