Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank Lieutenant-Colonel Selkirk and Brigadier-General Boucher for being with us today. We appreciate the hard work you're doing advocating on behalf of our reserve force.
I agree with everything you're saying about recruitment. That is the area we have to put more emphasis on, and we need to streamline the process to empower the local units to actually get out there and recruit their own people.
I want to come down to three quick things that I think are all linked together from an employability standpoint.
You mentioned making sure there's summer employment, especially for young reservists, and sometimes training our cadets. What other opportunities would you pursue there?
The Auditor General in his report also mentioned that DND had pretty much raided the budget that was set aside for reserves. Then, of course, we have this problem with lack of equipment and lack of training opportunities.
There is a third thing that you could, if possible, tie in as well. My understanding is that our reserve force doesn't have contracts like we have in the regular force or like the reserves in the United States have. They have contracts that they are obliged to uphold. I was wondering if that is something we should be talking about as well.