Military to reduce ‘unattainable’ targets for recruitment of women, visible minorities
Military officials are preparing to scale back targets related to the number of women and visible minorities in uniform because they say the current goals are “unattainable,” according to a defence department audit.
This is despite the military having made some progress in increasing the proportion of both within its rank and file in recent years.
At the same time, auditors have warned that the decision to close 12 military recruiting centres across the country to save money will hurt reserve units as well as aboriginal recruitment, which has been on the increase.
Despite an end to combat operations in Afghanistan and deep budget cuts, officials say the military needs more than 4,000 new recruits each year to offset attrition and keep 68,000 full-time troops in uniform.
As part of that, the Canadian Forces, like all federal government departments and agencies, is required by law to work toward increasing the number of women, visible minorities, aboriginals and people with disabilities within its workforce.
While the idea is to promote equal opportunity, the military has also taken to seeing this as part of its effort to better reflect Canada’s population and society.
As part of this, a complex calculation has been used to establish targets for diversifying the Canadian Forces, while dozens of initiatives have been launched to help meet these goals.
The targets were last updated in 2010 and aimed to have 25.1 per cent of the military represented by women, 11.8 per cent by visible minorities, and 3.4 per cent by Aboriginal Peoples.
Yet in an audit conducted last year and only recently made public, defence officials complained the revised goal for women “is unattainable without the imposition of significant measures.”
They added the new goal was “unrealistically high” because of the “flawed” calculation used to establish the target.
While auditors found the percentage of new recruits enrolled in basic training each year who were women has fallen from 15.58 per cent to 12.67 per cent between 2008 and 2011, women’s overall representation in the military grew from 13.59 per cent to 13.68 per cent.
Progress on increasing the representation of visible minorities also “falls well short,” defence officials reported, even though the number has increased steadily from 2.83 per cent in 2008 to 3.86 per cent in 2011.
The defence officials complained that the targets were “imposed” on the Canadian Forces, and though new initiatives to diversify the military’s representation are in development, so too are efforts to develop “more realistic” goals.
Officials said they were hoping to establish “revised” goals for women and visible minority representation by March 2017.
Royal Military College professor Christian Leuprecht, who specializes in diversity within the Canadian military, was aghast that defence officials were moving to slash the targets for women and visible minorities.
He said doing so would create a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy by reducing the pressure to recruit more of each, which he felt was necessary if the military wants to ensure it represents Canada’s changing culture and population.
“This is not just spreadsheets of multiculturalism and you fill in the numbers and hope to meet the targets,” he said.