Thank you.
Admiral, you mentioned in your presentation on the third page, second paragraph from the bottom:
My final comment with respect to “balance” relates to the need to have adequate resources to ensure that no one component, unit or group of CF members is retained at high readiness or on operations without adequate relief.
We know that any supplement or relief to the regular forces is the reserves. We've heard from numerous people that the expectation among people with experience in this area is that one of the first areas to be cut, because it's the easiest, is the reserves.
If one accepts that you need the reserves.... In the last 10 years, without the reserves we wouldn't have had a Canadian armed forces. If you removed the reservists from the equation, we wouldn't have had the standing armed forces we all thought we had. The reservists were critical.
Coming back to the budget, I hear what you're saying, Admiral, that no government is going to wait for a mere committee. I accept that. But I did preface my remarks by saying that I assume the government hasn't finalized their readiness; otherwise they would be having us chase our tails here, and I know they wouldn't do that to this committee.
Without a sense of what the ultimate plan is in the budget, the low-lying fruit to cut is the reservists, because that would do the least amount of damage right now. But it would immediately impact readiness, particularly as you were saying, Admiral, that we need to make sure no one group or individual members are stretched beyond their abilities when they're standing at high readiness.
Give your thoughts on some of that, Admiral—and Dr. Windsor too, if you have any comments.