National Defence committee  That is for this fiscal year, so it's zero.

National Defence committee  There's no way that you can take almost a billion dollars out of the defence budget and not have an impact, so this is something that we're wrestling with now. I had a very difficult session this afternoon with the commanders of the various services as we attempt to explain this

National Defence committee  Yes, there are. We are doing that more and more systematically. We have had exit surveys as well to determine the reasons. I will say the reasons are multi-faceted, ranging from family to.... There are push-and-pull factors. The pull factors are with the economy for sure, with t

National Defence committee  It's important to state that a guiding principle is that truth has a date timestamp. What was true on one day will not necessarily be true the next day, especially regarding numbers and personnel strengths. I can give you our numbers effective as of August 31 for the Canadian Ar

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for that question. Transfer between components is one way of keeping talented people in our ranks, and I'd like to improve the process of transfers between the regular and reserve forces. We've recently increased our ability to process transfers between the

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, yes. Absolutely. This is a very important issue for us. I am very concerned about our ammunition stocks. As we take a look at our ammunition holdings, we look at what we call battle decisive munitions, and there are 20 or 20 plus of those. Our NATO high readiness f

National Defence committee  The deputy minister hit it right, Mr. Chair. Generally, there are train, deploy and recover phases. In the train phase, you're preparing for deployment. In the deploy phase, you're on expeditionary operations. When you're in the recover phase, you are reconstituting yourself, re

National Defence committee  It puts increasing stresses on our airframes, for example, that we use for evacuation. Those are our transport aircraft and helicopters. The wheeled vehicle fleet numbers are low, so they get used more than what would regularly be the case. Yes, it increases the overall stress, m

National Defence committee  This is probably the number one issue that comes up as we travel around the country. As for every Canadian, housing is an issue, but it's more acute for our people. We expect them to move across the country—and they have to—based on where our operational bases are. Housing—getti

National Defence committee  You are right. At every NATO chiefs of defence meeting I go to, this is an issue of discussion. Our allies are rightly very concerned about this. We're all looking at ways of ramping up production. It is of increasing concern, because when we take a look at the Russian reconsti

National Defence committee  There are many pathways to victory, but as we take a look at the reliance of modern warfare—in fact, warfare for the past 150 years—artillery has been pretty key.

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, I'm going to have to do some math here. We started with 82 tanks. We donated eight to Ukraine. We're deploying 22 to Latvia. On the math, just very quickly, doing it in my head—there's an accountant sitting beside me here—it's 52.

National Defence committee  No. I don't know the rate off the top of my head. I do know what the overall serviceability rate of army vehicles is, and it's not good. It goes down to a shortage of spare parts, national procurement funds and technicians.

National Defence committee  You have hit on another issue of great concern. With these increasingly frequent deployments and call-outs, it's affecting our readiness to do our primary function. What is required is additional capacity at the provincial and municipal levels to respond to natural disasters. Mak

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, first of all, it's not enough. Secondly, it's 3,000.