By Dr. Ann Griffiths, 2 August 2024
In the face of severe personnel shortages, the RCN launched the Naval Experience Program (NEP) at the end of March 2023. It aimed to attract, recruit and train new sailors, by allowing candidates to experience the navy, with pay, for a year to see whether it was something they'd consider as a career. Those who signed on could try out a variety of different trades through hands-on experience, deploy on RCN ships while on international operations and exercises, and participate in RCN ceremonial events. Creating this program showed some imagination and initiative on the part of the RCN.
As the program continues into its second year, it’s time to ask how successful the first year was. According to DND, the goal was to enrol 144 participants – and this was surpassed with an enrolment of 179 individuals, and more than 500 applicants are still in the recruiting process. Of the cohort, 74% decided to stay in the Canadian Armed Forces (not necessarily the navy however) after the year was up. On the whole, the first year seems to have been a success, although it illustrates continuing long delays in the recruitment process – i.e., getting people into the NEP is a rather long process, just as getting into the CAF is – and there are also questions about how the NEP will affect training programs for regular forces.
Hopefully the program will grow in the future, otherwise, at this rate, it’ll take a while to fill the thousands of positions that the RCN needs to be filled. For more on the program see Mishall Rehman, “Royal Canadian Navy Extends Naval Experience Program,” Canadian Military Family Magazine, July 2024, Royal Canadian Navy Extends Naval Experience Program - Canadian Military Family Magazine (cmfmag.ca)
2 thoughts on “The Naval Experience Program at One Year”
179 individuals enrolled, and more than 500 individuals stuck in the recruiting process after a year – for a program specifically designed to speed recruiting. In a different context – the immigration system, which friends and family members have had to navigate – I have often wondered what the long delays were all about. Does anyone seriously think that someone in the government is actually spending a year of work deciding on one application? Of course not! The application is sitting in an unopened file folder on someone’s desk (physical or electronic) for 98% of that time.
When questioned, government officials will often attribute the delays to lack of resources and staff, or to security. Both claims are nonsense. Processing an application slowly takes more resources, not fewer, because the decision maker forgets the details of the case while he works on other files. Each time he comes back to it, he must refresh his memory and re-consider things that have already been decided four times over. Wasted hours. Wasted days.
As for the security question, how much investigating can an official at a desk really do? He can check the person’s id, and whether they filed a tax return. He can look on an RCMP database, and one from CSIS. He can read the social media postings of the individual and his/her family members. And that’s more or less it. Nobody will (or should) do the sort of in-depth personal investion that would give him a real idea of the person’s character – moving into the house next door, surveilling him night and day, interviewing everyone who knows him. If a brief screening raises doubts, the application will just be rejected; otherwise it will pass. The sort of investigation that can really be done doesn’t take much time.
We have this slow recruitment process in peace-time, when it doesn’t matter. If war-time comes, we will see how useless our slow faux-careful process really is. In that moment of urgency, when the risks of a spy or criminal in the ranks are most severe, the nation will take everyone willing to hold a gun. And nearly all will prove faithful.
As a currently serving officer at sea, I think the NEP program has shown a great deal of promise. While it may not have necessarily covered shortages in hard sea going trades (bos’n, martech, cooks, navcomms, etc.) it has encouraged young Canadians to engage with the forces in a way that has previously been missing. The shorter contract to start and variety of secondments that the NEPs receive allows for a relatively comprehensive glimpse of a world that most Canadians are either unaware of or uninterested in. NEPs been able to get to sea on a variety of platforms, some even deploying on domestic operations. Even if personnel do not necessarily sign up themselves, exposure to the RCN and CAF in general will help the forces get on the RADAR of more people than David Pugliese (and perhaps even in a good way!).
On a more anecdotal note, my personal experience has shown that the camaraderie of going to sea and working with the crew has proven effective in encouraging NEP personnel to consider longer engagements in the CAF, and with a larger proportion considering the hard sea trades.