“If life interests you. Do you remember that slogan, once used to convince Canadians to enlist?
It seems, now, that this life does not interest many people. And this is a problem that urgently needs to be resolved.
The Canadian Armed Forces have said they want to hire 6769 new members this year, but admit that it will “not be possible to achieve the objective”, recently revealed our journalist Mylène Crête.
Their record is hardly better when it comes to staff retention. More than 2,700 soldiers have left the Canadian Armed Forces since the start of the pandemic.
Is it necessary to add that the objective of seeing women occupy 25% of positions within five years will not be reached either?
The culture problem at the root of many cases of sexual misconduct has been repeatedly recognized and deplored, but never resolved. This neglect can discourage even the most motivated of potential recruits.
Men are also, certainly, demobilized by this crisis, already qualified as “existential threat”.
But that is not enough to explain all of the recruitment problems. COVID-19 has played a big role. The shortage of workers – which manifests itself in many sectors of the economy as well.
But that’s not all, because the difficulties in terms of recruitment are not new.
The Auditor General of Canada devoted an audit to it in 2016, then, two years later, looked specifically at the shortage of pilots, citing the “decline of our combat capability”.
This particular case allows us to consider another cause for the recruitment and retention problems.
The Canadian Armed Forces are too little valued in Ottawa.
For too long.
Proof: the equipment with which we force our soldiers to train and fight is, in some cases, embarrassingly obsolete.
One of the most atrocious examples is, precisely, that of fighter planes.
The federal governments procrastinated so much that we had to buy used planes in Australia instead of replacing our CF-18s with new fighters!
It’s embarassing.
Canada ranked in 2020 in the 20e rank (out of 29) among NATO countries in terms of the share of its military expenditure expressed as a percentage of its gross domestic product (with 1.42%).
The government would like the Armed Forces to be one of the priorities of young Canadians, but it is having trouble showing us that it is a priority for it.
A real case of: do what I say, but not what I do.
“We must do more to improve our methods of recruiting, selecting and retaining military personnel,” former defense minister Harjit Sajjan said five years ago in response to the auditor general.
But the only thing that has changed since then is that… Minister Sajjan is no longer in office.
Truth be told, another thing has changed: the threats we face have diversified.
Even our greatest ally has become unpredictable. How far can we always count on the United States when it comes to our defense?
This is not an empty rhetorical question. It should be among the concerns of our strategists.
Canada needs an army capable of protecting its territory and fulfilling its international commitments, particularly with regard to NATO.
An army up to our international ambitions.
There are limits to living on the hooks of the military forces of our allies. And it would be wrong to take them for granted.
The new Minister of Defense, Anita Anand, has a reputation for being dynamic and efficient. She distinguished herself, as Minister of Public Services and Supply, in the crucial issue of the purchase of vaccines for the Canadian population.
She has already started working to restore the image of the military, and at her office we are told that she takes recruiting issues seriously. And that she believes the desired culture change is part of the solution.
At the same time, the Canadian Armed Forces side, we are told that a personnel retention strategy will be made public at the beginning of next year.
We should be careful not to be too optimistic, but we seem to see a little light at the end of the tunnel.