Lagging Behind Our Own Needs

Recruitment in the Post-Pandemic Era

On Tuesday, October 2022, the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) published two reports related to National Defence: one on military housing and another on recruitment.

Needless to say, those reports are more than welcome. The last OAG audit on recruitment was in 2017, and the one on military housing was published in 2018. This left us with a significant data gap that we are now able to close for the short term. These audits allow us to assess what changes the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence have put in place in the meantime, and what the outstanding issues are. At a time where personnel has taken a bigger place in the defence policy discourse, it is welcome.

So let’s dig in.

Since 2022, we have massive movement in terms of personnel: the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces released two Reconstitution Directives (2022 and 2024) and a Retention Strategy, opened the CAF to permanent residents, created a new application portal, increased capacity for basic military qualifications training, launched the Naval Experience Program, and the Government authorized a new compensation package…

But were they enough to overcome the challenges identified in 2002 and 2016? At the time, the OAG highlighted lengthy recruitment processes, a disconnect between the need of the organization and its capacity to process candidates and train recruits, in an inability to attract and retain candidates from equity-seeking groups, as well as a gap in the information management of applications.

“Overall, the Canadian Armed Forces did not meet its recruitment and training goals.”

If you follow personnel issues even remotely, there is no surprise there. For decades, up until last fiscal year (2024/25), the CAF was unable to meet its Strategic Intake Plan (SIP). But even this past year’s achievement comes with an asterisk; looking by service and occupation, you can see that most have not met their SIP. The only reason they have been able to reach that overall success was by over-recruiting in certain trades. It is important to note that in some aspects, that over recruiting seemed to have been deliberate – not as a communications tool, but in the context of a force structure reform endeavour in which going above or under the SIP made strategic sense (which was the case for the Air Force).

“The Canadian Armed Forces did not know why applicants abandoned their applications during recruitment.”

The report found that 103,700 out of the 191,981 applications submitted between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2025, were withdrawn voluntarily or did not respond to the CAF’s inquiry within 60 days. Only 8 per cent (or 15, 101) were closed by recruiters for various reasons. Between fiscal year 2022/23 and 2024/25 therefore, 73,196 files were deemed viable, with 14, 946 recruited and 58,250 still in progress.

The CAF did conduct surveys of those who visited the website, those who completed the recruitment interview, and those who withdrew their application (survey conducted between November 2023 and November 2024). however, they did not analyze the results to identify why candidates might drop out of the process.

“The Canadian Armed Forces was not able to recruit enough new members to reach the targets in its Strategic Intake Plan.”

The OAG determined that the average recruitment success ratio is 1:13 (13 applications for 1 enrolment). The report found that the recruitment process took about 260 days. The data does not show any improvement just yet, as application processing took longer in 2024/25 than in 2023/24.

I ought to revise my previous statement: in 2024/25, the military passed its SIP by 210. Unfortunately, the report does not dig deeper on how it did across the organization.

The report then turns to something quite critical: completion of training. There seems to be an assumption that all enrolees in a given year will end up trained service members; it is not the case. During the audit period, 14, 046 enrolees began basic training, with 1, 997 not completing it because of voluntary release, inability to meet the training standards, and medical conditions. In total, 11, 124 recruits graduated basic. Due to limitations of the CAF’s information systems and the fragmented nature of the data, the OAG could not make any assessment of completion of occupational training.

“Planning for new recruits fell short of meeting demand and did not fully account for trained and effective members leaving.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The SIP is not the right tool for the military to meet its personnel needs.¹ It goes back to the finding in 2016 that the military recruits based on its capacity to process candidates and train recruits, not its needs – there have been improvements since, but the issue remains outstanding. The report also highlights that the SIP does not always consider releases. As a result, the CAF did not bring in enough people to compensate for those who left.

CDL NOTES:

1. A small moment of vindication as I have argued the CAF should not relyon the idea that 8 per cent of attrition is healthy because it is better that the private and public sectors as well as allied military. In my view, you lose knowledge and training that takes years and costs thousands to rebuild, and the CAF had been unable to recruit to match the rate of attrition until very recently.

2. I have to take a moment to address the SIP. It is a faulty tool that falls short in setting targets for the CAF to meet its personnel needs. However, the CAF has been falling short of meeting its SIP for decades – meaning that even if it reviewed its SIP to actually match occupational needs, the CAF is unlikely to meet those new targets. Inability to meet the SIP is in fact part of the SIP considerations, which contributes to the death spiral. But it is on the CAF to set up the proper recruiting conditions (including training capacity) so that it is able to create a SIP that is aligned with its needs.

   1. Once the CAF is able to have a SIP, as well as candidate processing, and recruit training capacity that align with its personnel needs, then the question of whether or not Canadians want to join and are eligible to join can come to the forefront. At this stage, we have blamed young millennials and Gen Z for not joining when the CAF does not have the proper structures and resources to recruit those who apply.

Because of those gaps, many occupations find themselves “distressed,” i.e., there are less than 90% at the authorized staffing level and they seem unlikely to reach 100% within 2 years. And the “Canadian Armed Forces predicted that 13% of occupations were at risk of not reaching their authorized staffing levels unless key challenges were addressed.” Contrary to popular belief, those occupations are mostly not direct combat roles, but mostly technicians – with pilots and combat engineers in the mix as well.

“Planned basic training capacity did not cover Strategic Intake Plan targets.”

I inadvertently did some good foreshadowing in the previous section, and was not harsh enough (shocker!). The central conclusion is that the CAF is lacking “sufficient basic training capacity to meet its recruitment targets as stated in its Strategic Intake Plan.”

In short, the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School (hi Marc!) would not have been able to train all the new recruits had the military met its SIP in 22/23 and 23/24. To help increase capacity, the CAF created a CFLRS offshoot in Borden – which helped with completion of basic training in 24/25 – but the CAF acknowledged to the OAG that it “was not a sustainable way to train new recruits.”

Shortage of instructors is a key factor for this challenge, which the CAF blames on “insufficient incentives and a demanding workload,” which the new compensation package and the change of rules around the weight of instructor postings in formal considerations for promotion should improve this state of affairs. CDL Note: An underrated issue with instructor postings is the personnel shortage in itself. With many occupations in distress, some services are less willing to send their people to instructor postings so as to better manage their preparedness in a way to avoid burning out their staff more than they already are (talk about a vicious cycle).

Training also suffers from a lack of equipment, which the CAF said did not lead to any training to be cancelled. But it might lead to additional challenges down the line.

“Coordination and decision making for recruitment improved.”

Some good news! This finding was made thanks to the creation of the Recruiting Campaign Board in June 2024, allowing for better coordination between the services and Chief Military Personnel, and the modernization of recruitment. The Board was behind the decision of removing the Canadian Forces Aptitude Test from the application process (candidates still have to complete and pass it before graduating basic), introducing the Scored Employment Application Form, as well as addressing delays and changing the medical requirements.

Issues with Authorities, Responsibilities, Accountabilities remain, especially for the Military Personnel Generation Group. Until February 2025, it did not have the authorities to make changes as directed by the Board, leading to delays. Whether the levels of authorities sufficed and had the proper effects reman to be seen.

“Recruitment of women did not reach Canadian Armed Forces goals.”

Another one where this is not a surprise. After rumours that the CAF put in place quotas on men to favour the recruitment of women, the CAF is still very far from its goal of reaching 25% of women by 2026 (as of 31 March 2025, women represent 16.5 per cent of the CAF, from 14.6% in 2015). Good news is, the CAF has done extremely well in meeting its goals to recruit First Nations, Métis, and Innu and racialized candidates.

One of the difficulties is that women apply much less than men do (less than twice as much), and only 4 per cent get recruited.

“Changes were made to the recruitment process during the audit period.”

Changes include the removal of the Canadian Forces Aptitude Test during the application stage, the introduction of a Scored Employment Application Form, changes in medical standards, graduates from basic training were allowed to start occupational training while awaiting secret clearance (just could not access certain facilities and information, and would be released if they failed to get the clearance).

“Permanent resident recruitment increased.”

Despite committing to recruit more permanent residents, there is no target set. Further, at this stage, only 2 per cent of applicants who are permanent residents are recruited (v. 10 per cent for Canadian citizens).

The report also shows some good insights into how many permanent residents have applied to join the CAF since they were allowed to do so in November 2022: 46, 276. This dispels a bit the idea that it is permanent residents driving the increase in applications. Canadian citizens account for about half of the about 30,000 jump in applications between 2022/23 and 2023/24.

The report also gives us insights as to why clearance for permanent residents took so long: “all permanent resident applicants were screened under the process used for higher-risk countries.” This increased the administrative burden on the process. Now, since October 2024, permanent residents “who had not visited or lived in higher-risk countries” no longer have to go through that process, which allowed for the faster processing (and recruiting) of these candidates.

“Recruitment and training processes were inefficient.”

Alright! Getting to some extra nitty gritty (yes, I have weird hobbies).

“The recruitment process lacked electronic forms and automation.”

The OAG mentions many issues under this section: (1) lack of centralization of IT systems for managing the different aspects of recruitment and training (they identified 8 different ones); and (2) the systems still required substantial manual intervention. This led to delayed and unnecessarily cumbersome processes (including applicants having to fill up the same data more than once), as well as important gaps in data.

“A new training management IT system did not meet Canadian Armed Forces personnel’s needs.”

To continue the theme of siloed processes, the CAF used separate IT systems for basic and occupational training, in part due to the fact that it is different entities across the CAF that are responsible for these different types of training (CFLRS v. the services).

In 2018, the CAF started developing the Basic Training List Management System. And, despite not being formally launched during the audit period, it was live but not used across the organization and did not meet the needs of CAF personnel.

“The security screening process had significant backlogs.”

Since the opening of the CAF to permanent residents since November 2022, the issue of clearance has been a significant topic of conversation. At the moment, the CAF is facing a backlog of 23,000 applications, plus a 8,335 applications backlog for Secret and Top Secret clearances (responsibility of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service). The CAF is loaning staff to CSIS in order to help process this backlog.

“We concluded that the Canadian Armed Forces did not recruit and train the members it needed to meet operational requirements.”

This is the unfortunate state of affairs in which the Canadian Armed Forces finds itself. We see small changes that incrementally seek to accelerate the current recruitment process a bit at a time, but not much improvement can happen without (1) profound changes to the process itself; (2) a healthy injection of money to help increase capacity (which includes infrastructure and personnel – not just instructors!).

CDL Takeaways

“I am not surprised” became a leitmotif for me as I was reading the report. Fact remains that it saddens me to see we are still in such a position, almost four years into Reconstitution. The inertia is frustrating to see, especially when we are trying to accelerate the acquisition of platforms and equipment, grow our battle group in Latvia to a Brigade, increase our naval deployments, and want more all domains awareness in the continent.

Another part that saddens me is the lack of data. While we got some insights into recruitment numbers, we still know very little about candidate attrition, why women do not get recruited at the same rate as men, and how many files from past years have yet to be processed. This allows for assumptions and biases to permeates the policy conversation, which can become easily counterproductive.

Now, the CAF agreed to all the recommendations the OAG made, giving a slight hope for improvement in the coming years. In my view however, this cannot happen without the involvement of Cabinet or Deputy Ministers and either a review of administrative processes to lighten them or a hefty injection of cash to ensure the bureaucracy has the capacity to process everything in a timely fashion.

See you tomorrow…

… for coverage of the report on military housing. Rejoice!

1. For more on that, read LCdr Cumming’s excellent Master in Defence Studies thesis: https://www.cfc.forces.gc.ca/259/290/351/286/Cumming.pdf