National Defence committee  I don't see that reaching our diversity goals would diminish the operational effectiveness; in fact, I think it would increase operational effectiveness. I don't think that those are mutually exclusive.

National Defence committee  First of all, we don't get much from DND. Whatever I know I pick up from the net and other publicly produced things. I suppose it could be figured out from your start point of how many people were enrolled, how many are left at the end of a year, and so on. I've never seen any nu

National Defence committee  That's so true. The problem is, if you don't retain the people who you've spent a lot of money to recruit, it's a waste of money. The Auditor General, in his spring 2016 report, reported that fully 50% of the recruits of the army reserve in the fiscal year before his report lef

National Defence committee  First of all, I think the gender data.... That's probably enough to start with anyway. I'm surprised that Mr. Gerretsen has numbers there about.... I'm not sure how they were collected or what they say, but it would be useful for units if they could have some indication of ethn

National Defence committee  It's a pretty complicated question, and I don't have an answer at the moment.

National Defence committee  As you and I are neighbours, let's have a beer, and I'll tell you, but give me a couple of weeks to think about it.

National Defence committee  I cannot, because I don't think I've ever seen any percentages although, again anecdotally, many of us who were regular army said, “Oh, yes, I got interested in this when I was 12 years old as a cadet.” I know that many people who serve in the reserves and in the regular force st

National Defence committee  I agree. I think I said in my opening remarks that there's an old saying that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. I don't think that these are areas that the department has done a particular good job in measuring, for sure. I don't have any numbers. I don't have anyth

National Defence committee  In a word, yes. Units are not rich in staff, so more pressure is not necessarily going to be helpful. On the other hand, we have to have goals to get to where we want to go.

National Defence committee  I can't think of any historical anecdotes, but my feeling and the feeling of a large number Reserves 2000 supporters goes like this: Let's focus on gender. If the unit requires, let's say, 20 new people in a recruiting year and you say, “Okay, half of those recruits have to be fe

National Defence committee  As I said earlier, the biggest thing that still needs to be improved is the delay caused by the medical process. I've heard the surgeon general speak about the problems. He actually has been turning some files around in under 20 days, which is tremendous, a great improvement.

National Defence committee  Yes. However, what stuck in my mind was that this is not 1960 when I walked down to the armouries and within about three days I was signed up and drew a uniform, and so on. There are a number of medical issues that probably weren't even known then, allergies and others. He had a

National Defence committee  I don't know the answer to that question, because I don't know whether, for example, the commander of the army is given those sorts of goals as one of his objectives for the year or whatever. If we're talking about management by objectives or something like that. I'm afraid, then

National Defence committee  If it is a well-thought-out program, yes, I think it could be very helpful. Until the department has more data on what they're working with, however.... They need to know more about those populations out there. The other thing is that you can't be a blanket: one size does not fi

National Defence committee  I certainly do. I'm amazed, actually; I don't think it does happen, but I don't know. If it does happen, in the army reserve, at least, I'm not sure it's not just happening in a haphazard fashion. It might be good in some places and not others. I don't know. I have no empirical d