Thank you for the question.
I've seen the reserves evolve significantly over the course of my career. To my mind, the reserves are in a much stronger place than they were when I joined the Canadian Forces.
We have seen almost a full circle, in that when I joined the reserves, the reserve force was very much a mobilization force: an augmentation force lest the country go to war and need that pool of trained people.
It became clear that we couldn't train people quickly enough in the reserves to fulfill the roles we would expect of the regular force, because the regular force was really quite small and specialized at the time. We evolved the reserves into specialized roles for the reserves in many areas in the army, the navy, and the air force.
When the heightened operational tempo came along, a lot of reservists expressed an interest in folding into a regular force training road to operations, as it were, and deploying with the regular force. I think the reserves really proved that they bring huge capability to the fight, and that the types of skill sets reservists bring are different from the regular force in many respects, but their professional competencies are exactly the same. We've reoriented the preparation of training of reservists to position them to be able to fold into Canadian Forces operations.
We have relied on them heavily to be able to support operations and to backfill at a time when we had a very high operational tempo. We need to shift back to really investing in that part-time reserve that can deploy on operations with the regular force; investing in training and capability for the part-time reserve; capturing the incredible experiences people have brought back from operations and plugging that back into the armoury floor, the naval reserve divisions, and the air reserves to create the enthusiasm, the commitment, and the ongoing expertise that will position us for the future.
Some aspects of the reserves will continue to be an important component of our total force. The army has significant reserve components in some of their ready forces, and they have structured themselves that way for a reason. The air force relies heavily on reserves just to manage surge in their operations, and they've been surging for a while. The navy is looking at a shift in the employment of reserves, from maritime coastal defence vessels being an exclusive domain to how reserve employment could be advantageous across the entire fleet to make the personnel pool more flexible and more agile.
I could talk about reserves for a couple of hours, but I see this as continuing to evolve. As we transition out of this high period of operational tempo, when we have relied so heavily on reserves on a full-time basis, a big priority for us is to invest in reserve capability and training on a part-time basis so they can continue to participate as we go along; it will give us that surge capacity in the future.