Faced with a deficit of 9,500 soldiers ready for deployment and a shortage of recruits, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) will devote their energies to rebuilding their ranks in the coming years.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
On Thursday, General Wayne Eyre, Chief of the Defense Staff, ordered that “non-essential activities” cease and that all efforts be directed towards recruiting and retaining personnel.
This reconstruction is all the more urgent as it is taking place in a tense “geopolitical environment”, particularly following the events in Ukraine. “Adversaries and allies surpass us in technological advancement and the ability to operate in an all-domain environment,” reads a directive from the Chief of the Defense Staff and the Deputy Minister of the Department of National Defence.
At the end of August, the CAF were 9,500 below the threshold of people ready to be deployed. “It’s worrying and it puts us in a very precarious situation,” said Major General Simon Bernard, director general of military personnel, in an interview.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also had an impact. Regular Force strength decreased by some 4,100 personnel between March 2020 and July 2022; the Primary Reserve decreased by 950 people. During the same period, recruitment reached a third of the usual figures.
“Other factors affect recruitment, but in the past two years, COVID has forced us to close the Saint-Jean recruit school. We were unable to train recruits and officers. We are in a period of catching up, explains Major General Lise Bourgon, Acting Commander of Military Personnel Command. And we weren’t able to do outreach to Canadians like going to educational institutions. »
Professor at the National School of Public Administration, Stéphane Roussel indicates that recruitment is “historically linked to the economic context”.
When the unemployment rate is high, there is less difficulty recruiting.
Stéphane Roussel, professor at the National School of Public Administration
This is not the case at the moment with staff shortages everywhere.
Examples of non-essential activities? The CAF, for example, stopped sending a contingent to the Nijmegen march in the Netherlands, as before. The number of participants in the activities of the ceremonial guard at the Citadelle of Quebec has been reduced. Where possible, we turn to the private sector for certain tasks.
The CAF also claim to be sensitive to diversity issues. Major General Bourgon draws our attention to the fact that her title can now be feminized. “I am sensitive to this concept of inclusion. Too often in my career [commencée en 1987], I felt a little sideways. »
The shortage, a security issue
In the office of the Minister of National Defense, Anita Anand, it was argued Thursday that it had always been clear that recruitment was a challenge. “We are asking more of our soldiers, and therefore we need more personnel,” said his press secretary, Daniel Minden.
Military operations, he added, must focus on areas “where they deliver real results for Canadians,” such as “protecting Canadians here, defending North America alongside the United States, and remain globally engaged with our NATO allies”.
The directive confirms that we must tackle the issues of recruitment and retention without further delay, underlines the Bloc member Christine Normandin, vice-president of the Standing Committee on National Defence. “Several witnesses came to tell us [en comité] that Canada’s main security issue right now is the labor shortage. »
Tainted institution
The slew of sex scandals that have tainted the institution have not made it attractive, adds the Bloc MP – a finding to which her New Democrat colleague Lindsay Mathyssen agrees. She accuses the Liberals of not having acted on the report of former judge Marie Deschamps on sexual misconduct, and of having “delayed the recommendations made” in the subsequent report, on the same subject, by Louise Arbour.
The Conservative Party did not provide a reaction on Thursday.
For retired lieutenant-colonel and professor at the University of Sherbrooke Rémi Landry, the initiative announced Thursday is commendable. But the political class will have to be more sensitive to what the CAF are doing.
“I continue to believe that our politicians have a lack of knowledge of the work that is being done,” he said. Among other things, we must pay a little more attention to the resources required to meet security needs in Canada and in the Canadian North. They took almost 10 years to sit down with the Americans and decide to upgrade our NORAD defense system. »
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- 101,500
- Number of Canadian Armed Forces target strength of 71,500 Regular Force and 30,000 Primary Reserve
Source: Direction from the Chief of the Defense Staff and the Deputy Minister of the Department of National Defense