National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  First of all, they know their audience better. Most importantly, the over-centralized policies of two years ago meant that, for example, on Vancouver Island, you would have had people in your riding who would have had to travel some distance to be processed and that would have turned them off.

National Defence committee  It's simply because you're going to get more people in.

National Defence committee  The fact that the units themselves living in the communities now have much more flexibility is a good start, because the recruiting sergeant or recruiting officer of any unit is going to have a good idea about his community and what the ethnic communities are within that community.

National Defence committee  Thank you.

National Defence committee  Here's our concern within Reserves 2000. If somebody says every unit has to be 15% this year, 16% next year, and so on, it isn't going to happen in the combat arms. We have to accept that. If you start issuing quotas to get to those numbers, it just isn't going to work. Those units are then going to go down in strength.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  Yes, and as I said, we're delighted that “Strong, Secure, Engaged” talks about goals, not quotas. If you want to call them targets, or goals, yes, the targets should be set. I don't know how you know the ethnic makeup of the Canadian Forces, because I don't think anybody really knows that.

National Defence committee  What percentage do they say come...?

National Defence committee  That's 11% from non—

National Defence committee  Okay. In both cases, gender and ethnic, targets are the way to go. I still don't necessarily think the armed forces or the Department of National Defence know enough about the populations where units are located, or even—I don't know—about breakdowns within units, to say, “Okay, how are you guys doing?”

National Defence committee  That's my personal opinion and the opinion of a lot of our folks. I have no empirical evidence, and I don't think the department does either. I think it should be the subject of a good longitudinal study on that whole issue. We feel, just from talking to people, that yes, women are not necessarily as inclined to want to, at the age of 19, get out of the house to go to Petawawa or some distant place.

National Defence committee  Percentage-wise, I don't know. Here's what I can tell you. I can give you the absolute numbers, because I've never worked it out for percentages. Within the army reserve, we have 117 units: 51 are infantry; 17 are armoured, and I think it's about 17 or 18 that are artillery. Those are the combat arms.

National Defence committee  Oh, it's more than half.