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The Canadian army is growing at a pace not seen in decades, reaching its highest number of recruits in 30 years and potentially reversing the chronic personnel shortage that has plagued the country’s military.

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Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute who researches Canada’s military culture, said that while there may be a “Trump effect” behind the recent rise in enlistment [referring to US President Donald Trump’s remarks to Canada as the “51st state”], military applications had already begun spiking in 2022, around the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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In March, he [Canada PM Mark Carney] announced that Canada had officially achieved the Nato target of spending 2% of its GDP on defence for the first time since the late 1980s, amounting to over C$63bn ($46bn; £34bn) in a single year. Carney also joined the Nato pledge to spending up to 5% of GDP on defence by 2035.

Canada reached that 2% milestone by increasing salaries, as well as pledging to buy new equipment, upgrade existing bases and build new infrastructure in the Arctic.

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In late April, the Canadian military announced it had enrolled more than 7,000 new members in the last fiscal year - its highest number of new recruits in three decades.

That figure is a fraction of the total number of people who have expressed interest in joining the military. As of February, confirmed applications to the Canadian Armed Forces had nearly doubled year over year, rising from 21,700 to 40,116, according to figures shared with the BBC by Canada’s Department of National Defence.

Those numbers reflect applicants who submitted the required documents to confirm their eligibility. The total number of applications was far higher, reaching nearly 100,000 over the past year.

It is a big jump from 2019-20, when around 36,000 people had applied.

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