Mr. Chair, the government extends its gratitude to the men and women of the reserves. The reserves are an integral part of the Canadian Forces. We could not fulfill many important roles, both at home and overseas, without them.
There are currently approximately 25,000 members of the reserve force within nine separate organizations, including the army, navy, air force, communications, medical and legal reserves. Forty-five per cent of the reserves hold full time civilian jobs and 40% are students. As we promised during the election campaign, we are working to expand the primary reserve to 35,000.
Not many Canadians know that our reservists fill such a diverse set of roles. For example, our naval reservists provide port security and operate maritime coastal defence vessels. Members of the air reserve perform squadron augmentation and support roles. The army reserve will participate in territorial battalions.
The Canadian Forces continue to work on the land force reserve structure, an ongoing project designed to help to ensure the long term relevance and effectiveness of the army reserve and the Canadian Forces as a whole by expanding the role and size of the land force reserve.
The second phase of the project, which focuses on change in growth, wrapped up this summer. The restructure of the land force reserves continues to move forward. The land force reserve restructure resulted in significant benefits, including improving the way the CF recruits reserves, development of personnel policies to support force generation for operations and the growth of the army reserve from its current strength to more than 16,000.
The land force reserve restructure process was recently integrated into the overall CF and army transformation process. Work is now underway for a third phase that will guide future growth and further integration of the army reserve.
Reservists are playing an invaluable role in our current mission in Afghanistan. The Canadian Forces currently have mechanisms in place to assist reserve members in maintaining their civilian employment while they are deployed. For example, the Canadian Forces liaison council has a highly successful process in place to advocate on behalf of reserves. The council has lobbied more than 4,900 employers that have pledged to support the reserve and more than half of those have committed to allow their employees to participate in operations. Among them, the federal government, all 10 provincial governments and 147 municipalities have stated their support.
An estimated 40% of reserves are students. The Canadian Forces liaison council has launched a special project to reach the 308 post-secondary schools and obtain their support for reservists who attend their institutions. In the first year of the project, 163 institutions have pledged their support.
We will continue to work with the private sector to help them understand the important role reservists play in the Canadian Forces for their country and the skills and experience they bring back to their employer upon returning from a deployment.