Our Missing Children Program

The Our Missing Children (OMC) Program is a partnership involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC) and Justice Canada.

Partners in the OMC program exchange vital information through a network of law enforcement and civil authorities to locate missing children and reunite them with their parents or legal guardians. They work with municipal, regional, provincial and national law enforcement agencies in Canada, and with various civil authorities both within and outside Canada.

The Our Missing Children program also has strong working relationships with non-government and non-profit organizations that provide an excellent resource to OMC program partners, law enforcement agencies, and to families searching for missing children.

In addition, the OMC program works with law enforcement agencies and other government bodies in creating policy and implementing action plans, such as America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) programs in local communities. The AMBER alert program is a voluntary partnership between law enforcement and broadcasters to activate an urgent bulletin when a child-abduction case is reported to police.

The program has also established contacts with over 180 countries worldwide, operating within the Interpol Network and its network of diplomatic and consular offices abroad. These offices work closely with local government authorities as well as other non-government organizations in locating Canadian abducted children.

Through the Our Missing Children program, the RCMP’s National Missing Children Services provides a national centre for information on missing children. It also co-ordinates investigations with law enforcement agencies, provides a photo-age progression service, runs a travel program to reunite families, and offers a two-day training workshop for law enforcement and other agencies that work in the search for and recovery of missing children.

National Missing Children Services is a national police service and part of the RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre (NCECC), which provides operational support and assists in the development of policy for the protection of missing and exploited children investigations.