Audit finds military using only half of ammunition purchases

Ottawa — The federal auditor general has found that the Canadian Armed Forces is vastly overestimating how much ammunition it needs for regular use in training and international missions, and it says part of the problem can be chalked up to a lack of usable military equipment and an ongoing shortfall of uniformed personnel.

The audit also found that while the Department of National Defence has started to replenish the military’s strategic ammunition stockpile — the lethal ammunition needed for emergencies and combat operations — critical gaps remain.

Canada has identified a lack of available ammunition and stockpiled ammunition as a reason why it is not meeting the readiness level required of NATO members.

“Without reliable information and sound planning, National Defence does not have a clear picture of the types and quantities of ammunition it needs,” auditor general Karen Hogan told a House of Commons committee on Thursday.

The five Canadian Armed Forces groups that account for 87 per cent of its regular ammunition use — the Army, Navy and Air Force along with the special operations forces command and Canadian joint operations command — are only using 56 per cent of what’s assigned to them, on average.

The reasons for that were not well tracked. The audit noted that key equipment like tanks and ships are often out of service and unavailable for use in training and exercises, and that a lack of personnel and poor environmental conditions might prevent training from happening.

The Navy in particular is falling behind, using on average 40 per cent of the ammunition it was assigned in 2023-24 and 2024-25. It’s also struggling to recruit and retain sailors, with shortfalls of up to 25 per cent in recent years.

The audit said that because National Defence doesn’t track the reasons it’s not using its regular ammunition supplies, it has difficulty determining how much it will need each year. Ammunition that’s not used is expensive to store, and risks degrading or expiring on the shelf. Hogan said the department doesn’t have clarity on what is nearing the end of its usable life, in part because it’s using two separate IT systems to track information.

Defence Minister David McGuinty said his department intends to fully implement all of Hogan’s recommendations, and said the report highlights that “we have progress to make.”

“We’ve got to get this better, and we will. It also tells me that as we embrace ammunition production as one of our top 10 priorities under the defence industrial strategy, that we’re going to have to marry that production capacity with the storage, transportation and use of that ammunition,” he said.

The report comes as the federal government is pouring billions of dollars into national defence in an effort to meet Canada’s NATO commitment to spend the equivalent of two per cent of GDP per year on defence.

In 2024-25, the government awarded some $800 million in contracts to procure ammunition. That number rose to $3 billion in 2025-26.
The audit looked at 15 of those contracts and found it took an average of 19 months between signing a deal and receiving the ammunition. In many cases, the ammunition was delivered late and contracts were extended without clear explanations for the extensions.

In 2024, the government set aside $9.2 billion over 13 years to restore the strategic ammunition stockpile.

Hogan said the department needs to fix what she called “weaknesses” in its information, now that it has the money to start replenishing the stockpile.
The audit noted that after decades of depleting that stockpile for things like training exercises, National Defence limited access to it in 2021 and tried to establish an inventory baseline. Five years later, the stockpile lacked “required types and quantities of ammunition necessary to meet targeted operational requirements,” the audit found.

Conservative defence critic James Bezan said the issues highlighted in the report are a result of a lack of political leadership.
Bezan said contract fulfillment is too slow, and the funding to restore the stockpile is spread over too many years. “Thirteen years, that is not fast enough when we are looking at the threats that we’re in today, the most dangerous time since the end of the Cold War,” he said.
The Tories want the government to provide the House of Commons defence committee with detailed data about the stockpile, the recovery plans and Canada’s NATO and Norad commitments.

The auditor general’s office is calling on the department to establish a formal, regular and documented process for supplying the stockpile.

Also in 2021, National Defence issued a directive to create an ammunition and explosives program meant to address supply and demand gaps and do a comprehensive review of existing processes. The auditor general’s office found the program was not yet established and the comprehensive review had no action plan or timelines attached.

The department has agreed it should develop the program and get it underway.

The auditor general flagged serious issues with data collection and management, and pointed out that it has been raising concerns with the department’s ability to account for the quantity and value of its inventory for more than 20 years.

The department does not have a central tracking system for ammunition expenses and isn’t able to produce a reliable, detailed breakdown of its spending. The auditor’s report says this means National Defence doesn’t have the necessary information to make decisions about its inventory.

In the last two fiscal years, about a third of National Defence locations have not completed their annual ammunition count, and the auditor estimates that meant some $656 million worth of inventory was not counted this year.

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