OTTAWA—Canada’s military is moving women to the top of the recruiting line as part of its effort to bring more gender balance to its uniformed ranks.

The announcement came Tuesday after the auditor general concluded that the military’s aspiration of having women make up 25 per cent of its personnel within the next decade appeared to be just that — a dream with no strategy to actually accomplish the goal.

Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of defence, announced earlier this year that the Canadian Armed Forces would boost the number of women in the ranks by 1 per cent a year until the goal of 25 per cent had been met.

But a report by the auditor general of Canada found that the military lacked a strategy to actually achieve that target.

“While some efforts were made to attract women, no special recruiting program was developed for that purpose,” the report said.

But on Tuesday, the general in charge of military personnel said there was a strategy ready to recruit more women and improve recruiting overall.

“To increase the representation of women in the (Canadian Armed Forces), women applicants who meet the required entry standards will go to the head of the queue,” Lt.-Gen. Christine Whitecross, commander of Military Personnel Command, said in a statement.

That move also includes the two military colleges, where young officers began their careers.

As well, women who left the military within the last five years will be invited back to serve either full-time or part-time.

And the military is developing a new advertising and marketing campaign to boost recruitment, including the goal of attracting more women.

In February, women made up about 14 per cent of the regular force, about 9,500 members. About half of those were concentrated in six occupations: resource management support, supply technicians, logistics officers, medical technicians, nursing officers and cooks.

Read the full report here.

In the last two fiscal years, 14 per cent of new recruits have been women. To meet the goal of getting more women in uniform, the military will have to set goals for women in each of its occupations and craft a strategy to achieve them.

The audit report comes just one day after the release of a Statistics Canada survey that highlighted the problem of sexual misconduct in the ranks and that women were often the victim.

On Tuesday, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said that while the military must do more to recruit women, it must also take steps to ensure they are treated “fairly and respectfully” once they are in uniform.

“We know that we must do more to improve the way women are treated by our institutions, and we must work relentlessly to ensure that women who do join are not subjected to harassment or misconduct,” Sajjan said.

That’s just one problem within the recruiting ranks that will leave the Canadian military short of the personnel that it needs to fulfil its mission, the audit report says.

The number of regular force members is set at 68,000 and the military needs 60,500 to carry out its mandate. (The difference accounts for members who are ill, injured or on training).

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Yet the size of the regular force has been shrinking in recent years and recruiting has not kept up.

By 2015-16, the force was down to 66,400 and the number of recruits accepted in the last years — 4,200 and 5,300 — was not enough to get the ranks up to what was needed.

Indeed, the audit found that the recruiting targets had been significantly trimmed because of the inability to process and train new recruits.

“Recruitment targets were based on National Defence’s capacity to process applications and enrol and train new members,” the report found.

Boosting the capacities of the recruiting group and training school were deemed to be “too costly a fix.”

But the audit warns that such action carries its own cost — it’s “unlikely” the military will achieve its goal of 68,000 regular force members by 2018-19 with “significant changes” to boost its annual recruits.

Whitecross said the military is making changes here to streamline the intake process and make recruiting “more timely and efficient.”

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