From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Defence Minister Bill Blair called for ‘outdated medical requirements’ to be abolished as the Canadian Armed Forces have lost more members than it has gained since vax mandates were enforced in 2021.

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) may drop its vaccine mandate after losing more personnel than it gained since COVID-19 outbreak.

At the annual Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence on March 7, Defence Minister Bill Blair called for “outdated medical requirements” to be abolished as the CAF has lost more members than it has gained since COVID vaccine mandates were enforced in 2021.

“I really see no point in us spending a lot of time trying to find out how we got to this state,” Blair addressed the conference. “We must focus on what needs to be done, and we must get to work.”

“Because the bottom line is the Canadian Armed Forces must grow,” he declared, revealing that the CAF is short nearly 16,000 people in both regular forces and reserves.

“We must change the way in which we recruit and retain the people of our forces,” he declared.

“And therefore, I’ve asked our military leaders to take a hard look at expanding eligibility for recruitment, to abolish outdated medical requirements where they are not meaningful and relevant,” Blair said, perhaps alluding to COVID vaccine mandates.

Indeed, the CAF has seen a drastic decline in numbers since COVID vaccines were mandated in 2021. According to information obtained last month by Blacklock’s Reporter, only 12,793 Canadians have joined the CAF in the past three years and 15,176 were released.

Beginning in November 2021, the Liberal government under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mandated that 275,983 employees from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, military and main federal departments provide proof of vaccination.

Those who failed to do so risked dismissal or suspension without pay. While there were provisions for medical and religious exemptions, these were rarely granted.

Currently, CAF members are “strongly encouraged” to take the experimental shot, but it is no longer a requirement for most personnel.

However, the vaccine is mandated for members supporting “operational readiness,” including members assigned “to units/elements expected to perform core functions/critical capabilities with short notice-to-move, such as SOF High Readiness Forces/Task Forces, (Standby) Ready-Duty Ships, DART, NEO, and contributions to NATO, the UN, or other partners.”

The shots are also required for members “placed on less than 45 days-notice-to-move with a potential to be deployed at a location with limited/no access to medical care, or locations or nations where vaccination is a prerequisite for entry/operations.”

Additionally, in November, Blair revealed that more soldiers are leaving CAF than can be replaced by recruits, a trend that started after COVID vaccines were mandated for all military members.

Also in November, a CAF member who spoke to LifeSiteNews under the condition of anonymity revealed that there is no “one root cause” for the army’s decreasing numbers but rather a number of factors that have caused military members to lose trust. He added that COVID vaccine mandates were likely the tipping point that put soldiers over the edge.

He explained that the military lost hundreds of soldiers for “no good reason” over COVID vaccine mandates. The military member further revealed that the military had no deaths from COVID despite working at the front lines in nursing homes.

“And when you think of those hundreds and hundreds of people, you have to think in the corporate knowledge we lost, the trainers, the institutional knowledge, the corporate knowledge,” the source lamented. “We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of years of collective corporate knowledge has gone in months.”

He further explained that the military “rewrote the rulebook” when it came to COVID vaccines, allowing for very few religious exemptions and forcing the vaccine on all members.

He revealed that while army veterans have “given 20 years of their lives to the military,” “served in combat,” and have “a chest for medals,” the Canadians military considers them “a piece of garbage overnight because you refuse it (COVID vaccine).”

According to the military member, another reason for many leaving the military is “radical agendas that are being pushed left, right and center.”

“And it’s not stopping with the gender ideology, it’s going to include medical assistance in dying,” he added. “There’s something fundamentally changing. And for most people, it doesn’t sit well with them.”

He explained that the new ideologies are driving away new recruits. The primary source of recruitment for the military is Saskatchewan farm boys who want to serve Canada and not radical ideologies.

“That farm boy looks at the army and with the blue hair and the face, piercings and ideologies and all that stuff,” he said. “And it doesn’t have the same pull because it doesn’t represent the farm boy’s values.”

“This is not the Canada that we signed up to defend. It’s an alien ideology that people don’t resonate with,” he continued. “These are not Canadian values of freedom and democracy. These are cancel-culture values of censorship, of authoritarianism, of radical ideologies that are alien to our culture.”