The transformation report that General Leslie produced has been an excellent blueprint in many ways for the transformative activities that have been under way over the past year and a half and that are continuing.
You've spoken already about the command structure, the regrouping of Canada Command, the Expeditionary Force Command, and Support Command under one roof, which leads to about a 25% administrative cost reduction that can be turned back into “tooth”.
You've also spoken about the process of rebalancing our reserves. It's really very heartening that as the Prime Minister and the government give me my marching orders to focus on more tooth and less tail, they also commit to my maintaining the capabilities and numbers in uniform.
In our reservists, as you mentioned, we won't see cuts. They'll maintain a balance of about 27,000. However, that balance will be much more towards part-time, so we'll go from about 11,000 class B reservists, which we really depended on during our combat time in Afghanistan, to a more traditional number of around 4,000 in full-time service, with the remainder back in part-time service.
You will have seen announcements about a decrease in the size of the public service supporting the Canadian armed forces. There will be a trimming of contracting, which we have to be very careful about. Of course, that contracting has come about over the recent 10 or 15 years, as we have transformed over the past couple of decades. Many of the capabilities that were carried out before by those in uniform but that weren't truly combat-type capabilities were handed off to contractors. So we have to be careful which of those we give away.
Quite a number of those things that were in the transformation report that you refer to have been undertaken already. Another third are under way and have been provided to the government for consideration. We will stand by for government decisions and direction on that.
For the future, for this difficult task of reforming our business process, the business of defence, to find these efficiencies is far more difficult. For that, we've stood up the defence renewal team that I spoke about. What's exciting about this is that it's a team made up of half public servants and half members of the armed forces.
Kevin Lindsey, the chief finance officer for the Department of National Defence, is the DND representative and co-leader of that. Major-General Al Howard, former assistant Chief of the Land Staff, is the military side of it. They're supported by an excellent and talented staff of military members and public servants.