When it comes to staffing up, Canadians' willingness to serve does not appear to be the bottleneck. The most recent DND figures indicate that over 67,000 applications were submitted to the Forces over the past year, representing a five-year high. Of that number, fewer than 4,000 have been accepted, according to information tabled in Parliament.

The biggest thing is the recruiting process is too slow. I think the DND are working on reducing barriers to enlistment related to stigma and discrimination, but the speed of beauraucracy is still a major setback.

Russia has a healthy military, as they'll take anyone who will get on a bus that dumps them on the front line. The US military has a whole program to make young people aware of them, and then snatch them right as they come out of highschool.

Those are extremes that I don't want Canada to resort to. If they can work on making the application process responsive and painless unlike the job recruitment process, then they will set themselves as a competitive opportunity with more skilled recruits to fill any gaps there may be. Pay will also be a big factor.

Betteridge’s law of headlines: No. No one wants to fight for a country that is actively fucking them. There was even some noise recently about how the Canadian Armed Forces doesn't pay enough to cover the cost of living near base.