National Defence committee  Good morning. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, it gives me great pleasure to be with you this morning along with Chief Warrant Officer Gino Moretti, Sergeant-Major of the Canadian army. I would also like to thank General Natynczyk, the Chief of the Defence Staff, for givi

National Defence committee  Thank you very much. I think it's very important to point out that Lieutenant-General Leslie's report was designed to be a list of options that the military needed to pay attention to and study. I have a great deal of respect for Lieutenant-General Leslie and his ideas. But my

National Defence committee  Certainly. There are three classes, A, B and C. I believe your question relates to class B.

National Defence committee  Let me start with class C. The class C soldier is on an operational task, an operational deployment. Class B is a full-time soldier operating here domestically, in Canada, in support of the institution. As an example, they would be tasked to an HQ, or they could be tasked at the

National Defence committee  Perhaps I can use the example of a reserve unit populated with class A soldiers. There is a regular element that in the past supported our reserve units. Because of the conflict in Afghanistan, you might find that some of those reserve units are now populated with full-time cla

National Defence committee  This is the first time in several years that there's been a brigade-level operation, brigade-level training. I think that's important. To train at that level provides Canada with a level of readiness and flexibility that Canada deserves. Over the past many years we have focused

National Defence committee  Thank you very much. That's a great point. It's a word that I use: your army reloaded, rechargé. We have been involved in the recovery of our people, our equipment, and our ideas from combat in Afghanistan, the reconstitution of the force, and the reorientation of the force. I

National Defence committee  Thank you. The army is undergoing individual and collective training to be able to respond to a full spectrum of conflict. As you and others saw in Wainwright—and, if you weren't able to, we would be honoured to host you, and provide you the opportunity to see our young soldiers

National Defence committee  Thank you, sir; great point, great question. I'm fiercely proud of our army--50% regular, 50% reserve--an army that has three regular brigades, ten reserve brigades, and the battalions and regiments you talked about are the regular elements, the nine regular battalions that we h

National Defence committee  Perhaps I could roll back a bit. There is the future land combat vehicle system, which is doing an upgrade to our LAV III. It's purchasing 100-ish close combat vehicles and 500 tactical armoured patrol vehicles. The end state will see close combat vehicles in a regiment of our

National Defence committee  I don't know what the.... So we would want more people, or more...?

National Defence committee  Sure.

National Defence committee  Thanks, sir. With each of those vehicle purchases, to use that as an example, there is a base number of vehicles, plus an option. We anticipate that we would not have that: that the government would not have the flexibility to exercise the options. For instance, in the tactical

National Defence committee  Sir, I wouldn't say that we are down. I would say that we said “this is what we need and this option provides additional flexibility for the army”. We have provided these. These buys go through, and of course the LAV upgrade contract was signed last month. Each of the contenders

National Defence committee  Thank you, sir. That's in fact what has happened, sir. The purchase of the future land combat vehicles was very much developed on the priorities of and with respect to the Canada First defence strategy.