The State of Canadian Civil-Military Relations in Early 2024
Blog: Saideman's Semi-Spew
One of the things that I had claimed since 2021's general crisis--Vance, McDonald, and other senior officers being outed for sexual misconduct and abuse of power--is that efforts to change the military would not face as much resistance as in normal times. These folks had so thoroughly disgraced the military that any resistors would have weak arguments and few allies--who would stand up for rapists and abuses of power? It took a few years, but we now have an answer: the far right and the Conservative Party of Canada.Aping the far right in the US, the right wing folks in Canada started accusing the military of being too woke. It is not just one random retired general with poor reading comprehension. This weekend, a different person, Jamie Sarkonak, wrote a piece at the same outlet--the National Post--arguing that the military is hostile to white men (providing no evidence), that the military should not change (although it is better than the retired general's by recognizing past abuses), and that women who join should just embrace being in a male-dominated/male-defined organization, and Indigenous recruits/officers and people of colour should just accept the military has it has always been.What this person gets wrong and what those who want to keep the military the same is basic math: she wants the military to rely on the traditional pool of recruits: "fit, aged 17 to 20, high-school educated, rural or small-city in origin and Caucasian in background." The problem is that this pool is shrinking. So, we need to expand the pool of recruits beyond this group--folks living in cities, non-Caucasians, and women. If you think you can do that while keeping the old culture that was/is hostile to these folks, then you not only suck at math but sociology.The piece is on target when focusing on the consequences of budget cuts--resolving the personnel crisis requires more money, not less. But culture change is also required.This Tuesday, I am presenting along with several sharp scholars--JC Boucher, Lynne Gouliquer, and Charlotte Duval-Lantoine--some data that shows that scandals about discrimination in the military cause people to lose trust in the CAF and become less supportive of their friends and family joining the CAF. So, the numbers cited in the op-ed piece about the decline in recruiting and the problem of retention may be more related to the abuses of general and flag officers than to the effort to change the culture. Of course, correlation is not causation. But the antiwoke forces don't really have much data, and they have weak arguments based on bad math and bad sociology. On the bright side, I am getting cited, which is what academics want, and I keep getting alerted to these publications by the hate email I get.