Canada

© HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN RIGHT OF CANADA as represented by the Solicitor General of Canada.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is the Canadian national police service and an agency of the Ministry of Public Safety Canada. It is a national, federal, provincial and municipal policing body, providing federal policing services to all Canadians and policing agencies.

INTERPOL Ottawa

Located in the capital Ottawa, the INTERPOL National Central Bureau (NCB) for Canada is part of the RCMP’s International Policing Branch. It is staffed by police officers, civilians, public service employees and police officers from Canadian law enforcement agencies. INTERPOL Ottawa national partners include Sûreté du Québec, Ontario Provincial Police, and the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (Montreal City Police Service).

Mandate

INTERPOL Ottawa serves as the primary gateway for the Canadian law enforcement community to pursue criminal matters outside of Canada.  It also provides domestic law enforcement with access to INTERPOL policing tools and services such as :

• INTERPOL's criminal databases for international checks on criminal records, passports, vehicle identification numbers, firearms etc.;
• INTERPOL Notices to locate an international fugitive or missing person or to collect additional information about a person’s identity, location or activities in relation to a crime;
• NCB coordination of the location, deportation or extradition of foreign fugitives in Canada or Canadian fugitives abroad;
• Access to INTERPOL’s secure global police communications system called I-24/7, providing access to police forces in all INTERPOL member countries.  Canada was the first country to connect to I-24/7, in 2003.

Extending access to INTERPOL's tools and services

INTERPOL Ottawa has made INTERPOL databases accessible to more than 66,000 police officers from 380 police and law enforcement agencies across the country. This network expansion was part of a strategy to boost national security and prevent criminal activity in Canada.

Using INTERPOL's technology known as FIND, Canada created an interface between two key INTERPOL databases and the national Canadian police database. This means that police across a territory of 10 million square kilometres all have hands-on access to critical data onwanted persons and stolen and lost travel documents, in just seconds.