The CAF recruitment system is failing everyone: J.L. Granatstein for Inside Policy

2026/05/11 Leave a comment

Not the principle but the details need to be fixed:

…Very simply, the problems with the CAF’s recruiting system have not yet been remedied. Yes, permanent residents and naturalized citizens should be encouraged to join the military, but not until they can speak, read, and understand French and/or English and are adapted to Canadian life and the military’s expectations. Yes, those with medical problems should be enlisted, but only if they have been properly screened in the recruitment process. And certainly, the CAF should not accept candidates who cannot read, write, or comprehend instruction at an acceptable standard.

To judge by his long memorandum with its substantiated recommendations, Kieley is a very able officer doing his best to deal with the difficulties he and his understrength staff face. The generals in Ottawa had changed the rules to speed up recruiting with good intentions but had failed to consider the possible consequences. The recruiting officers across the country too often pushed the unqualified to Saint-Jean, and Kieley had to clean up the mess. It’s almost as if NHL scouts sent those who cannot skate to training camp. This cannot work.

This matters because such applicants at the CAF’s Leadership and Training School cost DND money and take spots from better-qualified candidates. It also matters because General Carignan is studying options to expand the CAF to as many as 85,500 regular force members. “In the next month or so,” the CDS told the CBC in April, “we will be able to present various options, and the discussion is going very well,” Carignan said. “There is a lot of interest in doing this.”

Canada needs a bigger and better Canadian Armed Forces, and the Carney government is putting much money (and much of its credibility) into getting this program right. But if the recruitment process does not speed up and function properly, that investment will achieve little. The generals at National Defence Headquarters and officers in recruiting centres across Canada must fix these problems now.

Source: The CAF recruitment system is failing everyone: J.L. Granatstein for Inside Policy

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Success rate for basic training in Canadian military drops

2026/05/01 Leave a comment

Good intentions but problematic selection and integration processes. Some of the details are indeed disturbing…:

The success rate for basic training in the Canadian military has dropped to 77 per cent over the past fiscal year as the Canadian Armed Forces grapple with the impact of recruiting changes designed to boost enrolment, according to a leaked internal report.

That compares with a historical average of 85 per cent, according to an internal January, 2026, report by Lieutenant-Colonel Marc Kieley, commandant of the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School (CFLRS) in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. 

His report covers the first three quarters of the 2025-26 fiscal year, which began on April 1 last year.

The number of candidates requiring multiple attempts to graduate rose to 14.89 per cent, far higher than 8.44 per cent in the previous year and significantly above other recent annual rates.

The school conducts basic military qualification (BMQ) training and basic military officer qualification (BMOQ) training for the Forces.

In recent years, the federal government, in an effort boost the size of the military, has opened recruiting to foreign nationals who are permanent residents, begun accepting recruits with certain pre-existing medical conditions and dropped aptitude test requirements, among other changes….

Source: Success rate for basic training in Canadian military drops, Juno, who uncovered the memo, more sensationalist take: EXCLUSIVE: CAF training platoon with 83% non-citizens devolved into ethnic infighting

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Why foreign recruits won’t solve Canada’s military staffing problems

2026/04/08 Leave a comment

Yet another ill-advised boutique program as Banerjee notes:

…Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in February announced said it is expanding its Express Entry immigration program, adding three new permanent residency streams that cover professions the Liberal government says are needed to fill critical labour gaps, including “highly skilled foreign military applicants” recruited by the Canadian Armed Forces in roles such as military doctors, pilots and nurses.

Ottawa did not specify how many permanent residents it aims to recruit under the new immigration stream. 

The expansion will effectively move applicants in these professions to the front of the line for permanent residency.

The changes essentially placed a few select professions with Canadian work experience at the head of the queue for permanent residency via Express Entry, a stream of economic migrants introduced designed to get immigrants into jobs faster without long delays. 

Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab said the decision to have a new category for skilled foreign military applicants “supports Canada’s defence industrial strategy,” and aims to “strengthen our armed forces, defend our sovereignty and to keep Canadians safe.”…

Canada’s shift toward a category-based “boutique” immigration system that prioritizes certain professions over other immigrants is concerning, said Rupa Banerjee, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and Canada Research Chair in economic inclusion, employment and entrepreneurship of immigrants.

Labour market needs can shift quickly, and it’s difficult to accurately predict which jobs are in demand now and how that may change in the future, she said.

Banerjee pointed to the 1990s dot-com boom which saw Canada actively recruit IT and computer science professionals, anticipating massive demand. Following the subsequent tech bubble burst, many of these skilled immigrants faced unemployment, highlighting the volatility of relying on specific, fast-changing industries for economic growth and immigration planning.

“We’ve seen that labour market needs change before we are able to respond … and there’s always this lag,” Banerjee said. “It’s very short-sighted.”

Source: Why foreign recruits won’t solve Canada’s military staffing problems

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

2026/02/23 Leave a comment

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

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Canada to add three new permanent residency streams to Express Entry immigration program

2026/02/20 Leave a comment

Further dilution of the human capital approach and the CRS. Better than the Francophone category but still…:

Canada is expanding its Express Entry immigration program, adding three new permanent residency streams that cover a range of professions the Liberal government says are needed to fill critical labour gaps, including researchers and military personnel, Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab announced Wednesday.

The new categories under the Express Entry stream will give priority to researchers and senior managers with Canadian work experience; applicants with work experience in transport occupations, including pilots, aircraft mechanics and inspectors; and highly skilled foreign military applicants.

The new streams are part of what Diab calls a federal strategy to attract “top talent” to the country.

“We’ve identified these sectors as areas in critical need,” Diab said in a speech in Toronto. “Strengthening those helps us move goods across the country and to new markets, supporting trade, supply chains and economic resilience.”

Diab said the decision to have a new category for skilled foreign military applicants, along with other categories, “supports Canada’s defence industrial strategy,” and aims to “strengthen our armed forces, defend our sovereignty and to keep Canadians safe.”

This announcement comes after a new category for foreign medical doctors with Canadian work experience was announced in December. Diab at the time said this was part of a broader plan to move away from a “one-size fits all” immigration approach and make it easier for people in certain professions to come to or remain in Canada.

The 2026 immigration levels plan prioritizes permanent economic immigrants while reducing temporary admissions, particularly for students, as Ottawa ramps up its efforts to attract highly skilled workers and scientists from around the world.

The federal government in December announced it would spend more than $1 billion over the next decade to attract and retain leading international researchers to Canada. The funding is slated to support salaries, new infrastructure, grants and the recruitment of more than 1,000 doctors, researchers and scientists.

“Our Express Entry system is at the core of our approach for attracting and retaining the skilled workers Canada needs,” Diab said Wednesday.

“We’re not waiting for the right people to find us,” she said. “We will go out into the world to recruit the people our country needs, to connect them with Canadian employers and to highlight why Canada is the place” to build their careers and lives.

Canada has long struggled to retain in-demand, highly skilled workers. A November report from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the Conference Board of Canada, titled “The Leaky Bucket 2025,” found that one in five immigrants are leaving Canada within 25 years of landing and highly educated immigrants are leaving faster than those with lower education levels.

Many newcomers remain stuck in precarious, low-wage work due to a labour market that continues to undervalue international experience. More than 30 per cent of newcomers ages 25-54 with a post-secondary education reported they were overqualified for their job compared to 19.7 per cent of Canadian-born workers, according to Statistics Canada.

Source: Canada to add three new permanent residency streams to Express Entry immigration program

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Japanese immigrants fought for Canada during WW I while denied the right to vote 

2025/11/11 Leave a comment

Part of our less proud history:

For the first time the faces of Japanese Canadian veterans who fought in the First World War are on display on the streets of Vancouver after a century largely unrecognized.

A community historian spent more than 15 years digging through archives, tracking down descendants and uncovering heroic acts to bring this group of forgotten soldiers’ stories to life and push for the recognition she says they deserve.

“These were young men who gave their whole lives and no one remembers them,” Debbie Jiang told CBC News.

“I feel like I’m bringing back to life that person and their names that would otherwise be unknown.”

Jiang calls it a “travesty” that a dark chapter in Canadian history overshadowed their service and kept their stories hidden not only from the public, but in many cases their families, too. 

During the Second World War, Canada labelled all Japanese Canadians including veterans “enemy aliens” and forced thousands in B.C. into internment camps, seized their property and sold their belongings. 

Kelly Shibata says it wasn’t until he spoke to Jiang that he started learning more details about his grandfather’s remarkable military career. 

“That is the mystery of all of it — we had virtually no information about his time in the military,” Shibata said. 

His grandfather, retired private Otoji Kamachi, was part of a distinct group of Japanese Canadian soldiers who enlisted during the First World War in Canada’s military…

Source: Japanese immigrants fought for Canada during WW I while denied the right to vote

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Few immigrant applicants to Canadian military get enlisted: Report

2024/01/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

Efforts by Canada’s military to recruit new immigrants have been futile.

In fact, a December 2023 briefing note for Defence Minister Bill Blair said only 77 applicants out of thousands of permanent residents successfully enlisted, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“Between November 1, 2022 and November 24, 2023, the Canadian Armed Forces received 21,472 applications from permanent residents,” said the note Recruitment Of Permanent Residents. “Seventy-seven permanent residents have been enrolled.”

In 2022, the military altered regulations that promised a quicker path to citizenship for landed immigrants if they enlisted as soldiers, sailors and air crew.

Despite the more favourable regulation changes, the note cited lengthy security checks with the abysmal number of successful recruits during that timeframe.

“There are important and necessary measures which need to be completed such as security checks and medical evaluations,” said the note. “As well the validation of security clearances generally takes longer for permanent residents.”

Due to a 35% decline in recruitment numbers in 2022 — from 8,069 to 5,242 volunteers — the military turned to foreigners who had army training to fill the gap.

“The Canadian Forces recruiting group accepts trained applicants from foreign militaries,” said the note. “These applicants include pilots, logistics officers, infantry officers and other skilled professionals who may become enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces if they have permanent resident status in Canada. This enables other permanent residents who meet the same criteria as Canadian citizens to enroll in the Canadian Armed Forces as new recruits or officer cadets.”

The military says at minimum 60,500 fully trained full-time members are required while also setting a goal of reaching 68,000 military forces.

Source: Few immigrant applicants to Canadian military get enlisted: Report

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Facial Recognition Powers ‘Automated Apartheid’ in Israel, Report Says

2023/05/05 Leave a comment

Of note:

Israel is increasingly relying on facial recognition in the occupied West Bank to track Palestinians and restrict their passage through key checkpoints, according to a new report, a sign of how artificial-intelligence-powered surveillance can be used against an ethnic group. 

At high-fenced checkpoints in Hebron, Palestinians stand in front of facial recognition cameras before being allowed to cross. As their faces are scanned, the software — known as Red Wolf — uses a color-coded system of green, yellow and red to guide soldiers on whether to let the person go, stop them for questioning or arrest them, according to the report by Amnesty International. When the technology fails to identify someone, soldiers train the system by adding their personal information to the database.

Israel has long restricted the freedom of movement of Palestinians, but technological advances are giving the authorities powerful new tools. It is the latest example of the global spread of mass surveillance systems, which rely on A.I. to learn to identify the faces of people based on large stores of images.

In Hebron and East Jerusalem, the technology focuses almost entirely on Palestinians, according to Amnesty’s report, marking a new way to automate the control of interior boundaries that separate the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. Amnesty called the process “automated apartheid.” Israel has strongly denied that it operates an apartheid regime.

“These databases and tools exclusively record the data of Palestinians,” said the report, which is based on accounts by former Israeli soldiers and Palestinians who live in the surveilled areas, as well as field visits to observe the technology’s use in affected territories.

The Israel Defense Forces, which plays a central role in the occupied territories of the West Bank, said in a statement that it carries out “necessary security and intelligence operations, while making significant efforts to minimize harm to the Palestinian population’s routine activity.”

On facial recognition, it added, “Naturally, we cannot refer to operational and intelligence capabilities.”

Government use of facial recognition technology to so explicitly target a single ethnic group is rare. In China, companies have made algorithms that sought to identify minorities as they passed by the country’s ubiquitous cameras. China’s government has also used facial recognition checkpoints to control and track the movements of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities.

Israel’s use of facial recognition at checkpoints builds on other surveillance systems deployed in recent years. Since protests in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah over the eviction of Palestinian families in 2021, the presence of cameras has increased in the area, most likely supporting an Israeli government video surveillance system capable of facial recognition known as Mabat 2000, according to Amnesty.

In one walk through the area, Amnesty researchers reported finding one to two cameras every 15 feet. Some were made by Hikvision, the Chinese surveillance camera maker, and others by TKH Security, a Dutch manufacturer.

TKH Security declined to comment. Hikvision did not respond to a request for comment.

Government forces also use the cameras on their phones. Israeli authorities have a facial recognition app, Blue Wolf, to identify Palestinians, according to Breaking the Silence, an organization that assisted Amnesty and collects testimonials from Israeli soldiers who have worked in occupied territories.

Soldiers use the app to photograph Palestinians on the street or during home raids to register them in a central database and to check if they are wanted for arrest or questioning, according to the 82-page Amnesty report and testimonials from Breaking the Silence. Use of Blue Wolf was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

The surveillance is partly an effort to reduce violence against Israelis. This year, Palestinian attackers have killed 19 Israelis. At least 100 Palestinians this year have been killed by Israeli security forces, many during gunfights that broke out during military operations to arrest Palestinian gunmen. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 after capturing it from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war that year.

Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist in Hebron, a West Bank city where there is regular violence, said people are under constant surveillance. He, his friends and family are regularly stopped by soldiers to be photographed using the Blue Wolf app. Surveillance cameras line the streets and drones commonly fly overhead.

Mr. Amro said the Israeli military has become so dependent on the automated systems that crossing the checkpoints grinds to a halt when there are technical problems.

“Everything is watched. My whole life is watched. I don’t have any privacy,” he said. “I feel they are following me everywhere I go.”

Mr. Amro said Palestinians are angry that the surveillance tools never seem to be used to identify crimes by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.

Ori Givati, a former Israeli tank commander who is now the advocacy director of Breaking the Silence, said the new surveillance systems began being put in place around 2020. The technology has allowed the Israeli government to move toward an automated occupation, he said, subjecting Palestinians to constant oversight and supervision.

The facial recognition systems work, he said, “not just as an invasion of privacy but a powerful tool for control.”

Source: Facial Recognition Powers ‘Automated Apartheid’ in Israel, Report Says

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ICYMI: ‘Waiting for our death’: Afghan military lawyers beg Canada for help to escape

2022/08/12 Leave a comment

Sigh… As always, apart from the substance, lack of transparency and predictability on timelines cross-cut virtually all IRCC administrative problems:

A former Canadian military legal officer says a group of Afghan lawyers and other staff who helped his mission in Afghanistan have been “left in the dark,” and is urging Canada’s Immigration Ministry to act quickly to help them escape the Taliban.

It’s been one year since Canada began accepting fleeing Afghans through its one-year special immigration program for Afghans who helped the Canadian government, set up a few weeks before Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021.

To date, roughly 17,170 Afghans have arrived in Canada. Last month, the Liberal government closed its immigration program to new applicants, less than halfway toward its goal of bringing 40,000 Afghans to Canada.

“If [Canada] would not act upon my request and as soon as possible, I could lose my life,” said Popal, one of the Afghan military prosecutors who applied for this program, and whom CBC has agreed not to identify.

“When Popal called me for help, it was very heart-wrenching,” said retired major Cory Moore, a former military legal officer with the Canadian Armed Forces who was deployed three times to Afghanistan.

Moore is helping 12 applicants and their families apply for this program, and is still waiting for word from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) on the fate of these 66 people. Their applications were filed between September and December 2021.

The group includes military prosecutors, criminal investigators, security staff, recruitment video participants, a doctor and a journalist. 

All 12 Afghans were involved in various capacities during Moore’s mission to help bolster the Afghan National Army’s legal branch. He created a project to recruit Afghan law grads, making a recruitment video which aired nationally from 2012 to 2021.

As a result, eight female military lawyers were hired as prosecutors and criminal investigators with the military, in what Moore calls a “historical precedent.”

“During the period in time in which we were doing the video shooting, it was a particularly dangerous time in Kabul when I had a target on my back,” he said. 

“They never left my side. They never cut and run…. It’s why Canada can’t turn its back on them now.”

‘We are getting hopeless’

Popal, who appeared in that recruitment video, was an Afghan army prosecutor for 10 years.

Through WhatsApp video chat, Popal said he and his family are in “extreme danger” because of his involvement with the recruitment project.

“We are getting hopeless and … we are just waiting for our death,” he said in Dari, through an interpreter.

Popal, who was reduced to tears during the conversation, said it’s been a year of hardship for his family. His kids can’t go to school or appear in public spaces, and he’s unable to work so it’s been difficult to put food on the table. The family is facing “serious threats,” he said.

“The danger we are facing is because we helped Canadians.”

Maryam, whose identity CBC has also agreed to protect because she’s also in hiding, is the first of the eight female lawyers hired as a result of Moore’s project. (Three of the lawyers have not yet been accounted for, Moore said.)

She prosecuted Taliban members accused of infiltrating the Afghan National Army. She also criminally investigated sexual assault cases involving Afghan military members who committed offences against army nurses.

“I’m in danger because of that position,” she said in Dari, through an interpreter. 

Maryam spoke about the mental health impact the wait has had on her and her family. 

“We’ve all got kind of psychological issues, psychological problems,” she said, pleading through tears: “Justin Trudeau … please get us out of here. Please, evacuate us from here…. We cannot live here anymore.” 

Silence from department

Moore contacted IRCC several times this spring about the status of the 12 applications.

“I wasn’t hearing anything,” he said. “They explained that none of the 12 applicants … were coming up in their system.”

After seeking clarity from other agents, Moore said one of them told him this: “She explained that if you had been screened out at the initial review stage, you’re not invited formally to make [an] application … and if you don’t receive an email like that, then your case just disappears.”

To date, none of the 12 Afghans received an email from IRCC about their application status. The government website instructs applicants to “wait for us to contact you” once an application has been submitted. 

“They don’t receive anything. They’re just left in the dark,” said Moore.

“[For Canada] to shut the door on a group of people who were so intimately involved in helping me succeed with my project, it’s unfathomable.”

By speaking publicly, Moore wants to stress how each applicant played a critical role in helping him and the Canadian military. 

“There’s no question that Afghanistan was made better by their work with me,” said Moore. “And quite honestly, I think Canada is a better place with this fine group of people in it.”

Tight timeline a ‘slap in the face’

Tamar Boghossian, an immigration lawyer with Boghossian Morais LLP, is helping Moore with the case. Last week, she refiled and updated all 12 applications.

Boghossian said all 12 applicants meet the government’s eligibility requirements, which she called “very vague.” The government lists just two examples of who can apply — Afghan nationals who worked at the Canadian embassy, or interpreters — but adds the program “is not limited to” those professions.

The issue, Boghossian said, is that the program has “no transparency.” The short timeline is also problematic, as the one-year program has already expired, she added.

“It’s a slap in the face … to those who actually helped the Canadian government,” said Boghossian. “Why can’t we help these individuals in return?”

She explained that most individuals who’ve applied to this special program don’t have proper documentation or passports, and are having difficulty obtaining them because they’re in hiding. 

She’s urging the Trudeau government to not only extend the deadline for applications, but to also expand the number of people Canada will receive. 

“40,000 applicants is not a lot for, you know, Canada being in Afghanistan for almost 15 years,” Boghossian said.

Government decision ‘shameful,’ says MP

During a news conference last month, Conservative MP and IRCC shadow minister Jasraj Singh Hallan called the Liberal government’s decision to wind down its one-year program “shameful.”

The Conservatives are among those calling on the government to reopen the special immigration program, and Hallan said it’s Canada’s “moral responsibility to help those who served alongside our country.”

“The government’s decision to shut down the [special program] is unconscionable,” Hallan said.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan has said the government’s claim that other immigration avenues remain open to Afghans is “deceptive.”

“That is just a rejection,” she said.

Ministry working ‘as quickly as possible’

On behalf of IRCC, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser’s office said it could not comment on the 12 applicants’ cases for privacy reasons. 

The ministry said it’s received 15,210 applications under the special program, and has approved about two-thirds of them so far.

“We are working to process applications as quickly as possible,” wrote Aidan Strickland, the minister’s spokesperson, noting the resettlement initiative for Afghans is uniquely challenging.

Strickland said the eligibility requirements are meant “to be as inclusive as possible,” and can include cooks, drivers and other staff who helped Canada’s military.

“We have accomplished much, but there is still more work to be done,” she wrote.

The office did not say whether it will reopen the program.

Source: ‘Waiting for our death’: Afghan military lawyers beg Canada for help to escape

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

[Canadian] Military failing to remove barriers to diversifying ranks: ombudsman

2022/05/18 Leave a comment

Long-standing challenge:

Canada’s military ombudsman is joining the chorus of those accusing the Canadian Armed Forces and Defence Department of failing to address long-standing barriers to recruit and retain more women, visible minorities and Indigenous people.

Gregory Lick says in a new report that the military and department have adopted numerous initiatives over the last 20 years to increase the share of Armed Forces members who come from those underrepresented groups.

The moves followed several human-rights decisions and the passage of employment equity laws, amid a growing disconnect between the makeup of the military, predominantly composed of white males, and the rest of the country’s population.

Yet the ombudsman found those initiatives resulted in little progress on increasing representation from underrepresented groups, with the military consistently falling far short of its own targets.

“I am adamant that in order to not repeat the same mistakes, the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces need to do things differently,” Lick said in a statement Monday.

“Fresh and creative thinking is required. Rehashing former initiatives simply will not cut it. Period. We will continue to monitor developments within the defence community in order to inform our own next steps on this matter.”

The ombudsman’s report comes weeks after a panel of retired Armed Forces members released the results of its own review, which took the military to task for not acting on dozens of previous studies and reviews of racism in the organization.

The scathing anti-racism report, which followed a yearlong review ordered by then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan, also accused the military of not doing enough to detect and prevent white supremacists and other extremists from infiltrating its ranks.

Lick’s review, also requested by Sajjan, looked at efforts to increase the share of women, visible minorities and Indigenous people in the Defence Department and military since becoming subject to employment equity laws in 1997 and 2002, respectively.

It specifically noted the military’s failure to make any real progress toward its various targets, which include having 25.1 per cent of all Armed Forces members be women, 11.8 per cent be visible minorities and 3.5 per cent Indigenous people.

“Despite the CAF’s efforts over the past 19 years, the percentage of women members stagnated until 2019, when a one-per-cent increase brought that representation level to 16 per cent of all CAF members,” the report reads.

“The limited increase in Aboriginal peoples (2.8 per cent) and visible minority members (9.6 per cent) has not been sufficient to keep up with Canadian demographics,” it adds.

The report goes on to note that not only has the Armed Forces failed to achieve its targets, but that those targets have been repeatedly criticized by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and others as far too low given the country’s changing composition.

The Defence Department reported more success in terms of diversifying its civilian workforce, but nonetheless faced many of the same challenges.

The ombudsman reported that his office had received 931 complaints relating to recruitment and 879 complaints involving promotions or career advancement since 2010. Another 189 workplace discrimination complaints were received.

“While designated employment equity groups did not submit all these complaints and not all would have been deemed to be unfair, these numbers show that the DND and CAF face challenges to the provision of fair and equitable employment,” he wrote.

The ombudsman noted numerous barriers to the recruitment of Armed Forces members from the designated groups had been reported over the years, including language requirements, security-clearance delays and a lack of representation among recruiters.

The review also noted that because military personnel have to start at the bottom and work their way up, fixing the recruitment process is a critical first step. Concerns were nonetheless also identified around retention and promotions.

Lick emphasized the importance of addressing the problem given what he described as a growing need for a diverse force that reflects Canadian society and is able to operate in new and innovative ways.

“With the CAF currently operating at a deficit of approximately 10,000 to 12,000 regular and reserve force members and thousands of positions unfilled in the civilian ranks, a crisis is slowly emerging,” he said.

“Critical to the ongoing success of the DND and the CAF is ensuring that people of diverse backgrounds consider a career in these organizations and see themselves reflected in their mandates.”

While past reports and reviews have proposed a number of measures to address the problems, Lick echoed the anti-racism panel’s findings about a lack of action, saying: “It is unclear whether the CAF has implemented all these initiatives.”

Although Defence Minister Anita Anand was given four weeks to respond to the ombudsman’s report before its public release, Lick said he had yet to receive a response. The Defence Department did not immediately comment Monday.

Source: Military failing to remove barriers to diversifying ranks: ombudsman

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