Canadian Armed Forces

How can the CAF modernize its Reserve Force to remain relevant and operational amid a deteriorating global security environment? In this piece, Alaina Brunone examines how severe recruitment and training bottlenecks are hindering Canada’s ambitious 2025 mobilization goals. She highlights how decades of military underspending have complicated this overhaul, resulting in only one in thirteen applicants enlisting and a decline in basic training completion rates. She argues that to overcome these structural constraints, the CAF must confront tough trade-offs regarding trade-specific enlistment standards. Ultimately, Alaina showcases how the military is moving beyond discussion by leveraging targeted incentives and unconventional civilian partnerships to expand training capacity.

Following the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, Canada joined allies in pledging that 5% of its annual GDP by 2035 would be allocated to defence, which led to an immediate injection of capital into defence-related spending. The geopolitical reality of the day, marked by the fading of the international rules-based order, has exposed a profound capability gap. Read More…

While Germany struggles with a political divide over reintroducing conscription, Canada offers a viable model of part-time service which may be able to help. In this article, Robert Malloy explores how, as Germany debates how to solve personnel shortages in its armed forces, the Bundeswehr may benefit in learning from the CAF-Reserve model. His article argues Canada has an opportunity to market its reserve model to European allies, and promote itself as an institutional knowledge broker at a time of military revival on the European continent.

Why is Canada buying HIMARS? In this piece, Maral Hamzehloo examines how Canada’s acquisition of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) addresses a critical capability gap within the Canadian Armed Forces and supports Ottawa’s commitment to fielding a combat-capable brigade in Latvia. As HIMARS becomes NATO’s standard long-range fires platform, the system also strengthens interoperability with key allies. However, she argues that the capability’s effectiveness remains tied to access to U.S.-produced munitions, support networks, and industrial capacity. Drawing on recent examples involving Estonia and Ukraine, she contends that Canada should pair the acquisition with stronger munitions resilience, expanded allied procurement mechanisms, and greater domestic industrial participation to ensure the capability can be sustained during a major crisis.

Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy marks one of Ottawa’s most ambitious efforts in decades to rebuild military readiness and strengthen the industrial base behind the Canadian Armed Forces. However, renewed U.S. tariff pressure raises a harder question about whether Canada can turn defence investment into real capability while its production systems remain tied to American-linked supply chains. This article argues that tariffs are not simply an economic dispute, but a defence readiness issue that reveals the limits of Canada’s long-standing dependence on the United States.

Drawing on a collection of WWI-era letters and the experience of Canada’s “citizen-soldiers,” Emma Zhang argues that today’s recruitment gap is not just logistical but cultural, rooted in the erosion of the civic-military bond. Her article explores how rebuilding local connections to service may be key to solving the Canadian Armed Forces’ recruitment crisis.