QUESTION PERIOD — National Defence
Retention and Recruitment of Members
June 12, 2025
Leader, in the run-up to the NATO summit, the government is rushing to announce new defence spending. However, as usual over the past decade, it is throwing money at problems of its own making.
The Prime Minister spoke briefly about recruitment and retention, promising to increase pay and modernize the process, without offering any details.
However, as Bill Blair acknowledged:
Over the past three years, more people have left than have entered. That is, frankly, a death spiral . . . . We’ve got to do something differently.
Why hasn’t the Prime Minister said what he is going to do differently to solve this fundamental problem?
This government is committed to ongoing support for our Armed Forces and our capacity to protect ourselves in a way never before seen in Canadian history. To do that, it will adopt measures that address not only recruitment, but also retention of Armed Forces personnel. Among other things, that includes appropriate salaries that will incentivize Canadians to join our Armed Forces or to keep working to protect us. As I explained recently, more measures will be announced in the weeks and months to come.
Leader, the Prime Minister can talk all he likes about billions of dollars for defence, but the Canadian Armed Forces are still up to 15,000 short of a fully operational force. Furthermore, almost 50% of their equipment is considered unusable.
How can Canadians trust a government that, back in 2017, promised to increase the size of the Regular Force to 71,500, but is still far from reaching that goal?
Thank you for your question. Time prevents us from reminding senators about the backstory of military spending, not only under the previous government, but also under other governments before it. After dropping to less than 1% of our GDP, military spending has increased over the past 10 years. The government is going to continue making historic and targeted investments to effectively protect us.
