By Scott Taylor
For months now the senior leadership of the Canadian military have been bemoaning the crippling shortfall of personnel in the ranks.
Before a parliamentary committee last year Chief of the Defence Staff, General Wayne Eyre acknowledged that there are currently 16,500 vacant positions from a Canadian Armed Forces', combined regular & reserve authorized strength of 101,000.
The reason for this crisis is a combination of the CAF's failure to attract recruits while simultaneously failing to retain trained personnel.
For those who follow the affairs of the CAF closely it will be understood that General Eyre's numbers are somewhat misleading. When you factor in all those serving personnel who are currently on sick leave, stress leave, maternity leave, paternity leave, retirement leave and those personnel recruited but still awaiting trades training, those numbers make things far worse in reality than in Eyre's briefing notes.
The lack of experienced, trained technical staff means that ships' companies cannot put to sea, planes lack pilots and vehicles are inoperable due to maintenance delays. All of this leads to frustration and burn-out for veteran service members and as a result they are retiring early.
However, things are not bleak across the board as all 138, permanent and temporary, General Officer & Flag Officer (GOFO) positions remain staffed at 100%. As the bottom falls out of the CAF at the rank and file level, the top offices remain filled to the brim.
Clearly the government realizes that even a casual observer will question that bloated ratio of GOFO's to the dwindling number of troops they still command.
On the official Government of Canada website it states, "The Canadian Armed Forces is structured to have 631 Regular Force members per 1 GOFO, which makes us lighter at the top when compared to like-sized military forces of some of our closest Commonwealth Allies."
This is a classic example of, well to be blunt, horseshit. Our closest ally is the USA and in 2017 their military had 900 GOFO's for a force of 1.3 million service members which is a ratio of 1:1,400. The US Marine Corps has just 62 GOFO's for some 180,000 Jarheads which is an impressive ratio of almost 1 GOFO per 3,000 marines. The British press recently questioned why their Army was commanded by 53 General officers when the troop strength had dropped to 70,000. That would be a ratio of 1 GOFO per 1,300 British soldiers.
So no, we are not 'lighter at the top' than our allies as the government website claims. Quite the opposite is true. The worst part about this top heavy structure of the Canadian military is that this is not a new problem.
Back in 1995, in the wake of the Somalia Scandal which had shone a public spotlight on the darker reality of the CAF, citizens questioned why Canada had 96 GOFO's for a military with only 65,000 regular force personnel.
The Liberal government of the day had been quick to disband the entire Canadian Airborne Regiment overnight, but in the case of the bloated command structure they set a goal of 1 GOFO per 1,000 personnel, to be achieved through natural attrition.
Fast forward nearly three decades and that 96 is now 138 and while authorized a regular force strength of 71,000, the actual number is less than 60,000. This means that despite a passage of time which extends beyond that of a full military career, that attrition morphed into addition.
Given that the just released Defence Policy Update (DPU) does not project the CAF addressing the present personnel shortfall before 2032, it is time to drastically slash the bloated leadership of the CAF.
Later this summer, the retirement of General Eyre will open the door for the Liberals to start making good on that reduction through attrition that they promised.
Given the reduced size of the CAF, the next CDS should remain a Lt-General (aka a 3 star general rather than a full 4 star General).
This would set in motion a pattern where-in the 11 current Lt-General positions would be reduced to that of a two star Major-General as the incumbent retires.
Our NATO allies do not care how much gold braid our generals wear on their hats. They care about how much actual combat capability we can deliver. And right now that isn't much.
