“CAF – Canadian Armed Forces”

The Canadian military could have modern satellite coverage in the Arctic a decade earlier than envisioned if the federal government is willing to follow the example of other countries and embrace commercial options in space, a House of Commons committee heard Monday.

Mike Greenley, chief executive officer of MDA Canada, told committee members Canada has fallen behind the rest of the globe from “a military space capability perspective” and is not effectively working with companies in the aerospace sector.

The Canadian Army learned some valuable lessons Friday: art is in the eye of the beholder and it pays to be precise, even on social media.

The military faced a huge backlash online after unveiling a new logo for the army on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The Canadian military plans to destroy 11,000 of its Second World War-era pistols by the end of this year.

The move comes as the Canadian Forces confirmed it has received the final deliveries of a new 9-mm pistol as part of a $19.4-million project.

The recruiting hole in which the Canadian military finds itself is deeper and potentially more serious than it might appear at first glance — in part because of all the new equipment the federal government has ordered, or plans to order in the near future.

Just recently, Defence Minister Bill Blair estimated the military is short up to 16,500 members and said the Armed Forces’ failure to boost recruitment is leading it into a “death spiral.”

But the country’s top military commander, Gen. Wayne Eyre, told CBC News in a recent interview that the problem is actually bigger than the numbers cited by the minister suggest.

With absolutely no exceptions, every defence policy presented by the Canadian government over the past five decades has presented a vision of the world beyond our borders going to hell in a handbasket.

The wars may be different, the adversaries might change, threats might have evolved — but the language almost always stays the same.

And almost without exception, none of those defence policies ever lived up to their hype, or to the expectations and political spin that accompanied them.

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is 26 percent below target readiness levels, according to a Department of National Defence briefing note.

The CAF is able to recruit just 7,600 new members per year on average and current force strength is at 63,000 people—well below the target of 71,500, says the note published last December and obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter. Of the 63,000 members currently enrolled only 52,707 are fully trained, the document noted.

26% seems like a lot. Or is it just me?