Unlike most police forces of the period, members of the North-West Mounted Police, like their Irish counterpart, were armed and subjected to military discipline. As well, police forces were usually placed in an autonomous position from government, but the North-West Mounted Police was under the direct control of the federal government. In other words, the Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police would be accountable only to the Parliament of Canada, not the Lieutenant-Governor, or the Council of the North-West Territories, or any of the local town councils that were soon to appear in the West.

Since many easterners viewed the West as a unique opportunity to create a new and better version of their society, they felt that there would be no better way to begin this process than by sending representatives of the very people they wanted the new society to copy. By recruiting a police force from among their own members, the eastern ruling elite was, in a sense, trying to ensure that economic and social ties would be maintained between the two regions, and by doing so, they hoped to be able to control the direction of western development. More importantly, the eastern recruits would provide a strong counterbalance to American expansion north of the 49th parallel, at least until such time as Canadian claims of ownership could be established through other more substantial means, such as a railway and massive pioneer settlement.