BRULOTTE: Cut bureaucracy, restore readiness — time to rebuild the Canadian military

Dr. Bryan Brulotte is Chairman of Sterling-Trust, a Canadian private equity firm. He holds a doctorate in business and brings more than four decades of leadership experience spanning the military, private, and public sectors. He recently joined the NATO Association of Canada as Vice Chairman.Canada is finally getting serious about defence spending. After decades of underinvestment, billions of additional dollars are being committed to rebuilding the Canadian Armed Forces. That is necessary and long overdue. But there is a danger that we simply pour more money into the same bureaucracy, structures, and institutional habits that helped produce the military problems we are now trying to fix.Money matters. Ships, aircraft, vehicles, ammunition, infrastructure, and personnel all cost money. But a bigger defence budget does not automatically produce a stronger military. Unless Canada reforms the institution itself, we risk building a more expensive Department of National Defence without building a substantially more capable Canadian Armed Forces.The numbers illustrate the problem. In 2024-25, National Defence reported approximately 99,100 full-time equivalent military and civilian personnel across the defence establishment. Yet only about 41,700 were categorized under “Ready Forces.” These categories are not a literal tooth-to-tail measurement, but they demonstrate the enormous institutional apparatus surrounding Canada's relatively small operational military.The personnel numbers are equally revealing. As of March 31, 2026, Regular Force strength stood at 67,827, still 3,673 personnel below the authorized strength of 71,500. Recruiting has recently improved, which is encouraging, but Canada still needs to rebuild years of lost personnel strength while simultaneously expanding military capability..Every military needs a tail. Logistics, maintenance, intelligence, medical services, communications, training, administration, and infrastructure are indispensable to modern warfare. The question is whether the tail exists to support the fighting force or whether the fighting force increasingly exists to sustain the institution around it. That is the question Ottawa should be asking.National Defence has accumulated headquarters, committees, reporting requirements, approval processes, and overlapping civilian and military authorities. Procurement has become perhaps the most visible example. Responsibility has traditionally been divided among National Defence, Public Services and Procurement Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Treasury Board, and other organizations. When everybody has a piece of the decision, accountability becomes difficult to locate, and decisions take too long.The same concern applies to attempts to continually reshape military culture. The Canadian Armed Forces are not another branch of the public service. They are the profession of arms. Soldiers, sailors, and aviators accept obligations fundamentally different from those of almost any other occupation, including the possibility that they may be ordered into situations where their lives are at risk. Military culture must reinforce that reality rather than obscure it.When institutional initiatives weaken military identity, discourage aggressiveness in the appropriate military sense, diminish pride in service, or cause members to question the traditions and values that brought them into uniform, we should be willing to ask whether those initiatives are helping or hurting the Armed Forces. Culture cannot be engineered through headquarters directives alone. It grows from leadership, standards, shared hardship, unit cohesion, tradition, and confidence in the mission..The CAF's own doctrine recognizes this. Fighting Spirit: The Profession of Arms in Canada describes fighting spirit as determination, perseverance, and grit. It speaks of maintaining the will to succeed in adversity and identifies fighting spirit as a critical moral component of fighting power. That should be the centre of military culture.I would summarize the personnel philosophy necessary to support it with three letters: MEI: Merit, Excellence, and Integrity. Merit means selecting and promoting the best people. Excellence means maintaining demanding standards and constantly improving military competence. Integrity means treating people fairly, enforcing standards consistently, and expecting leaders to accept responsibility for their decisions. Those principles apply equally to every Canadian who volunteers to serve.There is another part of rebuilding the CAF that receives far too little attention: the Reserve Force. Canada has a proud tradition of citizen-soldiering. Today, the Primary Reserve includes the Army Reserve, Naval Reserve, and Air Reserve, along with other components. Recent government figures put Primary Reserve average paid strength at approximately 25,200 personnel, while current defence policy envisages substantially greater Reserve strength.I would go much further. Canada should examine doubling and ultimately perhaps tripling the effective strength of its Reserve capability, provided that expansion is properly equipped, trained, and organized. We are a country of roughly 40 million people facing an increasingly dangerous world. A permanent Regular Force will always provide the professional core of Canada's military, but maintaining enough full-time personnel to meet every conceivable national emergency is neither realistic nor affordable..That is precisely why reserves exist. The Army Reserve should provide trained units and personnel capable of reinforcing and expanding the land force during a national mobilization. The Naval Reserve should provide additional sailors and specialized capabilities that can expand the fleet's personnel base during emergencies. The Air Reserve should similarly provide experienced personnel and additional depth to support expanded air operations. Reservists also provide an invaluable connection between the military and communities across Canada.But reserves must be treated as military capability, not simply as an institutional afterthought. That means predictable training, equipment, ammunition, leadership development, and clear mobilization roles. Canada should know in advance which Reserve units and capabilities would be generated during a crisis and how quickly they could become operational.This leads to a larger reform agenda. Ottawa should examine every headquarters, committee, reporting requirement, and administrative organization within National Defence against a straightforward test: Does this activity materially contribute to generating, sustaining, or employing military capability? If it does, strengthen it. If it does not, stop, ask why it exists.Canada should also establish and publish a genuine tooth-to-tail measurement. Canadians deserve to know how many military personnel are serving in operational formations, training establishments, and deployable support organizations compared with headquarters and administrative positions. Transparency would help determine whether new defence spending is actually reaching the fighting force..Command authority should also move downward. Commanders need meaningful authority over personnel, training, and resources, and they should then be held accountable for results. Procurement should be judged by useful equipment delivered. Recruiting should be judged by trained personnel reaching units. Headquarters should be judged by the capability they generate. And senior military leadership should ultimately be judged by readiness.The international security environment is deteriorating. Russia's war against Ukraine continues to demonstrate that major conventional warfare is not a relic of history. China is undertaking an extraordinary military expansion. The Arctic is becoming increasingly strategically important. Our NATO allies expect Canada to carry a greater share of the collective burden.We therefore have a rare opportunity. Canada is preparing to spend substantially more on defence. We can use that money to enlarge the existing institution, or we can use it to transform the Armed Forces.The objective should be a larger Regular Force, a dramatically stronger Reserve, fewer bureaucratic obstacles, faster procurement, stronger command authority, demanding standards, and a renewed emphasis on fighting spirit.The test is ultimately very simple. Can the Canadian Armed Forces deter an adversary and, if deterrence fails, fight and prevail? Everything we do in defence should begin with that question.Dr. Bryan Brulotte is Chairman of Sterling-Trust, a Canadian private equity firm. He holds a doctorate in business and brings more than four decades of leadership experience spanning the military, private, and public sectors. He recently joined the NATO Association of Canada as Vice Chairman.

BRULOTTE: Cut bureaucracy, restore readiness — time to rebuild the Canadian military

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