You will see in my introductory comments, which I did include to ensure that I stayed within my eight-minute time limit, because I know timings are very important here in this committee, that there are two areas when you take a look at the challenge.
Challenges were during years zero to three, which I touched on. To elaborate, what we've done in the recruit school to take our attrition rate at the recruit school from perhaps 24% down to maybe 15%, positive...but the flip side is this whole area of the 19 to 24 age group. That's the second issue.
The point to note is that with the younger age--speaking on behalf of my children--everything is transactional. It's not relational. Even though I tell my children I love them every day, it's still very transactional at that age.
At the other end, 19 to 24 years, it is very relational, as Karol will tell you. It's not about benefits. It's not about money. It's all about how people are treated, being part of the organization.
Given the transformation, given everything we've done, given the Canadian Forces have grown, that has been an area that's come up as a spike. Karol will be more than happy to address what we've done in those areas. I'll give you one of them.
One of the dissatisfiers was this, and Karol will jump in here if I have it wrong. We have certain gateways at which you leave the Canadian Forces.
Monsieur le président, I think we have almost two hours, so if I can, I'll take a little bit more time to answer the questions.
At any rate, you hit that 20-year gateway, and the next gateway would be about year 27. Those are the pension gateways we had. And if you said you would stay, but then you decided to leave, you would be penalized when it came to your pension.
What we put into place, actually before we issued the retention strategy, again, if you remember part of its process, was a small tool that allowed people to stay in, not be penalized, if they wanted, for a shorter period of time.