TORONTO - Efforts by the Canadian Forces to boost the number of women, visible minorities and aboriginals within its ranks has resulted in the military losing ground in finding recruits from those designated groups.
The military's employment equity plan, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, reveals few jobs within the military near "acceptable" representation of women, visible minorities, Aboriginal Peoples and people with disabilities.
"This reflects a lack of progress over the past years, and ground that has to be made up as we move forward," the document says.
The latest figures provided by the Canadian Forces reveal the gap has widened as the military fell more than 11,200 people short of its representation targets in June 2007.
In January 2006, the employment equity plan was short of its benchmark by slightly more than 10,000 people.
The largest gaps between actual and expected representation were among women and visible minorities.
The Canadian Forces doesn't actively recruit people with disabilities because of a principle that requires those in uniform to be deployable for general operational duties.
Lt.-Col. Diana Herrington, who runs the military's directorate of human rights and diversity, said the military isn't where it wants to be when it comes to its representation goals.
"We have a ways to go, there is no doubt that ... the gap is high. We recognize that," she said.
The military has set a number of short-and medium-term recruitment goals to bolster its representation levels, including reaching out to visible-minority communities. Recruiting more visible minorities "should be given a higher priority" than the other groups because of "anticipated changes in the demographic makeup of Canada" over the next 35 years, the equity plan says.
It says it's "critical" the military recruit from the designated groups, otherwise "ensuring adequate manning levels in the future will become increasingly difficult."
But the military isn't alone in failing to meet its employment equity targets.
Michel Lefebvre of the Canadian Human Rights Commission said the Employment Equity Act prevents him from commenting specifically on the Canadian Forces, but speaking generally about all employers that fall under the federal law, there is under-representation "in practically every single audit that we do conduct."
The military faces a number of hurdles when trying to recruit visible minorities.
An internal draft report obtained by The Canadian Press reveals women and visible minorities are the groups least familiar with the military, although overall familiarity with the Canadian Forces among those surveyed in late 2005 and early 2006 rose four percentage points to 56 per cent since 2000.
More than half of the women and visible minorities surveyed said they were either not very familiar or completely unfamiliar with the military.
Military historian Jack Granatstein said he would have expected more Canadians to have a better understanding of the military given the amount of coverage it gets because of Afghanistan.
"I am surprised because I just think there's been far more coverage in the last five years than I've ever seen of the regular forces, outside of full-scale war," he said.
The draft report appears to highlight a challenge facing the Canadian Forces as it tries to improve representation among designated groups.
Granatstein said the military's regular force "hasn't had the kind of success it would wish to have" reaching out to these designated groups.
Herrington said one possible explanation for the military's failure to meet its employment equity goals is that visible minorities tend to live in large, urban centres, away from the military's traditional rural recruiting base.
Another theory, she said, is that some also come from war-torn countries where the military is seen as corrupt.
Christian Leuprecht, a political science professor who specializes in diversity within the Canadian Forces at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., said those are only symptoms and not the root of the problem.
Despite a 1989 human rights tribunal that gave the military 10 years to open all its ranks and trades to women, he said the Canadian Forces still isn't doing enough to attract new recruits from minority groups.
Leuprecht said the military has been slow to move from "a very traditional, monolithic" culture to one "more reflective of Canadian society that would be more welcoming to people from diverse backgrounds."
"If you look at the senior leadership, it tends to be white males ... the people within the organization still think that they alone know what's best in terms of who needs to get promoted," he said.
"They don't see the writing on the wall with regards to demographic change in the country. Basically, if you just keep recruiting white males, you're going to run out of qualified people."
Khakan Zulfiquar, 18, recently applied for the military's regular officer training program. Both his father and grandfather served in the military and Zulfiquar said he's enlisting because he wants to experience a similar lifestyle.
Speaking recently outside a recruiting centre in Toronto's north end, Zulfiquar said it appears to him that the military is becoming more diverse.
"When I was doing my testing, there was a lot of guys there that were Canadian-born, or white, if you want to say it," he said.
"When I was down at the reserves and asking them questions about how I could join, in my little platoon, I had, I think, six people from Pakistan, two from China."
Capt. Ken Charles of the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group in Borden, Ont., said it will take time for members of the designated groups to work their way through the ranks.
"The senior ranks ... represent recruiting 20 years ago, when we didn't have these very dynamic, strict outreach campaigns," Charles said.
"If you want to see the effect of the recent campaigns, you have to look at privates and corporals and second lieutenants and officer cadets."
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Here are diversity statistics for the combined regular and primary reserves of the Canadian Forces. The figures show the actual representation of each group compared with the military's employment equity goals:
Women:
- Actual representation: 14,594 - 15.1 per cent.
- Expected representation: 18,845 - 19.5 per cent.
Aboriginal Peoples:
- Actual representation: 1,519 - 1.6 per cent.
- Expected representation: 2,705 - 2.8 per cent.
Visible minorities:
- Actual representation: 2,951 - 3.1 per cent.
- Expected representation: 8,794 - 9.1 per cent.
Persons with Disabilities:
- Actual representation: 1,101 - 1.1 per cent.
- Expected representation: Not available because the military doesn't actively recruit people with disabilities.
Canadian Forces Totals:
The Canadian military is made up of 62,000 regular force members and 25,000 reserve force members, including 4,000 Canadian Rangers.
Source: The Defence Department
