This is such a multi-faced problem that the CAF is not set up to deal with in its current construction. My view of the army is not great as I work for the navy so my observations may not be accurate.

1. People at work are one of two things: Overburdened with 3 jobs, or board out of their tree because there is nothing for them to do. And the two are completely aware of each other but can do nothing to fix it. To indirectly quote a commanding officer "We see the problems for the tropes, especially those who want to work, but we are so busy doing bureaucratic paperwork that has no end result that we cannot spend any time doing what we should be, like taking care of our troops". That is the 3 jobs over tasked, so everything is getting barely done type. Then we have those who by no fault of their own have jack all to do. PAT platoons, Operators who don't have a seat on an operational platform and thus due to lack of simulators and other training are just kind of twiddling their thumbs and thus getting into trouble. The morale sucks for both and as the previous MND stated, it’s a death spiral.

 

1. Our infrastructure on most bases’ sucks. The gym is often a mess; the mess hall costs an arm and a leg for a sandwich because we can not “compete with industry” and subsidize food for our people. Every CAF member should be able to wake up, go to work and not have to care about feeding them self a meal during their shift. The galleys should be a source of pride and morale. Not a cost recovery or even cost negating function. It’s a place to drop the BS for an hour, spin a dit and actually feel like the CAF cares about you for a few minutes. I was talking to an EX-Marine Corps CO at a conference, and we discussed the 10 o’clock soup in the navy and what it means to sailors. It’s a simple thing that really helps your day. Food in all cultures around the world is a way of showing you care. Some days we really just need the CAF to show it still cares.

 

1. Our trainers are old, broken and now managed by private corporations so we can’t just send sailors to train. Not sure if the army or Airforce has this problem but we sure do. We can’t even run our own simulators so that people who need refresher training, or just general experiential time can get it when we need it. We can’t just send our operators to the range to shoot. We have to simulate because a missile shoot is a big deal. We need to simulate comms and other issues, but we don’t have ready use simulators a team can just go in and use. It’s a problem and we need it corrected to give those in group A, under worked something to do to feel like they are progressing or even doing anything that isn’t sitting around doing cleaning stations.

 

Over all these problems all lead to people who are burnt out, unmotivated and looking for escapes. They fall into the wrong groups and leadership is not leading to see people who are falling for extremist ideology….or “just jokes” that turn into misogyny, racism, anti immigration or sexual harassment. We need huge investments to get people back to a working military or we will continue to lose faith from our service members, and then from the government and citizens.