Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I don't think there are any quick solutions. Something has to be done, but it's not a matter of money. I was a member of the Armed Forces for 20 years. My colleagues know it, but perhaps not you.
And I'd like to remind the committee that our military has been in decline for over 20 years. When I joined the military
in 1980, 85,000 persons belonged to the Canadian Forces. When I retired in 2000, there were 63,000. So we're talking about a significant decline in human resources. We note that the rate is high, perhaps because of Afghanistan, our NATO commitments or our training commitments.
These are very real commitments.
My concern is that the Canadian Forces, right now—the soldiers we're talking about—are stretched very thin. They're asked to do a lot with very few resources. So I see the first challenge as being with resources. As I have said, when I speak of resources I'm not talking about money, because money will not fix this problem. I'm talking about having trained, qualified personnel.
When we come to instructors, Monsieur Godin might say, just throw a mechanical instructor in there, for heaven sakes. But we're talking about military equipment, and military equipment is different from civilian equipment. You can't find very many weapons technician instructors in the civilian sector, not ones who are fully conversant with military weapons systems or with fire control systems. Not only do you have to have someone who is capable of instructing in French; you have to have someone who is qualified on military equipment, and it's very specific military equipment. I see that as being one challenge.
The second challenge is bilingual training.
As our commissioner said, bilingualism training in the Canadian Forces has been a real failure in the past. I was part of that system.
Given that situation, the Canadian Forces are presenting a new program designed to improve bilingualism. The fact remains that, for the moment, we're living with the consequences of a failure. There aren't enough bilingual individuals who qualify to take training in both official languages.
I look forward to seeing positive results with respect to the new bilingualism policy. But I want to be clear: the situation in Borden has to improve, and we have heard some of the initiatives that have been taken to improve it.
I'd like to ask a couple of questions. One of them is with respect to bilingual instructors. As you know, we've asked the Canadian Forces to focus on recruiting and to increase the number of people who join the forces. My understanding from contacts I have is that at CFB Saint-Jean, where recruit training—the basic training—is done,
the capability to train recruits in a Francophone environment has increased. There has always been training in French at Saint-Jean. That's why I would like to know whether you are able to transfer bilingual or Francophone personnel from Saint-Jean to Borden.
I ask the question because my understanding is that Saint-Jean has been able to accelerate its training. They've been able to graduate many recruits, but not to do the follow-on training. The follow-on training is where there are still choke points. It might be possible to decrease some of the training resources at Saint-Jean and increase some of the training resources at other institutions.