Canada’s military recruits lower on fitness, education
OTTAWA — Canada’s military is having to accept new recruits who are fatter, less educated and harder to motivate than previous generations because quality applicants are in dwindling supply, an internal Defence Department audit has concluded.
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.
According to the audit conducted last year, Canadian military recruiters are expected “to encourage dedicated individuals, who are mentally and physically fit, towards military service as a career of choice.”
However, the department’s auditors found that “recently, this has been an increasingly difficult challenge.”
The Canadian Forces has historically drawn heavily on young, white males from rural communities to fill its ranks, but the auditors cited recent census data showing that “traditional pool” has been steadily shrinking.
“Factors such as increased levels of education, an aging workforce, a labour pool increasingly made up of immigrants, and the changing expectations regarding the nature of work among the 17- to 29-yearolds have also been contributing to challenges in recruiting,” they added.
The result? The auditors found that “fitness and educational levels of recruits in the last five years have been slightly lower than in the past,” while “compared to previous generations, recruits of today are described as harder to motivate.”
Despite this, they warned “raising the quality line” could backfire by making it even harder to find new recruits, and instead noted a number of initiatives such as sending out-of-shape recruits to fat camp before basic training has had positive results.
The audit was conducted before the military rolled out a new fitness test earlier this year that it says more closely reflects the actual tasks the country’s soldiers, sailors and air force personnel must be able to accomplish, such as carrying sandbags.