You guys are all forgetting that DND and the CAF are make work projects especially directed at small town Canada. It allows many canadians who would otherwise never get access to Federal government jobs to have access.

Manning on the new ships is going to be half of the current fleet, so either all those positions will be moved to deskjockeys or staffing levels will be lowered naturally through attrition.

There are a lot of officers, and part of the problem is a lot of positions are high tech and require university degrees and in order to keep recruits happy nearly all positions requiring a BA+ are officers. And these officers are advanced relatively quickly to retain people in the CAF.

To fix this one would have to completely change payroll and structure.