Cory Morgan: Shunning of ‘Warrior Culture’ in Canada’s Military Must End

Commentary

Canada’s reinvestment into its Armed Forces was long overdue, and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announced plan to increase defence spending to 5 percent of the GDP by 2025 was welcome. Canada has long faced criticism from NATO allies for its refusal to meet the defence spending obligation of 2 percent of the GDP.

Canada’s military has been working with antiquated equipment and low budgets for a long time. Canadian troops deployed to Poland in 2023 were forced to seek out their own food sources while on duty. When we can’t even feed our forces when they are on deployment, we have serious issues.

Many of the Canadian military’s issues can be fixed through an injection of funds to purchase new equipment and update infrastructure. One area that needs more than simply money, however, is personnel. The Canadian Armed Forces faced a shortage of up to 14,000 personnel even before the plans to more than triple spending were announced. They will presumably need to recruit and train tens of thousands of new members in the next few years if they hope to meet their targets.

If the culture within the Armed Forces isn’t quickly reformed, however, the chances of recruiting and maintaining enough members will be slim.

Canada in recent times has not been a nation with a strong military culture. While Canada contributed greatly during the World Wars and many troops made the ultimate sacrifice in regions such as Afghanistan, the military during peacetime has been treated as an afterthought by governments and citizens alike. Young people don’t tend to see military service as a potential career choice, and it isn’t strongly promoted as one. In the United States, recruiters target high school and university graduates with promises of adventure and free training in trades. In Canada, it’s tough to spot recruitment drives, and prospective recruits don’t know where to start. The Canadian Armed Forces must begin to actively campaign to draw new members, and they will need a good pitch to draw them in.

Polling by Angus Reid found that if a war were to break out, while 55 percent of people aged 54 and over say they would enlist to fight for the country, only 43 percent of those under 34 say they would do so. There is a marked decline in a sense of patriotic obligation among the younger generation. While it’s great that older Canadians still maintain a sense of duty should a war occur, it will be the younger people the nation will need. We need them to enlist in peacetime.

Those who do choose to join the military often find themselves unsatisfied with their decision. A leaked report written in April found that nearly 10 percent of recruits quit within their first year of service. Training is bottlenecked, and troops feel undervalued.

The priorities of the forces don’t align with those who have joined. The report noted: “Interview evidence shows that there is a perception leadership is prioritizing culture change over critical operational needs like ammunition and equipment.” While the military has gone out of its way to ensure items such as tampons are provided in men’s washrooms, it only recently decided to replace the World War II-era sidearms its members use. Which items are more important on a battlefield?

Canada has earned a reputation as having the “wokest military on earth.” While this reputation may earn applause from academics and peaceniks, it drives people away from considering enlisting. It takes a certain type of person to commit years of their lives to a duty that may take them away from friends and family and drop them into life-threatening situations. That kind of person is not typically the type who wants to fret about appropriate gender pronoun use or quotas for minorities. If they wanted that sort of environment, they would go to any of Canada’s post-secondary institutions.

Indeed, when the military reluctantly rolled back some of its “woke” policies, such as gender-neutral dress codes and allowing long hair, it improved the morale among serving members. Armed Forces members are seeking structure, training, consistency, and discipline. They know their lives may depend upon it, and they won’t stay if they can’t get it.

Lt.-Gen. (ret’d) Michel Maisonneuve wrote that the forces need a meritocracy rather than wokeness and that efforts to shun a warrior culture must stop if the military is to become effective.

Prime Minister Carney must clarify the mandate of the Canadian Armed Forces. Traditional military practices and training must return. If senior bureaucrats within the forces refuse to change, they must be replaced. There isn’t time or room to work incrementally to heal the ailing culture within the Armed Forces.

If the culture of the military doesn’t change, recruitment efforts will fail, and morale among existing members will continue to decline. The Canadian Armed Forces won’t improve under the new spending but will just become a more expensive and dysfunctional entity.

Hopefully, Carney knows that money alone isn’t the answer when it comes to Canada’s military services.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.