OTTAWA-
The Commander of the Canadian Armed Forces is calling on the country to rally behind his military as he faces an unprecedented personnel crisis that he says threatens his ability to protect and defend Canada.
“We are here to defend our way of life, now and in the future,” Chief of the Defense Staff General Wayne Eyre said. “So we need a whole-of-society effort to help us get the armed forces back to where they need to be for the dangerous world ahead.”
The extraordinary call comes as Eyre and his subordinates struggle to fill approximately 10,000 vacancies at a time when the Canadian military is facing a growing number of threats and requests for help at home and abroad. foreign.
Earlier this month, the defense chief issued an order setting a new direction for the army after years of deployments and operations at breakneck pace, making recruitment and retention of personnel his top priority .
About one in 10 positions in the armed forces remain vacant after years of lagging recruitment rates and there is a growing shortage of non-commissioned officers and other mid-level leaders.
“We have to rebuild the armed forces, we have to bring the numbers back up,” Eyre said in an interview. “And we have to do it with a sense of urgency and priority because it affects our ability to respond around the world.”
Neither the order nor the retention strategy that accompanies it paints a clear picture of exactly why Canadians avoid recruiting centers or why the military has difficulty keeping troops in uniform.
The retention strategy instead emphasizes the need for better data on departures, while Eyre said military officers are “seized” with the same problem when it comes to recruitment.
The defense chief was quick to note that his organization is not alone in struggling to attract talent, with labor shortages across the country.
But the Canadian military faces unique challenges, starting with a reputational issue after reports of sexual misconduct involving senior leaders and concerns about the presence of right-wing extremists in the ranks.
Not all difficulties are self-inflicted. Some are due to the nature of military service. Most Canadian Armed Forces bases and wings are located in rural communities, while the majority of the country’s population lives in cities.
“Let’s face it: Petawawa is a little different from downtown Toronto or even Ottawa,” Eyre said. “But to create the required operational performance, we have to push people to Cold Lake, Bagotville and the coasts.
“So cracking that code – how to incentivize travel to those places – that’s the big challenge.”
An opinion poll conducted for the Department of Defense earlier this year found that most Canadians are reluctant to consider a military career.
“When asked if they would consider joining the CAF, young men were more likely than young women to say they would, but overall less than half of all groups generally indicated that they would,” reads a summary report.
“Both men and women were deterred by the idea of having to leave their families and/or to move frequently, forcing them to uproot their families.”
The poll also revealed public concern about sexual misconduct and racism within the ranks.
Many of the recruiting and retention challenges are nothing new, and former commanders have deployed a litany of initiatives to address them.
These include everything from signing bonuses in certain professions to preaching the importance of diversity in the ranks and promising to root out inappropriate behavior.
These efforts continued under Eyre.
A new dress code significantly relaxes the rules on how troops look and dress. Despite some outside criticism, this decision was adopted by many members of the Armed Forces as long overdue.
“The walls didn’t come down and we didn’t lose our operational efficiency overnight,” Eyre said of the new gender-neutral dress code, which also allows long hair, nail polish for the first time. nails and facial tattoos in uniform.
“I’m more concerned with: Can they fight? Are they fit? Are they following orders?”
Eyre opened the door to other changes, such as working remotely and relaxing the requirement that members must be physically able to perform their duties and deploy on a mission at all times as a condition of service. ‘use.
The defense chief said he was also working so troops could afford to live. This includes updating an allowance to offset the cost of living in more expensive communities, which has been frozen since 2009.
“The price of accommodation is skyrocketing,” he said. “But it’s more acute for our members because we expect them to travel across the country more frequently. And so fixing that is high on the list of things that need to be fixed.”
Eyre acknowledges that it has been difficult trying to change an institution with decades of established tradition – a tradition he has been steeped in for nearly 40 years. But he says he and the armed forces have no choice.
“It’s about adopting them, trying or experiencing new things,” he said. “Because the path we’re on, the stuff we’ve tried, it hasn’t worked out very well.”
Asked if such changes risk disabling the military’s traditional recruiting pool – of single white men – Eyre acknowledged the “paradox” that as the population grows, the traditional pool shrinks. .
But he says it underscores the need to embrace diversity, and that those who disagree with the changes are likely not the ones Canada wants in uniform anyway.
What Eyre says he needs is buy-in from the rest of the country, including an acknowledgment of the stakes involved.
“It’s not just the Canadian Armed Forces that have to worry about Canadian Forces recruiting.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on October 15, 2022.