OTTAWA — Chief of the defence staff Gen. Wayne Eyre has ordered an immediate halt to all non-essential activities in favour of boosting military recruitment and retention, as the Canadian Armed Forces faces an unprecedented personnel crisis.
Eyre issued the sweeping order to senior commanders across the country on Thursday, saying dramatic action is needed to ensure the military has the troops to respond to growing demands and threats at home and abroad.
“I am concerned that as the threats to the world’s security situation increase, as threats at home increase, our readiness is going down,” Eyre told a parliamentary committee after issuing his order.
“I’m very, very worried about our numbers. And that’s why we’re putting as a priority effort — the priority effort — the reconstitution of our military.”
The reconstitution order sets a completely new direction for the military after years of high-tempo deployments and operations in Canada and overseas by making the recruitment and retention of personnel its top priority.
Expected for several months, the order follows a period of unprecedented activity by the military. That includes large-scale deployments to Iraq, Mali, Ukraine and Latvia as well as helping with the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters in Canada.
It also coincides with lagging recruitment rates and a shortage of experienced personnel to train new recruits and lead actual missions, which Eyre in his order said “imperil our ability to recruit, train, employ and retain diverse Canadian talent, thus jeopardizing the readiness and long-term health of Canada’s defence capabilities.”
The Armed Forces is supposed to be adding about 5,000 troops to the regular and reserve forces to meet a growing list of demands, but is instead short more than 10,000 trained members — meaning about one in 10 positions are currently vacant.
The problem has become so acute that some senior offers have started using the word “crisis” in interviews with The Canadian Press, including the commander of the navy and the officer responsible for military recruitment and training.
Eyre’s order reflects on the seriousness of the situation, saying: “Owing to personnel and staffing levels that have been compounded by the CAF’s heavy commitment to operations, the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a culture crisis, National Defence continues to lose its ability to deliver and sustain concurrent operations at the scope and scale necessary.”
It also underscored the need for urgency, saying: “The rebuilding process needs to occur on an accelerated timeline given the geopolitical environment that we find ourselves operating within, especially in light of the invasion of Ukraine.”
To that end, the order directs commanders to prioritize fully staffing recruiting centres and training schools and calls for a complete reassessment of the military’s current structure and composition.
Military commanders will take a closer look at what missions and other activities are no longer critical, whether certain positions in their units are no longer needed, and even whether certain recruitment targets are still realistic.
Eyre also opens the door to more flexible working arrangements for service members while emphasizing the continued need to change the military’s culture to better attract and retain women, Indigenous people and other under-represented groups.
“Culture change will remain the top departmental priority throughout the reconstitution process,” the order reads. “This endeavour will require significant resources and a willingness to embrace recommendations from external review authorities.”
The new approach won’t come without risks, which Eyre acknowledged in directing a reduction of large-scale training exercises in favour of more individualized classes as the military focuses on getting enough troops with basic skills into the ranks.
While military commanders have previously underscored the importance of large-scale exercises, the order says Eyre “will be ready to accept the associated reduction in readiness levels using a risk-based approach.”
And while many Armed Forces members join to serve on missions, the defence chief ordered commanders to “strike a balance between providing deployment opportunities to junior members and the need to rebuild our mid-level leader capacity.”
The defence chief indicated the reconstitution effort will take up to eight years, with the immediate goal of growing the force, and working toward the broader objective of ensuring the military’s size and structure are lined up with future needs and missions.
“External events such as major domestic emergencies caused by climate change, economic crises impacting the federal government’s fiscal flexibility, and widespread disinformation campaigns creating a lack of public confidence in national institutions could impede efforts to reconstitute,” he added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 6, 2022.
COTEAU-DU-LAC, Que. – Quebec provincial police are investigating the death of a five-year-old boy found in a home about 55 kilometres southwest of Montreal.
Police say emergency services were called to the home about 3.a.m. in Coteau-du-Lac, Que.
The boy was found unresponsive and his death was confirmed not long after.
Sgt. Marythé Bolduc says investigators are calling the death suspicious but no arrests have been made.
Two other people inside the home were taken to hospital and will meet with investigators when their health condition permits.
Crime scene technicians were at the home today and investigators are looking to speak with people who had seen the child in the past 24 hours.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
TORONTO – There is less and less space on the lawn for the dozens upon dozens of bright white crosses.
The grass between the fire station and the sidewalks on a downtown corner in Sudbury, Ont., is crowded with markers bearing the names of people lost to the opioid overdose crisis.
Too many more are dying.
What started four years ago as a memorial to a local woman’s son has grown so much in size and in the public consciousness that the city has pledged to find space for a permanent installation.
It’s not the only municipality with such plans in Ontario, where opioid toxicity contributes to an estimated seven deaths a day, or some 1,249 people in the first five months of the year, according to preliminary estimates.
Across the province, data from the Office of the Chief Coroner show rates have been significantly higher since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, from an average of 130 deaths per month in 2019 to a peak of 238 a month in 2021. Four in five deaths involve fentanyl.
Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre says his municipality has been struggling to keep up over the past few years, despite “lots of outreach going on.”
“We’re trying to address it, but it’s getting tougher and tougher,” he said in an interview. “We’ve never seen that in our lifetime.”
From January through August, 90 people died from a suspected drug overdose in the Sudbury and Manitoulin districts, Public Health Sudbury & Districts reports – about 15 per cent more than in the same period last year. Another 245 people visited emergency departments for confirmed opioid overdoses.
Over the course of 2023, the region saw the highest rate of toxic drug deaths per capita.
Lefebvre said he’s working with the founder of the downtown memorial, called Crosses for Change, to find an appropriate space in the city where residents can come to grieve.
“We need to memorialize what these folks, our friends and family members, have gone through, and their tragic passing in this crisis we’re all facing,” he said.
A similar effort is underway in Guelph, Ont. Though its region’s rates of opioid-related deaths are consistently among the lowest in the province, community members are far from immune to this particular type of grief.
People closely affected by toxic drug use worked with the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy and other community partners to design a “contemplative space” that will be built in a city park, says Jean Hopkins, the strategy’s manager.
The Pathways to Remembering Monument is imagined as a stone podium surrounded by tall grasses, meant to symbolize lost loved ones.
A spokesman for the City of Guelph confirmed the city is looking at options for a site, will fund bench purchases and lead the project implementation. Other costs are being covered by a fundraising effort that Hopkins said began in 2022 and has raised about one-third of a $50,000 goal so far.
“It is so important to have reflective spaces within our community to call attention to this issue, and ensure we are honouring those we have lost to a preventable cause,” Hopkins said in an email. “We hope that the memorial will also address the stigma that is linked to substance use and drug poisoning.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
KESWICK, Ont. – York Regional Police say two people are dead after a shooting at a park in the community of Keswick.
Police say officers responded to sounds of gunshots in the area of Bayview and Lowndes Avenue just before 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, and two adults were pronounced dead.
The force says its homicide unit is investigating.
Officers are calling the incident isolated, with no threat to the public.
The York Region District School Board says schools in the area are under a hold and secure due to police activity in the area.
Police are looking for witnesses and asking nearby residents to check security footage for any information that might help the investigation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published September 18, 2024.
