On August 8, 2025, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a new compensation and benefits package for Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members including a pay raise between 20% and 8% depending on rank, as well as several allowances (i.e. financial incentives) for stressed occupations, instructors, frequent postings, and deployments to domestic and international operations. These investments are “part of the strategic investments to meet NATO’s 2% defence spending target this year and invest 5% of annual GDP in defence by 2035”
At the same time, these initiatives aim to address some of the CAF’s personnel challenges, including a shortage of about 16,000 members or 15% of the total force, which prompted the recent modernization of the recruiting system, an overdue measure that enabled the CAF to meet and even surpass their 2025 recruiting goal, for the first time in many years. All these are all steps in the right direction, however, as they say, the devil lies in the details, and as the CAF roll out these important initiatives over the course of the next twelve months, there are some key points to keep in mind.
To begin, any new personnel measures should be considered and implemented wholistically in the context of recruitment, training, and retention. Although there are thousands of Canadian citizens and, since October 2022, Permanent Residents of Canada who apply every year to join the Canadian military, they face many obstacles and delays, including obtaining security clearances and accessing training. Some applicants may be waiting over a year to get recruited, and once they cross that bridge and complete basic training, they may be awaiting trades training for several months or longer. These delays in turn may trigger early attrition. While implementing these new financial measures will incentivize existing CAF members to serve longer and help to attract new applicants, the CAF must also address the recruiting and training bottlenecks by continuing to streamline the application and security screening process and increasing training capacity.
Secondly, communication is key for the success of any new initiative. Therefore, the new compensation and benefits package for the CAF must be widely advertised throughout mainstream media, social media and outreach activities, targeting a variety of specific groups such as Permanent Residents to Canada who, as mentioned, are now eligible to apply to join the military. Often immigrants find the Canadian job market challenging particularly at times of economic uncertainty, so the CAF can be seen as an employer of choice for eligible newcomers as well as for members of allied militaries who wish to immigrate to Canada and “laterally transfer” to the CAF. Indeed, research on immigrants in the military, shows that recruiting newcomers is an opportunity to bring much needed human capital and greater diversity to the CAF.
Thirdly, the CAF clearly have a complex problem to resolve regarding personnel. Hence, it is essential to continue to think outside the box to increase their numbers and retain current members. In that light we should ask, what else can the CAF do that has not been tried before? Given the current shortage of uniformed personnel the CAF should consider increasing the use of civilians for certain support positions such as finance, clerical, staffing, training instructors, and other roles, in line with the objective of “Strengthening the Canadian Forces and Civilian Capacity” as stated in the new Defence Strategy Our North, Strong and Free.
Another consideration for the CAF, as they embark on these new endeavors, is to continue striving for improvements while also keeping an eye on the horizon. It is essential for defence to monitor the implementation of these new initiative to measure their effectiveness, identify areas for enhancements, and assess what is working well and what is not working. Establishing a performance measurement framework for these new CAF initiatives would be an appropriate mechanism to accomplish this objective.
Lastly, the CAF like many large organizations, historically have not done a very good job at learning lessons from the past to inform the future. To this end, the CAF should have teams dedicated to constantly scanning the external environment and looking at the future, as well as learning from others, including allied militaries, external experts and researchers. Organizational learning in Defence is important for our military to stay relevant and abreast of change so that our soldiers, sailors and air personnel, can effectively keep defending Canada and its interest at home and abroad.
Dr. Grazia (Grace) Scoppio is a Professor in the Department of Defence Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC), is cross-appointed in the Queen’s University Department of Political Studies, and is a fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen’s.
The views expressed in this op-ed are the author’s/authors’ own and do not necessarily represent those of the Institute or its staff.
