By Michael Blais CD
Recruitment for the Canadian Armed Forces has clearly reached a critical level. All three service branches are being affected. The Royal Canadian Navy recently initiated the one-year term of service known as the Navy Experience Program (NEP) in an attempt to address their personnel shortfall. At present, 16,500 positions remained unfilled out of a combined Regular & Reserve force authorized strength of 105,000.
Over the last six months, the government has taken a number of extraordinary steps to encourage Canadians to consider a career in the military. Some of these steps include efforts to resolve the endemic, long term plague of sexual misconduct at all rank levels. This effort is based upon the implementation of Charter of Rights-driven measures which are designed to foster culture change.
I am certain that we can all agree upon the notion that sexual assault has no place among our honourable band of brothers and sisters. However, the measures regarding cultural evolution have certainly created a deep division between traditionalists and those who now consider themselves to be woke.
The traditionalists, including myself, joined the military out of patriotism and we proudly embraced the unique concepts of uniformity and service-before-self. Many of us feel that this new direction has undermined the uniformity standards which we once cherished, and our past service has now been deemed to be culturally unworthy. In other words, we have become dinosaurs.
By current standards I am indeed a dinosaur, having served two tours in West Germany during the Cold War and a UN Peacekeeping tour in Cyprus in 1985. I can assure Esprit de Corps readers that The Royal Canadian Regiment (and other proud units) fostered a strong sense of regimental identity through our uniformity in appearance, deportment and drill.
Back in those days, moustache and hair protocols were strictly enforced, and beards were the sole preserve of the battalion’s pioneer platoon. These trademark beards were considered to be an honorific earned in recognition of the pioneers’ long and proud history.
Many of us dinosaurs consider the term ‘military cultural evolution’ abhorrent. As a result, we feel that the Liberal government’s extraordinary changes to dress and deportment standards, with the focus on diversity, has destroyed the core standards necessary to field a professional armed force.
Canadian society may have evolved considerably since the Charter of Rights was adopted, but the fundamental elements of war have not: they remain mission, team, self.
I feel replacing long-standing military uniformity standards – which have served this nation well in war and peace since before confederation – with civilian standards will be self-defeating and will foster ridicule from our allies.
What difference have these changes made to date? Did allowing members to break free of the traditional military persona and instead embrace their individuality result in a surge of new diverse recruits, eager to embody the envisioned standards dictated by ‘cultural
evolution’?
How have these changes impacted retention? Have they perhaps created an adverse response among those who joined seeking to achieve those military standards traditionally associated with professional armed forces? What about those traditionalists who believe the military has become a tragic laughing stock under the Liberal government and are releasing because of it?
Time will tell, but frankly, I’m not optimistic that the result will be a positive one.
Desperate measures by DND have not been limited to damage control of the recruitment challenge created through years of sexual assault incidents at even the highest levels of the CAF. Citizenship requirements have been drastically reformed and now those living in Canada as non-Canadian permanent residents, as well as their children, are eligible to enlist.
For me, this is of concern on two levels. First, how can we expect someone to make the ultimate sacrifice for a country of which they are not yet a citizen? Second, wouldn’t there be a potential loyalty conflict should a Canadian military deployment be into the birth nation of this permanent resident? While DND claimed that over 1,400 permanent residents applied within a month last November, we have no numbers on how many were accepted, or if this surge has had any impact in reducing the overall personnel shortage. Time will tell.
I wonder if things are improving or actually growing more desperate. It seems that Canadians, instead of responding favourably to these efforts at cultural evolution, continue to look upon the military with ever greater distrust. To illustrate how dire things have become, at the end of May, it was reported that groups of school students from four high schools in Nova Scotia united and petitioned their school board to remove DND recruiters from their schools.
These students have taken to protesting whenever recruiters show up at their school. They designed and distributed a pamphlet entitled Top ten reasons not to enlist. Surely these actions are precedent-setting and counterproductive to recruiting in Nova Scotia. As reported in The Coast, the general theme of the students’ arguments, is that the military ‘promotes violence’ and ‘enables the exploitation of young people.’
The ultimate irony is that the Liberal government has finally ordered new frigates to replace the current fleet and will spend billions of dollars replacing the antiquated fleet of CF-18 fighter jets with state-of-the-art F-35 Strike Fighters.
It will be a terrible shame if when this new hardware is delivered, we don’t have the personnel capable of operating them. Eh?
