What’s Stopping Canadians from Joining the Military?

What is driving Canada's ongoing military recruitment and retention crisis, and how can the CAF address the challenges that are preventing it from meeting its personnel needs in an increasingly unstable global security environment?

In this Expert Series episode, Charlotte Duval-Lantoine outlines the underlying causes of the CAF’s personnel crisis: outdated recruitment processes and delayed security clearances for permanent residents, to poor housing, healthcare access, and dissatisfaction with career management are keeping personnel processing numbers low despite an uptick in public interest. Charlotte emphasizes that fixing the problem isn’t just about funding—it requires political will, cultural change, and personnel policies that reflect modern realities.

“Every time we have this conversation [on eligibility criteria], we tend to cling to an older idea of the military and say we're lowering standards. [In WWII,] the physical test was, can you run properly, do you have healthy teeth? Standards were very different. We need to ask ourselves: are we expecting a military strength that is like what we see in Hollywood movies?”

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