The Ben Mulroney Show - Canada's military recruitment has soared... but did they do it right?

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

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This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch.

Steep. Flip. Or that. And enjoy. Via Rail, love the way. Want to go a little? electric without sacrificing fun? That's the Volkswagen ID4.

All-electric and thoughtfully designed to elevate your modern lifestyle. The Volkswagen ID4 is fun to drive with instant acceleration that makes city streets feel like open roads. Plus a refined interior with innovative technology always at your fingertips. The all-electric ID4, you deserve more fun. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUVW, German engineered for all. Here at the Ben Mulroney show have been consistent, I would say, in our critiques of the previous government for its irresponsible behavior as it relates to the treatment of our armed forces and the value it placed on its importance and the lack of support it has given to the brave men and women who are willing to sacrifice by serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. And we here at the show have also been consistent in our support of Mark Carney and his desire to reclaim the honor of the Canadian Armed Forces by investing in a way we haven't in generations, investing in the people, investing in the hardware, investing in the technology and the know-how, investing in the infrastructure like barracks and roads and military bases so that we can achieve.

what a lot of us believe is the basement of 2% of our GDP going towards our military to fall in line with our NATO commitment and going as high as 5% which our Prime Minister has agreed to. We have championed that. But how do we get there? How do we get from where we are to where we need to be? And based on some new reporting, it's not going well. We have, as of right now, the military can handle emergencies, can contribute internationally, and that's in air quotes, because what does that mean? But it would struggle to fight a long, high-intensity war by itself.

Only about 40% of our aircraft are considered mission-ready. That was last year. And we've been told that the army we have is not the army we need. So how do we go from what we have to what we need? Well, according to the Globe and Mail, basic training success in this country has dropped to 77% that's down from 85%. And you got more and more recruits who need more and more attempts to succeed. And a lot of it's interesting.

If you read this article, the reasons for why we are not hitting the metrics of success are kind of baked into who we are recruiting. You know, we've relaxed recruiting. rules. Instructors say they're overwhelmed. They can't give struggling recruits enough help. There are mental health issues among recruits. That is surge, but one of the reasons is because we've opened the door to people with

more mental health issues. But here's one that's interesting. There's a wave of permanent resident recruits. Some people who've been in this country as short of period as three months are joining the ranks of our military, and that is creating. cultural, and language challenges. One platoon graduated only 48%. And so you look at all that.

And then there's this line, when you take all of that into account, this next line seems almost meaningless. Despite the problems, overall recruitment is way up with 7,300 new members last year the most in 30 years. Okay, sure, but what's the quality of the recruit? And all of this reporting was the door was open to it because of a Juno News exclusive where they obtained a secret document that said that the Canadian Armed Forces were training some platoons with as high as 83% non-citizens. 83% of a particular platoon had non-citizens and that platoon devolved into ethnic infighting.

That's not a misread, ethnic infighting. So this internal CAF report revealed that a Quebec officer platoon, and we're not talking grunts who enlisted, these are people who are fast-tracked for military leadership. A Quebec officer platoon was dominated by non-citizens. And because of ethnic infighting and a lack of respect for women as peers, which followed abysmal graduation rates, this thing descended into chaos.

When I was listening to the journalist who was reading out aspects of this report, I started getting a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I mean, this platoon had a less than 50% graduation rate. Allegations of racism, discrimination, which, by the way, went in multiple directions. This wasn't necessarily the military being racist towards, just being racist towards the people in the platoon.

This was inside. Racism within the platoon because you had new Canadians who came from different French language African countries who historically and culturally did not get along. Cameroon and Coutivouard. Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire. As I said, many recruits had been in Canada for only three. Three months.

What kind of fighting force are you putting together of people willing to die for Canada? If they, I mean, I've been here three months. Can you name all ten provinces? Would you even get a PR card within three months? I don't think you do. My jaw was on the ground as this journalist was laying out what's in this report. How we can buy as much hardware as we want. We can buy the best tanks and helicopters and fighter jets.

But if we do not have a fighting force made up of people who know what they're fighting for, who are shoulder to shoulder with people that they, brothers in arms, brothers and sisters in arms, bands of brothers and sisters, if we don't have that, we have nothing, nothing. This report suggests that were we to be invaded? Some of these platoons would be more likely to be fighting with themselves than they would fighting the enemy. And based on the assessment of the journalist, this is something that most likely, in his opinion, has crossed the desk of the leadership of our government and probably the ministries in charge of buying the military equipment

and veterans affairs and probably the prime minister himself. But if we are trying to short circuit the process of weeding out those we don't want, taking our time to finding the ones we want, elevating those who deserve elevation, taking our time with those who might need a little more time. If we're short-circuiting that whole thing to get to a number, we might as well just give up right now.

We might as well because what is a fighting force worth if they're not all rolling in the same direction? It certainly does give a different view of when they said earlier in the year that recruitment was up. Things are going so much better. Recruitment is up and you're like, okay, great. But it really, based on these reports, it does not seem like it's the up that you would really want. So a lot of these guys, no.

The recruits are struggling with language barriers, poor communication, cultural clashes. It was pointed out a lot of them have basic reading and writing ability, but it's the spoken language that they have an issue with. And it was pointed out, what happens if you are in need of support and all you have is a radio and you've got 10 seconds and you're taking heavy fire, how are you going to accurately explain what you need, what is happening to you, and how you can better the situation if you cannot speak either English or French? Communication is so important. But how about this element, though?

I mean, if you do have some people from French language-speaking countries in Africa, the dialect is so much different than say from, because if they were in a platoon with it from Quebec, yeah, it's not, it's not a given that the people from Quebec, the soldiers from Quebec and the soldiers from elsewhere from another French-speaking country,

will be able to understand each other. When I lived in Quebec, I couldn't understand half the people I spoke with. It's a problem. This is giving me a little, some feelings of anxiety, because if this is how we're starting the rebuild of the Canadian armed forces.

I don't know what it pretends for the future. I really don't. You can throw as much money as you want at a situation. If you are not getting the human element right, then I don't know what we're doing here. And so this is one guy who's never served, who has much respect for anybody who has served. But this is just my opinion based on this.

What we're going to do after the break is we are going to speak with a man who has served. We're going to speak with a man who has led. We are going to speak with a man who knows what we need to get from the army that we have to the army that we need. We're speaking with General Rick Hillier, the former commander of the Canadian Army next right here on the Ben Mulroney Show. If you believe in a strong military, if you believe in Canada's obligation to defend its borders and be able to promote its values abroad, if you believe in multilateralism and Canada's obligation to live up to its obligations to, say, NATO, then this is a

conversation that you need to listen to. Before the break, we were talking about a Juno News exclusive that uncovered an internal Canadian Armed Forces report that reveal that there are great problems involved in the human element of this rebuild of our armed forces with many recruits, having only been in Canada for three months, which has led to language barriers, poor communication, culture clashes. And if this is the first step in the rebuild, it causes me concern. But I'm going to take my pun intended marching orders from our next guest. It is my honor to welcome General Rick Hillier, former commander of the Canadian Army to the show. Again, General, thank you for your service and thank you for your time today.

I've been, my pleasure. Thank you. I have to ask, have you read this report? I've not read it. I've gone through it. I won't say I read it in great detail for sure. I've looked at a few things and, you know, I looked at a few other things besides that

to sort of make sure I understand what is occurring. So as somebody who is not and has never served, but I appreciate and value and thank anybody who has, am I too worried about this or is this of concern? Well, I'd answer to second prior first. Yes, it is of concern. And however, here's what I would say, and taking maybe a little bit of light and fire out of it,

this is not new. Maybe the specific kinds of issues or problems being faced with some of the individuals is newer. But, you know, 20, 25 years ago, as we were expanding the Canadian forces, that we were trying to get up the stress. We were changing the criteria for a Roma. We were bringing in probationary periods. We were getting people in who actually now could not pass, for example,

some of the performance objectives and could not meet, for example, the physical fitness test. And we took additional time to train them. So we encountered most of those problems before. We didn't like it, but we got on with it because without the people in the Canadian forces, everything else that you're doing fails. And so, yeah, there are some issues here without question. The leadership is going to have to address them. And leaders at a very senior level are going to be focused on supporting those folks at the training in,

getting through this, and producing the right kind of soldiers, aviators, and sailors and special forces, troopers for the Canadian forces, because it's a challenge, I would say that. General, because you went through this and you said you, years ago, experienced some of, if not all these problems, Shouldn't we have learned from that? Shouldn't whatever our policy is today have taken those growing pains into account? Why are we going through? Why are we making the same mistakes again? Well, I can't answer that.

I don't have a response for that. Yeah, we should have learned. We should be able to go back, even 22 years ago. Many of the people who were engaged and involved and have made things happen dead and for us as we were in the middle of the war in Afghanistan and allowed us. to rebuild the people component by the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, our round are still reachable.

So, yes, we should have learned, and it's not too late to learn now. Well, we got, you know, look, I have faith, and we've got a lot of incredibly intelligent and capable and efficient leaders, get them focused on this, and they'll resolve the issues. We work with our allies

who also encountered these issues. We work with the British. We work with the Americans in their recruiting and training systems. And although they're different, We are similar. They are similar to us and we can learn from them also. So we can get through this.

Again, I just come back to the fact the people part of this is so crucial that I would say expand your entry pipelines greater and greater. Be ready for the challenges. You set a standard in both performance and efficiency and fitness are three of those things in fitness. And you've got to ensure that people can meet those standards. And that means you're going to have to take somebody like, you know, a Rick Hillier who is not ready for the training is not fit or perhaps cannot speak the language, one of our two official languages, and you're going to have to spend a lot of additional time with them. And that's where part of the problem is. Well, and I think that's something that we need to explore. A lot of us were very happy and emboldened by our prime ministers, bullish and ambitious plans to get us to a place where we go from the army we have to the army we need.

short order, but perhaps the timeline, general, is too tight. Maybe that's part of the problem that there's this rush to get to the conclusion, not realizing that in order to get the fighting force right, if the people are willing to serve, then we have to make sure that they are fit for service, and sometimes what that takes is time. I agree that. However, if you look at some of the statistics here, more than 70% of them come through those courses and they meet all the standards required. They excel in many cases, and they're good to go in the Army,

the Navy, the Air Force, and special forces, and do the job that we ask them. So even in those expanded pipelines, in those expanded cadres of young recruits that we bring in and send to our training centers, we're getting more than 70%. So keep doing that, keep doing that.

You just got to be prepared to handle the differential that has increased somewhat, those who are having problems, those who are incapable, Perhaps those who don't have Canadian values and it's obvious from the start. And so you've got to be prepared for that additional number, the additional sort of contingent of problems that you're going to have engage with. But keep bringing the people in, do the basic assessment, get them in there and train,

keep the standards high because what you don't want are people who are not capable of doing the job. Keep the standards high. And let's get, look, I'd love to have the challenge of doing all this double-quick triple time and get on what it because we need it done. And the world is not going to wait around for us to spend 10 or 20 years expanding the Canadian forces capability. General Rick Hillier, on one hand, you've got sort of the opening foray of new recruits. And we've talked about those things.

And I'm glad to hear that somebody of your experience and knows that the road is long and we can get a lot of those people to where we need them to be. But that other report by Juneau News is talking about, basic officer training. I mean, these are people who are on the leadership track. These are people who could one day become generals and could be leading us into battle. And from the perspective of that platoon, for example, that's where we're seeing some of these internecant cultural issues and language issues.

How critical are these issues in a platoon, the ability to talk to each other, the ability to stand with one another? Hey, what happens in those platoons? if you've got a man from a culture that does not respect women, and he's going to be taking orders from a woman. Isn't that a problem? Ben, it is a problem. These are critical issues without question.

You can cause a platoon that should be a close-knit team of men and women who are ready to lay down their lives if necessary for each other. You can take that, and with one individual who's got the wrong values exploded into a completely inefficient organization, those kind of folks have no place in the game of But just you have to remember, we are recruiting from that general population of 41 million Canadians. And so what you're talking about is seeing perhaps a symptom of what's occurring in society that we actually haven't addressed as a general society at large yet.

So you set the standards. You set the values. You don't change people's values at age 19, 20, 21 years old what you have to do because they've learned them. They've, you know, inculcated those values no matter what they are. What you do is set the standards in those values and make that crystal clear and educate people to what those standards are. And then when they can't meet those standards, you move them on to some other profession than the one that you have. It is important for everybody that puts a uniform on.

It is particularly important for those young leaders who get shaped in that training environment here. So, yeah, it is a challenge. I don't minimize the challenge whatsoever. and if you can't communicate, for example, in one of two official languages in this great country, you are not going to be able to succeed as a leader. You cannot succeed in getting men and women fired up to go into an operation, go into combat when stresses eye. If you can't communicate your intentions with them and understand what they are doing and then be able to work together efficiently to be successful at your mission.

General Rick Hillier, thank you for your service. Thank you for your time. and here's hoping that the powers that be take these issues seriously so that we can get to the place where I think we all want our Canadian Armed Forces to be where they feel respected, where they can do the job that we're going to call upon them to do. I appreciate your time, sir. Thank you, Ben. My name is Mickey Fox. Friday, February 27th on Global. I'm Sheriff of Edgewater.

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