Thank you, Mr. Chair.
That's an excellent question.
In fact, we do have two strategies under way right now for the Canadian Armed Forces. One is for retention and one is for recruiting.
To be quite clear, these are strategies that are aimed at both the regular force and the reserve force because we are in a period of accelerated recruiting towards targets in the 2018-19 period. We have targets right now of 68,000 for the regular force and 28,500 for the reserve force in the 2018-19 time frame.
You're absolutely right to bring up both retention and recruiting because they are linked. We have a relatively high attrition rate in the reserves. About 50% of our reservists leave within the first five years, so we have to address that. We're doing that from the military personnel command perspective by targeting a couple of different issues.
First off, we're looking at creating better mobility between the regular force and the reserve force. We find that this is a good retention strategy. The more that our reservists can become regular force, if that's their desire, or our regular force members, for personal or family reasons, want to become reserve forces, if we improve that flow, then we actually improve the retention of both regular and reserve forces. We're working on that process to streamline that.
We're also looking at the compensation and benefit structure for the reserves and the regular force, with the objective of aligning the two and using it as a strategic enabler to have a compensation/benefits structure that is going to be attractive to Canadians to join either the regular force or the reserve force. We're looking at current management as a key element, because that can be either a satisfier or a dissatisfier, regardless of whether you're in the reserve force or the regular force. We're looking at family support, because that's key to retaining any individual in the Canadian Armed Forces.
We're looking at mental health and wellness, of course, and we're looking at diversity. Diversity is a key element. We have to reach out to the less represented members of the Canadian population and bring them in. What we've done in that area, skipping over to recruiting now, is we've actually focused a diversity recruiting team on bringing in elements of the population that are under-represented within the Canadian Armed Forces right now. That strategy—