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The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has failed to recruit and train enough personnel to meet its operational requirements, a new report from the auditor general says.
Between April 2022 and March 2025, the Forces received roughly 192,000 applications to serve — but just one in 13 applicants made it through the recruitment pipeline. More than half of those who applied either stopped responding to CAF recruiters or voluntarily withdrew their applications within 60 days.
During that three-year interval, the CAF planned to recruit nearly 20,000 new recruits, but ended up recruiting about 15,000.
The numbers reflect the Forces’ ongoing struggle to recruit talent — which has real implications for the Forces’ ability to function.
“The continuing gaps in Canadian Armed Forces personnel could affect [its] abilities to respond to threats, emergencies, or conflicts and to accomplish their missions,” says Auditor-General Karen Hogan’s report, published Oct. 21.
What is more, the CAF is unsure why so many people are backing out of the recruitment process after initially expressing an interest.
“The Canadian Armed Forces did not always know why applicants abandoned their applications during the recruitment process,” the report says.
‘Ineffective and disjointed’
The auditor general’s investigation found that the CAF’s recruitment and training systems remain mired in inefficiency and poor governance.
“We found ineffective decision making for recruitment and training,” says the report. “Committees and groups managing recruitment and training activities lacked authority and clear accountability, leading to disjointed ownership of the recruiting process.”
The report found that IT systems meant to support recruitment and training were not linked, forcing staff to manually input data and slowing down application processing.
The report also found that while the CAF increased its diversity in some areas — recruiting more Indigenous and visible-minority members — the proportion of women in uniform remained below the CAF’s target of 25 per cent.
Beyond weak recruitment, the report highlights a deeper crisis: the CAF is losing trained members faster than it can replace them.
“While recruitment improved over the audit period, the Canadian Armed Forces did not bring in enough new recruits to replace the people who left,” the report says.
The report warns that attrition and under-recruitment has created chronic staffing gaps across key occupations, including pilots and ammunition technicians, threatening long-term operational readiness.
Capacity stretched thin
The CAF’s training system is also failing to keep pace with the demand of applicants who do make it through the military’s selection screening.
The Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School, responsible for basic military training, was operating at just 80 per cent capacity as of March 2025, due to instructor shortages and heavy workloads.
“We also found that as of March 31, 2024, there was not enough equipment to carry out training operations,” says the report.
In response to persistent training delays and high dropout rates, the CAF introduced several changes during the audit period. The Canadian Forces Aptitude Test — which assessed job applicants’ verbal, spatial and problem-solving skills — was eliminated. A new Scored Employment Application Form was introduced as an alternative screening tool that focuses on an applicant’s education and work experience.
Medical standards were also updated to align eligibility requirements for new recruits with those already serving.
But the fitness standards of people already serving in CAF are raising concerns. In 2019, 72 per cent of CAF personnel were either overweight or obese, Canadian Affairs reported in August.
“The Armed Forces’ readiness level right now is amongst the lowest it’s been in probably 50 years,” Lt.-Gen. (Ret’d) Andrew Leslie told Canadian Affairs at the time.
“And if your people aren’t fit to go … then they’re not of much use to you,” said Leslie, who commanded the Canadian Army from 2006 to 2010, at the height of the war in Afghanistan.
In her report, the auditor general said it was too soon to measure whether the CAF’s reforms have improved recruitment outcomes.
Strategic implications
The recruitment shortfall adds to growing uncertainty about the military’s ability to meet its commitments abroad.
The CAF is currently deployed in Latvia under Operation Reassurance, trains Ukrainian troops under Operation Unifier, and has expanded its presence in the Pacific region with Operations Horizon and Neon.
Defence analysts have warned that without personnel growth, Canada’s ability to sustain these missions — or contribute to new ones — will erode. NATO allies want Canada to take on more responsibilities in ensuring global security, but Ottawa is currently limited in what it can do abroad, geopolitical analyst Jonathan Berkshire Miller told Canadian Affairs in July.
“I think the challenge is purely resources-wise,” said Miller.
“Until we start ramping up more recruitment — to really make [Canada’s contributions] much bigger would be challenging.”
