Over the last 25 years the amount of demands on the Canadian Armed Forces has increased significantly, both qualitatively in terms of the complexity of the security environment and quantitatively in terms of what's required of the Canadian Armed Forces.
The Canadian Armed Forces are currently, as of February this year, 7,600 people short of their authorized troop strength of 72,500, but they are about 10,000 people short on the operational side. That means effectively that they're operating at 85% of staffing levels to meet operational requirements and mandates. That has a significant impact on morale, as well as on the ability of the organization to deliver on domestic operations on continental defence, as well as on regional and international security. It partially explains why the government is more limited than perhaps it might like to be to respond to current challenges.
That is the result of 20 years of benign neglect where governments have chosen their force packages and force structure and the operations that they go on. With this emphasis on operations, we've neglected force reconstitution, force regeneration and force sustainment. So all efforts need to be on that front piece because it takes, as you point out, 15 to 20 years to train an experienced soldier who can then deliver not only kinetic operations abroad or for continental defence, but also for some of the complex domestic responses that the Canadian Armed Forces are increasingly called upon.