The Torch: Afghan mission boosts CF recruiting...

...and, mirabile dictu, commenters at the Toronto Star are not, er, impressed:

Had Ryan Cass asked, the Canadian Forces' recruiting office in Toronto could have told him about any number of the 100 types of jobs the centre seeks to fill. Lt.-Cmdr. Michael Wood could have extolled the bonuses the military offers tradespeople, the value of the education it pays for, the virtues of a career as, say, a naval electronics technician.

He is persuasive. But Cass, 18, isn't interested in a pitch. He is interested in combat. So he walked into the North York office yesterday to sign up for one of the jobs for which Wood has the least trouble hiring: infantryman.

"Whatever I can do to help out," Cass said nonchalantly. "I want to help out, and I want to travel, too."

To Kandahar? "It doesn't bother me," he said. "I go where I go."

Canada is at war. Our military, however, finds it far more difficult to recruit pharmacists than fighters. The ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, in which the 100th Canadian soldier died Friday, has not hurt the forces' efforts to find recruits for front-line combat. In fact, it appears to have helped, even though much of the news coverage of the conflict focuses on combat deaths.

"The actual (100) number itself has absolutely zero impact," Wood said. "But the fact that Afghanistan is a very high-profile event reminds Canadians that the military is there, it's needed, it's viable, it's honourable. So from that perspective – that's one small slice of the pie as to why people come through my recruiting doors."

Wood said the Toronto office, with about 75 per cent of its 2008-09 enlistment target of 860 full-time recruits filled, will likely set a record. Lt.-Cmdr. Peter Antonew, head of the Hamilton recruiting centre, said his office is on track to enlist 700 recruits, up 100 from 2007-08. (The military did not return a call seeking national figures.)

Despite various inducements, sometimes including five-figure bonuses, the military struggles to hire skilled workers like doctors, engineers, electronics experts and pharmacists, Wood said. But not fighting soldiers.

This may, in part, be a result of the forces' "fight" advertising campaign, which has attempted since 2006 to recast the military as an action-oriented fighting force.

Thirteen of 17 recruits who participated in an enlistment ceremony at the North York office yesterday will fill combat-related roles.

Newmarket's Matthew Cholack, 20, whose family has a long military history, wanted a way out of his tedious welding job. Lee Houston, 18, of Uxbridge enlisted as an armoured soldier partly because he wanted a way out of his small town.

Both were drawn to the possibility of gun-shooting action.

"I was in the reserves in the late '90s, and from what I've seen, the positive effect of Afghanistan is that it's created a renewed sense of purpose for the Canadian Forces," said incoming artillery officer Jeff Brownridge, 28, a University of Toronto history graduate who worked as a Green Party provincial campaign manager.

"There's a relevance – I think there's something important – to what we're doing in Afghanistan. So going into being a part of that is something I support."