The Canadian Armed Forces has recruited nearly 3,000 permanent residents since opening enlistment to non-citizens in late 2022, but military officials admit they do not track the foreign citizenships of those recruits.
The disclosure came in response to an order paper question from Conservative MP Scott Anderson regarding the CAF’s recruitment of permanent residents.
According to the Department of National Defence, the military enrolled 1,844 permanent residents into the regular force and another 1,017 into the reserve force between December 2022 and May 2026, for a total of 2,861 recruits.
Recruitment accelerated dramatically over the past year, with more than 1,800 permanent residents joining during the 2025-26 fiscal year alone.
The military also revealed that permanent residents are permitted to serve in dozens of occupations, including infantry, artillery, combat engineering, logistics, military police, intelligence-related roles, aerospace operations, naval positions and a variety of technical trades.
But when Anderson asked how many of those permanent residents were citizens of countries outside NATO, the government said it simply doesn’t know.
“The Canadian Armed Forces does not centrally record members’ citizenship of countries other than Canada,” the department replied.
The admission means the military cannot say how many permanent-resident recruits hold citizenship in countries such as China, Iran, Russia, Pakistan or any other non-NATO state.
The department also acknowledged that it cannot determine how many of those recruits have since become Canadian citizens because that information is not tracked in a way that can be readily reported.
The figures come as the CAF continues to grapple with a recruiting crisis and personnel shortages. In an effort to boost numbers, the military opened many occupations to permanent residents in 2022, ending a longstanding preference for Canadian citizens.
Since then, 292 permanent-resident recruits have already left the CAF, including 234 regular force members and 58 reservists.
While the CAF can provide detailed breakdowns of where permanent residents serve and what ranks they hold, it cannot say how many are citizens of foreign countries outside Canada’s military alliances.
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