Get your elbows up, boys. Canada's back! Mark Carney is going to make Canada Great Again and pull the military up by its bootstraps. Hooah!
Chief of the Defence Staff and weepy DEI-hire General Jennie Carignan signed a directive to increase the size of Canada's reserve forces from 25,561 to 400,000. For those rubbing their eyes at that number, that is a 16-fold increase.
Cue the laugh track. Canada's already paltry reserve force has thus far failed to ever hit its personnel target of 30,000 every single year since it was set in 2017, when it was 26,500.
Even if the Canadian Armed Forces were fully funded and furnished with adequate equipment and resources, it will never happen. At least not without conscription.
The thing is, the federal government and the senior military leadership appointed by it, openly loathe the very things that have traditionally fueled voluntary military recruitment.
The new military prioritizes DEI in its recruitment and promotion. This is a problem for a profession that, by its nature, is attractive to nationalistic, young white men. On aggregate, they tend to like guns, struggle, camaraderie, and feeling a part of something meaningful. When they join a nation's armed forces, they take pride in the uniform.
Other demographics are great and are welcome. But the main source of recruits has been made to feel decidedly unwelcome.
The martial culture of the CAF has been thoroughly replaced by cultural marxism and bureaucracy, and generations of pacifist propaganda have destroyed the broader martial culture of our society.
Soldiers, sailors, and airmen can now have long, neon-blue hair, face tattoos, and fake pink nails.
Many cannot even perform a simple march-past at a level that teenage cadets could in the 1990s.
The "planned" wildly unrealistic sextupling of the reserve force got me to thinking: just how top heavy is our new DEI army, navy, and air force?
"Too many chiefs and not enough Indians" doesn't quite do justice to how upside down our military has become.
We've got 145 flag officers. That is officers with the rank of general or admiral (including commodores, which are the navy's equivilent to an army or air force brigadier-general).
Of this, an estimated 27 are in the navy, 77 are in the army, and 27 are in the air force. Another 15 are in joint commands across the branches or other organizations like NORAD.
So how many Indians are our chiefs leading?
Lock and load dear reader. This is going to be good.
As of January 2025, the Royal Canadian Army had just 82 Leopard-2 main battle tanks in its armoured forces. But due to maintainance issues, only 41 were combat-ready.
That means that for ever combat-ready main battle tank, Canada has nearly two generals.
"Crazy" you say? Perhaps, but it could make for a rather direct command structure. If Canada were to mount a defence against an invasion from say, Vatican City, we could have one general pilot the tank, and another general man the gun. With our top brass so close to the action, their orders would be immediately followed without hesitation.
The Royal Canadian Air Force is in, slightly better shape.
On paper, we have 88 CF-18 Hornet fighter jets, mostly built in 1980. Of that, only 30 to 35 are combat ready, but let's be generous and round up to the high-end of that figure.
That means that our airforce could almost have one general piloting every single fighter jet in operation. If you're not going to have a big air force, then you'd better put your best men where it counts, eh?
And the vaunted Royal Canadian Navy? The floating force that ended the Second World War as third-largest navy on the planet?
Well, it's got six-to-eight combat ready warships, mostly Halifax-class frigates. Again, let's round up to eight to be generous in this exercise.
With 27 flag officers, that means we have more than three admirals for every single combat-ready warship in the RCN. With the deck so crowded, they may need to bunk-up.
But perhaps I'm being unfair. In April, the RCN posted on X that the HMCS Corner Brook was upgraded and ready to return to operations.
"Freshly upgraded, it's now the most advanced submarine in the Canadian fleet."
Correction: the HMCS Corner Brook is the only submarine in the Canadian fleet.
One, diesel submaine, build in the 1980s, to patrol the largest coastline of any country on the planet.
But, we can rest assured the Corner Brook will be well commanded with three admirals aboard.
If we combined every single one of the 145 generals and admirals in the CAF, and gave each of them a fighter jet, tank, or warship, they would outnumber their equipment by nearly two-to-one.
Canada has nearly two generals or admirals for every operational fighter jet, tank, and warship in operation.
Canada's Armed Forces have been in decline for a very, very long time, with a moderate resurgance during the first half of the Harper government.
That blip was not enough to reverse the damage of decades of neglect. And since then, the imposition of radical progressivist ideology into its command structure has destroyed its meritocracy and martial culture.
I grew up in military towns, and dreamed for most of my boyhood of joining the navy's ranks. If I had done so, perhaps I'd be an admiral by now, and get to command the engine room of the HMCS Corner Brook.
Thank God I didn't. And based on the truly wretched state of our forces, it's doutful we'll be meeting our 400,000 man recruitment target anytime in our lifetimes.