I had to be a realist. When I took an early retirement a couple of years earlier, in 1993, we were around 85,000. We then had the famous decade of darkness in which we started buying people out.
In my perfect world, we'd probably be somewhere around 100,000--but I'll live with 85,000--and then the army would go to units that would be large enough to deploy with very modest augmentation. Our navy has a reputation way beyond its resources, because it's able to command and control foreign ships. And foreign militaries, including the U.S., trust it. So we have experienced commanders there. Our air force has a reputation for outstanding skills, and now we're in the position of having to cut back on flying hours and we are grounding aircraft, etc.
I guess, probably, my timing must have been brilliant, because I would say go back to the way things were when I left and what we were doing then with the numbers we had. We had a large component of air force and army in Europe, and those numbers were supposed to come back to us, and somewhere halfway over the Atlantic they vaporized, and all of a sudden--boom--we lost those positions, and the downgrading of the numbers in the military started.
I also know that all of you would want to have something in your backyard that the military needs, but the fact is it takes so long--like 10 years--in Canada to get from the blueprint to either driving it or flying or sailing it, and what the military needs is something off the shelf. Somehow we get compensation here in Canada for that, but we have to buy stuff off the shelf, which we showed we could do in Afghanistan with artillery pieces and vehicles, etc. We saw the need, and, bang, it was filled. If we had to turn to Canada to replace those, they'd be arriving 10 years from now.
So Public Works and DND have a real challenge. And I know there have been tons of studies, but if I could speed up the procurement issue with a magic wand, that would be one of my top priorities.