2025 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada Recruiting for Canada’s Military
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today to discuss our report on recruiting for Canada’s military, which was tabled last October. I’d like to begin by recognizing that we are meeting on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. With me today are Gabriel Lombardi, the principal who was responsible for the audit, and Mohamed Ayachi, the director who led the audit team.
In this audit, we looked at whether the Canadian Armed Forces recruited and trained enough members to meet its operational requirements.
The Canadian Armed Forces set a goal of recruiting just over 19,700 new members between 2022 and 2025 but fell short by about 25%. While tens of thousands applied, only 1 in 13 were successfully recruited and made it to basic training. Some applicants were rejected by the Forces, but we found that a high number of candidates withdrew or abandoned their applications. The Forces did not analyze why this happened during the recruitment process. Without understanding why applicants are dropping out, the Forces does not know what changes are needed to increase the number of successful candidates.
Furthermore, the IT systems used to support recruitment and training activities contributed to inefficiencies and delays. As these systems were not interconnected, applicants had to provide information more than once, and staff had to manually enter large amounts of data.
While the Forces implemented changes to increase the number of recruits, these were introduced late in our audit period. As a result, it was too early to assess the impacts of these changes on recruitment levels.
The audit also looked at the demographics of those recruited by the Canadian Armed Forces. We found that it had strategies and programs to attract a diverse group of Canadians. While it exceeded its employment equity recruitment goals for the representation of Indigenous peoples and visible minorities, the representation of women continued to fall short.
We also found that the Forces did not have enough training capacity to cover its recruitment targets as there is a shortage of equipment, instructors, and facilities. In 2025, temporary instructors were hired to train additional cohorts, but according to the Forces, this approach is not sustainable.
Without enough highly skilled recruits, including pilots and ammunition technicians, the army, navy, and air force will struggle to respond effectively to threats, emergencies, and conflicts.
Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you.