The Canadian military is falling short on recruiting and training enough members to meet this country’s operational requirements, a new audit finds.
Amid a renewed recruitment push and massive spending commitment from the federal government, a report tabled in the House of Commons this morning from Auditor General Karen Horgan found that while thousands apply annually, on average, only around one in 13 applicants end up starting basic training.
Between 2022 and 2025, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) planned to recruit more than 19,700 new members. During this time frame, close to 192,000 people applied, and they ended up recruiting around 15,000.
The audit found that the military wasn’t fully tracking why thousands of candidates dropped out or did not complete the recruitment process, and while the military aimed to have a recruitment time between 100 and 150 days, it often took twice as long.
Even if they had met the recruitment targets, the CAF “did not have sufficient basic training capacity to meet demand.” In the last year, while the military managed to increase the number of cohorts and brought in temporary instructors to train the uptick in candidates, the CAF acknowledged “this was not a sustainable way to train new recruits.”
Further, the report found that the CAF is experiencing a challenge of attracting and training enough “highly skilled recruits” to reach full staffing levels for some key occupations, such as pilots and ammunition technicians. Compounding this, the military “did not fully account for trained and effective members leaving.”
Other challenges the audit identified were that the IT systems being used for training and recruitment were not linked and required significant manual data entry; there was a growing backlog of pending security quality checks, and the military is still under its targets for recruiting women and permanent residents.
The CAF has an authorized staffing level of 71,500 regular force members and 30,000 primary reserve members. As of April, Canada had 65,154 regular force members and 23,561 reservists.
This summer, in an effort to boost recruitment and retention, Prime Minister Mark Carney committed to a series of salary increases and a boost to entry-level pay for members of the armed forces. This spending pledge is part of the Liberals’ plans to spend $9.3 billion in new military investment in order bring Canada’s defence spending within reach of the two per cent NATO target.
At the time, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan said the pay enhancements should help Canada reach a full-strength complement of troops before 2030.
Hogan acknowledged that the CAF did implement changes intended to increase the number of recruits during the audit period — which her team was unable to measure the impact of — but still concluded that until the military is able to consistently attract and retain troops, it could continue to affect the forces’ ability to “respond to threats… and accomplish their missions.”
Not managing military housing needs
Potentially further challenging the military’s ability to staff up and stay that way, a second report out Tuesday as part of the auditor general’s fall reports found that the Department of National Defence (DND) is also falling short on providing enough, and adequate military housing.
Hogan found that the department is “not managing living accommodations in a way that meets operational requirements or responds to the needs of Canadian Armed Forces members and their families.”
This conclusion was the result of a series of shortcomings identified by the auditor general’s office during their detailed examinations of three of the CAF’s 27 bases: a Royal Canadian Navy base in Esquimalt, B.C., a Canadian Army base in Gagetown, N.B. and a Royal Canadian Air Force base in Trenton, Ont.
Among the findings:
• Many quarters were in “poor physical condition” at all three bases, such as failing to meet standards for living space resulting in overcrowding, as and the lack of modern amenities like WiFi.
• Across 32 buildings at these bases, auditors found 227 “high-priority” repairs, including “significant issues” such as lacking potable water or properly functioning sanitary waste systems.”
• DND does not maintain reliable information about its quarters, including the number and location of beds.
Also, the Canadian Forces Housing Agency — responsible for managing residential housing units on bases — has not planned to meet growing housing needs.
According to the independent audit, back in 2019, DND said they’d need an additional 5,200 to 7,200 residential housing units, but the Agency’s plans to build more still left a gap of “at least 3,800 units.”
In the last year, DND has begun implementing stable funding to the Agency to build more and renovate existing units, while also looking at bulk leasing and reserving market rentals to address the shortage, however the report found these efforts are “at different stages of implementation.”
An example of how this played out in real time is that in the spring, there were just 205 residential housing units available, and more than 3,700 applicants on waitlists.
These issues strike at an overarching concern Hogan identifies from the outset of the report, that with military members forced to move frequently, it is “important fort their morale and well-being,” that they can access housing in good condition.
The department and the military were made aware of the audits’ findings ahead of Tuesday’s release — both reports resurfacing some longstanding issues that have previously been identified — and the government has agreed to make changes.
Federal officials will be speaking to Hogan’s latest audits this afternoon in the House of Commons foyer.
‘We have work to do,’ defence minister says
Responding to Hogan’s findings, Defence Minister David McGuinty said he has visited several bases over the last several months, and has spoken with servicemembers who call them home, and acknowledged “we have work to do.”Noting the current Liberal government has made the single largest investment in the Canadian Armed Forces in a generation, McGuinty said the work has already begun to address the issues identified in these audits.
According to the government, among the examples of steps being taken to improve the housing situation, is the allocation of funding to construct up to 1,400 new residential housing units and renovate another 2,500 existing units across the country, as well as the development of a new national compliance and oversight framework to be in place by March 2027.
“We have to invest in core infrastructure,” McGuinty said. “Which is exactly what we’re doing. This is long overdue. For decades now, governments, successively, have not been making the investments we need to make in our armed forces. We’re doing that.”
In terms of recruitment, the CAF said that the last year it surpassed its goal for enrolling new regular force members, has implemented a series of “modernization initiatives,” and is working on rolling out further allowances to attract and retain more skilled trainers.
“We know that we have to invest in the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces if we want to recruit them and we want to retain them. We know that the better the conditions of living, not just housing, but childcare and dental and medical, things we’re investing in, the higher performing they are,” McGuinty said. “We want a high-performing military. We have one, we’re getting there.”
