This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By J.L. Granatstein, September 2, 2025
Compulsory military service in wartime has been one of the most controversial issues in Canadian history. In the Great War, though francophones and farmers fought it furiously, the government rammed conscription into effect. In the Second World War, francophones resisted once more, but the Mackenzie King government handled the politics much better, delaying overseas conscription until late 1944 and sending only a few thousand conscripts into action. During the early Cold War, as Canada rearmed, however, there were plans on the books for immediate conscription if war broke out with the Soviet Union, plans that fortunately remained unused.
Now, more than seven decades later, with tensions between Russia, China, the United States, and NATO increasing, there is talk in Canada (and in other nations too) of national service. A recent Angus Reid Institute poll asked for opinions on a range of service for young men and women in public health, environmental support, youth services, civil protection, and military service. There was more than 70 percent support for one year of service in the first four categories, but only 43 percent for military service.
In fact, proponents of national military service ought not to have been completely unhappy with this result, for only 44 percent opposed military service, with the remaining 12 percent undecided. In other words, half of those polled who offered a response approved of national military service of one year for young Canadian men and women. That approval rate suggests that Canadians are increasingly aware of global tensions and of Canada’s relatively defenceless state.
But not all was satisfactory in the responses. The young, those 18 to 34 years of age, were the least positive to military service, only 15 percent of males and 8 percent of females. As was true in the Second World War, polling demonstrated that older Canadians favoured compulsory service, but the young, those who would be drafted, were cool to the prospect. Broken down by region, the Atlantic provinces at 28 percent were the most positive to national military service today, the Prairies at 25 percent, Ontario at 21 percent, and Quebec, as given history might be expected, the lowest at 13 percent supportive.
With these numbers, how can national military service even be contemplated? The situation of the Canadian Armed Forces has begun to change for the better. The scandals over sexual abuse and extremism have affected the military’s image among the public, but major efforts to control these excesses are underway. The large military pay raise recently announced by the Carney government will offer a good wage for those in any national military service program, and, with youth unemployment presently very high, this will certainly become increasingly attractive to young men and women who will want to build a nest egg.
For the CAF, there are positives in such a program. Those who have never experienced military training might find that the simple tactical training, the discipline, the camaraderie, the physical training, the sports, and the chance to meet Canadians from all regions and of all ethnicities will help them appreciate the experience. Some might even decide to join the CAF, many enlisting in the regular forces, while others might opt to sign on with reserve units in their area. All the national service trainees would be well-versed in useful IT skills, and almost all could drive a vehicle. Those who are uncommitted at least would have had a taste of military service, something of value in the event of any future national mobilization.
The Canadian Armed Forces, however, would face problems running a national service program. The present training system can handle just under 7,000 recruits a year, and the regular forces are meeting their recruitment quotas at present. Certainly, the training of regular force recruits must continue without interruption. Thus, to scale up to training large numbers of national servicemen and women would almost certainly require re-purposing old bases and bringing back anglophone, francophone, and bilingual officers and NCOs who had recently left the services as instructors.
Funding to improve and create new infrastructure would be required, and the financial and pension incentives for returning servicemen and women must be attractive. Any new program must also start small—say 25,000 in the first year, the men and women likely selected for national military service by a birthdate lottery—and increase year by year as the training system geared up to handle the influx.
But national military service cannot be a plan simply for the sake of service. In the late 1950s, the Diefenbaker government converted much of the militia’s training (and some of the regular forces’ training too) into National Survival courses, derisively called “snakes and ladders” by those involved for its emphasis on rescuing survivors in cities devastated by nuclear war. This was time-consuming, expensive, and unrealistic at best, and it almost killed the reserve forces by driving many to leave. A mistake like this cannot be made again. National military service training must have as its basic purpose the need to instill pride in achievement for all those who serve and, as an important subsidiary goal, to improve the physical fitness of young Canadians.
Above all, it must be service for Canada, service for the defence of Canada, its national interests, its people, its territory, and its values. If national service is done right—and it must be done well or it is not worth doing—it will make those who doubt the values of military service into believers.
Historian J.L. Granatstein is a member of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Research Advisory Board. A bestselling author, Granatstein was the director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum.
