Canada moves to 2% GDP end of FY25/26 - PMMC

[daftandbarmy]

I initially agreed with this but in hindsight, no, that's bullshit. Clearly, not literally everyone needs it, but basic load carriage and sleeping gear should be available to most/all members if for nothing else than dom ops, or being tasked out last minute for something where you may not be staying in proper accommodations. These are such cheap and durable items it's easy to ensure everyone has it available.

I've also experienced nothing but stock shortages for 20 years. I did my basic in 2005 with my pockets stuffed full of magazines, canteen, odds and sods, bayonet part of the time (partway through course, after the bayonet scabbard ate through a couple cargo pockets I was permitted to leave my bayonet in the barracks box). Other members on that course were likewise missing load carriage kit (webbing or tac vest), rucksacks, sleeping bags, boots even though they did some issues shortly after.

We were running courses with temp issue sleeping gear and load carriage ten years ago consistently, it's only gotten worse. While members holding kit they shouldn't is doubtless part of the problem, it's one that we've had a decade to address. We've disposed of enough old equipment that half the time the solution has been members buying surplus rucksacks for themselves or more senior members loaning out theirs, which is fine for one off situations but not as a matter of routine. This is some of the lowest hanging fruit, and we've consistently dropped the ball on it both from an equipment management standpoint (why is kit not being collected upon transfer out of field units if that's what we're doing, it's not like we haven't had shortages forever) and never buying/retaining enough. During COVID we had most of two courses worth of DP1 candidates given 13 broken 82 pattern rucks to share, we cannibalized like 5 working ones and a sixth that was kinda dangerous due to metal pokey bits but a staff member taped it up and rolled with it. Probably half? the troops didn't have sleeping kit, for the nights the temps dropped they slept in rain or ICE gear. Interesting intro to the infantry but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a sleeping bag for the garrison portion.

Either just buy a bunch for right now until we sort out the permanent solution, or make some funding available for members or units to make some purchases to patch things over.

I’ll assume we could adopt more modern resource management processes where the people who don’t n ed ‘stuff’ right now don’t get it until they do.

E.g., Right before I retired ‘they’ made me get a fitted out ballistic vest. I never wore it and handed it back within 6 months of issue.

 

[Good2Golf]

We cancelled the Avro Arrow, signed up for Bomarc, American fighters and radar lines and got access to the US market, protection from invaders and an Autopact.

That’s a take. You’re welcome to keep it.

My dad was in aerospace engineering. There was an unquestionable American presence throughout Canadian aerospace academic and production, surveying/reconnoitering (American astronaut Gus Grissom attended several of my dad’s PhD classes at UofT as an example), influencing and pressuring Canadian talent towards an America nexus. Colleagues of my dad moved to the U.S. in droves following Arrow’s cancellation. Friends at Orenda working on the Iroquois becoming senior engineers at Pratt on the J58 program (for the SR-71). Other friends emigrating and working on Gemini, Mercury and Apollo, Other leaving Avro and off to McDonnell, North American, Convair. Your view is that Canada chose to hobble its own aerospace capacity and America was its saviour with Bomarcs, Voodoos and the like. Some, quite reasonably informed, know it was a deliberate act of interference and deliberate action by America to debilitate another nation’s capability and capture the stranded talent to its own benefit. Sorry, you won’t change my mind.

 

[Furniture]

Pay raises and new barracks increase the budget. Taking on responsibility for veterans pensions likewise.

Those funds, as the article title says, don't stop missiles.

Nor do they put bullets in rifles or rifles in hands. In those areas we are slow off the mark.

True, but they keep experienced people around so they can train new people, and they keep the staff in uniform long enough to get projects rolling so we can stop missiles and put rifles in the new troops hands.