Canadian military to focus on recruiting LGBT people
The Canadian military has announced plans to rebrand itself and recruit more women and members of the LGBT community.
They hope this move will diversify the military and make it more inclusive to people from different communities.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shakes hands with Canadian military instructors (Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images)
Lt.-Gen Charles Lamarre, the Chief of Military Personnel, told The Canadian Press that the military recruitment system is in need of an overhaul to make it more diverse, inclusive and attractive to Canadians.
“Our population doesn’t look like all white guys,” Lamarre said.
Lamarre is responsible for overseeing all aspects of human resources in the Canadian Armed Forces.
This attempt to connect with Canadians from all different groups is also an attempt to increase the number of recruits overall.
Over the next 20 years, Justin Trudeau’s government is aiming to invest $62 billion into the military.
There are also plans to recruit 3,500 more full-time military personnel and 1,500 part-time reserves.
This would put the number of Canadian military personnel at their highest levels since the Cold War.
“If you want to get the very best people — the very smartest, most capable, most committed and most ingenious — then you need to look broadly and not exclude groups that would be very useful to you,” Lamarre added.
It appears that there is a stronger emphasis being placed on inclusiveness and diversity within Canada’s military than there has been before.
Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance recently released a diversity strategy which stated that Canada was becoming more and more diverse and the military needed to follow suit.
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Vance’s strategy went on to say that doing so would be necessary to attract and retain people, as well as to ensure the military continued to reflect the society it is sworn to protect.
Canada’s military has very recently adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards anyone who has complaints of sexual misconduct made against them.
The military is very clearly trying to distance itself from the negative press it has received in the past over the treatment of women and the LGBT community.
