DND scrambles to figure out how to mobilize and equip a citizens' army: documents

The Department of National Defence is scrambling to figure out how it will clothe, equip and train hundreds of thousands of new reservists envisioned under an ambitious mobilization proposal that Canada’s top military commander describes as a work in progress.

Similarly, in what may be an ominous sign of the times, the department has established a key position dedicated solely to growing the military in the event of a major crisis.

Internal documents obtained by CBC News show the military buildup will, at the moment, proceed slowly because the defence industry is either overwhelmed — or not equipped for the ramp-up.

While Canada had various mobilization schemes during the first and second world wars, the new director general position is — according to a defence expert — the first of its kind and faced with the daunting mission of delivering 100,000 reserve soldiers and an additional 300,000 citizen soldiers in a supplementary reserve, should the need arise. That would be on top of an estimated 85,500 regular — or full-time — force of soldiers, sailors and aircrew.

"Existing supply chains, inventories and personnel systems are already at capacity," says an internal slide deck presentation, dated July 2025, from the Defence Department’s material branch. 

The briefing noted the system was already struggling to re-equip the regular force and that the new initiative's success will be "predicated on a gradual intake (slow trickle) due to current inventory and warehousing and contract limitations."

The country’s top military commander said they are working on options to present to the federal government, hopefully by spring.

"They are currently doing an analysis of what is in the realm of possible," said Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan.

"Basically they are planning to plan. So, what is clear is we don't have a plan as of yet. We need to figure out how we are going to do this. And the first step is to figure out what are the roles and missions of this strategic reserve."

The part-time force would be mostly employed at home, she said. 

A directive, signed last spring by Carignan and deputy defence minister Stefanie Beck, is much broader and envisions the supplementary reserve would be used for "low-intensity natural disaster response to high-intensity large-scale combat operations."

Carignan doesn’t see an invasion threat to the country, but believes there are a variety of other potential threats, such missile strikes, that would require an organized response. 

The Ottawa Citizen was the first to report on a mobilization directive signed last spring by Carignan and Beck, which envisioned federal civil servants, among others, volunteering for the supplementary force.

The documents obtained by CBC News paint a detailed portrait of a system struggling to wrap its head around all of the challenges of growing a force.