The Globe and Mail
Tues 6 March 2007
Under pressure to step up recruiting in the face of Canada’s declining birth rate and aging work force, the RCMP and the Canadian Forces have begun working together to achieve their enrolment targets. A five-page memorandum of understanding between the Mounties and the military, obtained under the Access to Information Act, shows they are sharing resources, staff, multimedia production capabilities, demographic information, survey results, best practices and facilities.
They will also team up for recruiting tours and events. The Strategic Recruiting Partnership, which will run until March, 2009, is the first of its kind between the RCMP and the Forces. Together they hope to be more effective in competition — described in internal military documents as “intense and relentless” — with private industry and other public institutions in the labour market.
Visitors to the RCMP’s recruiting website will now find a link to the Forces’ recruiting website, and vice versa. The partners will also deliver a one-two pitch at job fairs and recruitment events.
The Canadian Forces are striving to achieve the government’s expansion mandate of a regular force strength of 75,000 by 2011, up from the current total of 62,000. Next year the Forces will need to recruit about 7,800 men and women annually. By last week, the RCMP had signed up 1,358 cadets for 2006-2007 — its largest intake in the past four years and a “significant ramp-up in recruiting” according to the RCMP’s director of national recruiting, Superintendent Glen Siegersma.
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