National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Pierre. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this opportunity to address you and to take your questions about the army reserve, or the militia, as it's still known in many circles in Canada. Reserves 2000 is a nationwide alliance of Canadians

National Defence committee  If I may answer that question, yes. One of our major objectives has always been to return the command in control of the army reserves to reservists. I'm not speaking for the air force or the navy, but we feel that would be best for Canada if that happened.

National Defence committee  Undoubtedly, there will be arguments made, and there's no doubt this close working arrangement the two components have had for the last number of years has increased the operational capability of reservists, and I'm sure you saw that in your time. I don't think putting the reser

National Defence committee  Mr. Garrison, I would say this: there is a lot of effort being put into improving the recruiting, especially on this terrible wait time—167 days—when a kid can go down and be hired by McDonald's within a week or so. We're just not able to compete. On October 9, 2015, the chief

National Defence committee  That is the problem. For the first year, the recruit is employed almost all summer just getting to the first stage of training. But it's after that.

National Defence committee  I don't know, but certainly in the past, 20 or 15 years ago, reserve units were capable of doing the complete process within the unit. In Kingston in the PWOR armoury, it could have been done right there. We hear anecdotal stories all the time from old, grey-haired guys like me

National Defence committee  They did not, to my knowledge, Mr. Gerretsen. I don't know of any instances, although undoubtedly a few bad things have happened, but you have to accept some risk when you're talking about an organization as large as this. You can do a lot of things to mitigate that risk. For exa

National Defence committee  Absolutely, and concurrent with that, there has to be a recognition that a civilian doctor has passed numerous professional qualifications to get where he is, and he is just as capable of assessing that individual coming in the door as somebody reading a file on them in Camp Bord

National Defence committee  Yes, we do have a wide variety, and they bring their civilian skills with them. They don't leave those at the door when they leave the house, and those skills can be very useful. There are some problems in that area. For example, a qualified mechanic who has passed the provincia

National Defence committee  Certainly, I believe that if a reservist is employed for, say, more than three months on a continuous contract, as about 3,500 are across the Canadian Forces—that's army, navy, air force—when money is appropriated from Parliament, if you as a parliamentarian see a number that is

National Defence committee  I'll take that last part. No, we don't have contracts. I don't know how efficient that would be. If an individual on joining the army reserve were told the expectation that we have for the next 12 months and what we as an organization commit to, but we want the individual to com

National Defence committee  Thank you for inviting comments from Reserves 2000 on diversity in the Canadian Armed Forces. I've testified here before, so some of you have probably heard this little speech. Reserves 2000 is an alliance of Canadians who advocate providing more defence capability with part-tim

National Defence committee  As you say, I've seen the landscape change dramatically since I joined the army in 1960. In those days, we had a Canadian Women's Army Corps, CWAC, and they were segregated into that organization. Since then, of course, women have been participating in every trade and officer cla

National Defence committee  I think the biggest problem there is how do you assess change in culture. What sort of specific markers can you put out there, so you can say, “Okay, we had three of those last year and now have five”? I think it needs to be monitored, but I'm not sure how you would do that. Obv

National Defence committee  First, it helps the Canadian Armed Forces, and I'm really going to just speak about the army reserve here. It helps because tapping into communities, beyond the traditional French, English, white communities, you're obviously opening up the potential of the bigger pool, so you ca