I must admit that things have improved when it comes to individual equipment. Twenty or 25 years ago, the equipment we had was outdated compared to what our militia, our reservists have now. It is more the training equipment that is lacking. The Bison or Grizzly armoured vehicles were purchased at the time. They were supposed to be for the militia. We were then told that if these vehicles were left with the militia units they might not get maintained properly and the decision was made to centralize them on the bases with the understanding that the militia could uses these vehicles when it wanted. Unfortunately, when we wanted to use them, they were not available.
I believe that individual equipment, which includes clothing, does not cause serious problems. Equipment for collective training is the problem.
As far as budgets are concerned, when I was Commander of the Eastern Militia Area, I got a budget for pay and training, but the bases provided us with everything to do with transportation, and room and board, among other things. I had no control over any of that, but the bases were required to provide us all that. There weren't too many problems. Now, with the new system and limited budgets, each unit is responsible for all its expenses. We had to be given a budget to cover training, housing, food, and so forth. The money that was transferred to us was not the same as what we were getting before.
Class B reservists are those who can be employed full time. At one point we ended up with 10,000 class-B, full-time reservists. It goes without saying that this ate into a big part of the reserve force budget. LGen Leslie helped reduce that number. He determined that 10,000 reservists was too much and reduced the number to 4,000. The fact remains that even with 4,000 reservists, a good part of the reserve force budget is drained.
In sum, we would like to have better control of the budget that the House of Commons gives to the reservists.
John, do you have anything to add?