It seems the recruits are not what they used to be at the Canadian Forces. Even though the Forces need 4,000 new people a year to fill the ranks, they just can鈥檛 get the kind of recruits who once walked through the door.
An audit by the Defence Department has found that the military is taking on recruits who are less motivated, less educated and less fit. Canadians are not fighting in Afghanistan any more, but we still want to know that the men and women who are on the front lines of disaster relief, peacekeeping or any other emergency are up to the job.
The military has long experience of turning out-of-shape civilians into fit soldiers, so the overweight ones will shape up, particularly since the Forces started sending them to 鈥渇at camp鈥� before basic training. But the education and motivation problems aren鈥檛 as easily fixed.
What happened? Young males from rural communities were once the backbone of the military, but these days they are in shorter supply. If they鈥檙e from the Prairies, the young men probably have jobs in oil and gas. And with the aging workforce, there are proportionally fewer young people of any description.
The auditors aren鈥檛 sure of the solution to the recruit problem. They refer vaguely to 鈥渢he changing expectations regarding the nature of work among the 17- to 29-year-olds.鈥� Do they mean kids these days are lazy? That old line won鈥檛 fly.
The military is making do with candidates of lesser quality in the short term, but in the long term, it has to find a way to make careers more attractive to fit, educated, motivated young Canadians.
