Military in worse shape than numbers indicate
In what cannot be termed as peaceful times, regular forces well below Cold War complement
There is no shortage of news stories outlining the current woes of the Canadian Armed Forces. The shortage of personnel stands at a crippling 16 per cent and this gap between authorized strength and service members in uniform will only widen as the senior leadership is failing miserably in both recruiting new candidates and retaining trained soldiers, sailors and aircrew.
Apologists for the Justin Trudeau Liberal government and the military brass will dismiss this current crisis as a common challenge for a western democracy to maintain a peacetime army.
However, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine still raging in Europe, Gaza and the West Bank aflame in the Middle East and Houthi pirates running amok in the Red Sea, these can hardly be considered peaceful times.
100TH ANNIVERSARY
In fact, the demand for CAF combat instructors to train the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the UK and Poland, plus the crunch of maintaining a forward deployed Battle Group permanently in Latvia as a NATO deterrent to further Russian aggression, the Canadian Army is hard pressed to conduct the necessary training in Canada for any would be recruits.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force. The occasion will be marked with pomp and ceremony, parades, gala balls and commemorative photo books. However, a few coats of paint cannot hide the reality that the RCAF is desperately short of pilots.
Programs have been initiated to encourage trained pilots from allied nations to immigrate with their families, complete with hefty signing bonuses in order to plug the gaps on the flight line. Experienced RCAF pilots are being encouraged to keep their uniforms handy and enlist in the Reserves, just in case the civilian airline business takes a downturn and they need to slide back into their old cockpits.
WHY THE APATHY?
The poor old Royal Canadian Navy is also slammed with some sea-going trades listed at 40 per cent below authorized manning levels. Sure, you can round up a bunch of green recruits and herd them aboard a frigate, but you cannot put an RCN warship out to sea without having certain qualified technicians in key trades aboard. It was recently announced that an annual operational two-ship RCN commitment to the seas off West Africa was aborted for want of trained crew.
Which begs the question, how did Canadians become so apathetic towards serving in our military? In 1989, at the zenith of the Cold War, Canada had more than 88,000 regular troops enlisted, when our population stood at just 26.7 million.
Today Canada has just crested the 40 million population threshold and we are hovering around the 60,000 mark for regular service members still actually on the payroll. Note, that number includes hundreds, if not thousands of personnel who are awaiting release or are on extended leave (stress, medical, paternity, maternity, etc.). Not to mention the scores of individuals officially recruited, but who are languishing on bases while awaiting their trades training.
For those who recall modern history, shortly after the CAF had hit that 88,000-member pinnacle, the Soviet Union imploded and the good guys won the Cold War.
Although Canada had never really fully ponied up for our NATO commitments, a peacetime dividend was expected by the Canadian public, so the Progressive Conservative government of the day implemented the Force Reduction Program (FRP) for the allegedly “bloated” CAF.
Under the terms of the FRP, from April 1992 to March 1998, military personnel were offered lucrative incentives in order to take early retirement. Naturally enough, DND bureaucrats botched this up by overpaying members for their unused leave and then they callously clawed it back once Treasury Board realized DND had not conformed to the official guidelines.
But the members were by now out of uniform and on civvy street. An estimated 10,500 CAF veterans took advantage of the FRP.
RECRUITMENT ISSUES
It is hard to imagine that just 30 short years ago, the Canadian military could not get rid of personnel fast enough, and of course in their keen desire to thin out the ranks, recruiting courses were suspended. That created its own set of difficulties in the years to come as the CAF literally had no privates (rank level).
The aging out of Canada's military equipment is fodder for another column but relief is on the order books in the form of 88 purchased CF-35 Joint Strike Fighters and 15 Canadian Surface Combatants. The real challenge will be to ensure that there will be enough people left in uniform to actually get to use them.