According to three Canadian military veterans, the Canadian Armed Forces are in crisis, and the government’s recent push towards Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has a share in the blame.
In an interview with Canadian psychologist and author Dr. Jordan Peterson, three retired CAF veterans spoke about the state of the military and how DEI policies are contributing to low levels of retention and recruitment.
“The global security situation we find ourselves in is eroding rapidly. This is another aspect of what I would describe as…a sense of ‘it’s not really affecting us’ on the part of the machinery of government,” Mark Norman, a retired Vice Admiral of the Royal Canadian Navy, said in the over an hour-and-a-half long video.
Norman retired after 39 years of service and thinks there are many problems the military faces today.
“We have broader issues with respect to equipment, purchase, procurement, maintenance, and these are all combining to create what I believe is a genuine crisis,” he said. “Add to that external concerns around the credibility not of the individual soldier, sailor or aviator inside the armed forces but of the institution.”
Norman noted that the government still hasn’t achieved its commitment to its NATO allies of spending 2% of its GDP on defence each year. He also questioned the military’s capability to help its international partners, a role he thinks is a key mandate of the CAF.
“We have an organization that has been chronically underfunded and undersupported for decades. This has been episodic but constant throughout my entire time in uniform, and I’m sure my friends here would agree,” he said, speaking of the other two veterans on the panel.
Lieutenant-General J.O. Michel Maisonneuve retired after 35 years of service, and his wife Barbara Maisonneuve, a 21-year Royal Canadian Air Force veteran, agreed that there are significant problems facing the organization they had all dedicated their lives to serving.
“We tried DEI. How’s that working out for us?” Barbara said. “Not great. We’re still way down 16,000 in personnel (of an estimated 100,000).”
“In wartime, at 15% (below capacity), your unit is no longer combat capable; your unit has to be pulled back,” J.O. Michel added. “So you could say that the armed forces are not combat capable.”
Norman added that the situation may be bleaker than that.
“Even though you might be at 85%, of that 85%, a bunch of them are unavailable for a variety of reasons, from medical to administrative,” he said.
A 20% shortfall faced by the CAF today.
J.O. Michel added that a large amount of the shortage is in the militaries center core such as warrents, sergeants, lieutenants and captains, roles that take decades to achieve.
“So even if you recruit 16,000 people tomorrow… It’s going to take the time to get there,” J.O Michel said.
He added that other specialized occupations, such as technicians and fighter pilots, would also take a lot of time to train, the later facing shortages for years. and considers.
Barbara blamed the attrition on the top-down culture change, which targeted the armed forces’ ‘warrior culture.’
“If there’s one place you want to have a warrior culture, wouldn’t it be in your Canadian Forces?” she said. “Now we’re implementing the DEI. We’re targeting this quota of (‘diverse’ people’), so there are my four fighter pilots who are lined up and want to join, and they don’t even get a medical appointment because (there’s) quotas to fill.”
Peterson agreed, saying the DEI quotas, which hire anyone who’s not straight, white or male over the former, are shrinking the pool of potential candidates for those positions.
Norman suggested that Canada’s military underfunding stems from Canada’s various governments’ continued overreliance on the U.S. military for defence over the decades and the concept that an invasion of Canada is highly unlikely.
J.O. Michel said security is more critical now than in recent years.
“It’s a perfect storm, that the international security environment has completely changed where we never thought we’d ever have a state-on-state war again. There are rogue nations out there that are trying economically and a lot of other ways, eventually, perhaps militarily, are going to try to have the upper hand,” J.O Michel said. “The international situation is forcing people across the world to look at their security situation.”
The panellists agreed that the security a well-funded and well-manned military provides transcends traditional physical threats of war.
The three are calling on men and women to join the armed forces to defend the nation and the high quality of life Canadians enjoy compared to the rest of the world.
“We still enjoy an incredible level of privilege in our lifestyles, and that is dependent on a whole series of international systems, and those international systems are all under threat,” Norman said. “They’re under threat from a military, political, economic and sociological perspective. And the more that we erode our ability to protect those systems, the more vulnerable we become.”