Correct.
Mr. President, I think there are really three factors that we need to look at in terms of explaining and dealing with senior-level attrition and retention. One is the structural issue that the general has referred to.
Back in the 1970s, when the terms of service structure for the Canadian Forces was designed and implemented, they put in place a provision that at certain gates people had the option of leaving voluntarily or the Canadian Forces had the option of directing release if they felt there were surplus numbers there or if they wanted to retain a more robust population in the Canadian Forces.
So one of the gates that was put in place at that time was the 20-year service point, and there was also a special provision made in the Canadian Forces pension act that would allow for the collection of a pension based on 20 years of service at that point.
About eight years or so ago, when we started looking at the demographics of the Canadian Forces population, we said that's not going to serve us in the long run. So we introduced a change to that provision at that time. The Canadian Forces Superannuation Act changed to require 25 years of service prior to being eligible to collect a pension.
But we also realized that for those people who were currently serving on the 20-year-of-service term, it wasn't really going to have much effect on them. We said it's going to take about a generation for that cohort to clear, but then everyone serving from that point forward would be obliged to serve to at least 25 years before they could collect a pension.
For that group that was in the 20-year-of-service term, we de-penalized early attrition after 20 years of service. We actually put a little bit of incentive in and said every additional year you serve beyond 20 years will count towards your pension. So if you serve 22 years and decide to leave, then you get a 44% pension.