Immigration program’s new focus on military recruits unlikely to solve shortages, experts say

Of note. USA also had a program, not sure if continued under Trump, that provided a pathway to permanent status and citizenship for military recruits. This proposed EE pathway is more for support staff, doctors, nurses, technicians than active combatants save for pilots:

…Defence policy experts say that the CAF doesn’t struggle to attract Canadian citizens interested in serving in the military. Instead, they argue, there are significant bottlenecks in the recruitment process that result in applicants frequently being rejected or waiting unduly long periods to obtain responses to their applications.

Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, vice-president of Ottawa operations at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, described the recruitment of foreign service members as a new move for the country.

She cautioned, however, that the success of this immigration pathway will depend on improving a recruitment system that’s struggled domestically.

In October, 2025, the federal Auditor-General’s office published a scathing report on the CAF’s recruiting problems, stating that “ineffective” decision-making and “disjointed” ownership of the recruiting process between various committees and groups had affected its operational readiness and ability to respond to threats. 

The report found that in the period between April 1, 2022, and March 31, 2025, almost 192,000 people applied to the CAF, but only 15,000 were accepted. The CAF had planned to recruit roughly 19,700 people in that period. Moreover, it often took twice as long to recruit than the target of between 100 and 150 days, leading to more than 100,000 applicants voluntarily withdrawing from the recruiting process.

“The system is broken. Recruiting has been a chronic, ongoing problem for many years. Young people are coming to CAF’s doors, they are just not getting through,” said Grazia Scoppio, professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada….

Source: Immigration program’s new focus on military recruits unlikely to solve shortages, experts say