National Defence committee  If I may, Mr. Chair....

National Defence committee  I just wanted to thank the committee for the work you've done. I've followed some of your previous meetings, and I think the interest you show, both in the regular and the reserves, is only going to help us improve the military writ large. At the end of the day, we all work for y

National Defence committee  Can I just make a first-hand comment to reinforce what General O'Brien said? For a reservist coming back from theatre, it could be traumatic. A dead reservist coming back from theatre is very traumatic. Before I went to Afghanistan, I had the honour of attending five funerals

National Defence committee  Just before General O'Brien comments, can I perhaps bring some clarity here? Not only do we have army reservists in Afghanistan, but we have air and naval reservists in Afghanistan as well. So we have reservists in Afghanistan from right across the spectrum. The bulk of them obvi

National Defence committee  It should be pretty straightforward. He's going to be looking at all these and working on them for General Semianiw. So work is in progress.

National Defence committee  What we've been doing in the last couple of years is starting to focus people's minds on what's important. And what's important is the soldiers. Whether the soldier is a reservist or a regular force soldier, I think there is understanding and consent and agreement within the seni

National Defence committee  Luckily, I'm not a medical officer so I cannot really stray into the fields of the medical world. The chief of military personnel, Major General Semianiw--who has been before this committee--is in the process of looking at each one of the 12 recommendations and looking at the po

National Defence committee  Some of our personnel policies have not been re-examined in recent times. Commodore Blakely, who was Commodore Bennett's predecessor as COMNAVRES, commander of the naval reserve, has recently gone to work for General Semianiw to address all these personnel policies, to bring them

National Defence committee  From 1991 to 1993, I commanded the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment in Thunder Bay, and I had the misfortune of having to receive the first reservist injured overseas on an operational tour back into my unit. I must tell you that at that time the system to deal with reservists inj

National Defence committee  There are two aspects to it. As you're aware, cadets do training in locations close to home during the school year, and some of them go away in the summer to cadet training centres. In the cadet training centres we have established medical facilities that provide initial care to

National Defence committee  I do not have a definitive answer to that question, sir.

National Defence committee  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Major-General Dennis Tabbernor. I am chief of reserves and cadets. I am basically General Hillier's principal adviser on reserve issues. I took over the position on the 20th May from Major General Herb Petras, who retired. The ye

National Defence committee  If you allow me, I will just talk generalities, and then I will ask General O'Brien to talk specifics, because most of the soldiers coming back belong to the army. There is a process in place to prepare soldiers--and I use the term “soldiers” generically to include basically eve