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Teaching functional French to everyone would take 4 months per member, based on the proven and well-established model of the French Foreign Legion. It could be done. But we’d have to collectively take that training deadly seriously, which we don’t.

The argument for a degreed officer corps is a a separate issue from the value-for-money of ROTP. 80% of British Officer Cadets report to Sandhurst having already completed a Bachelor’s degree — if we wanted to, couldn‘t Canada similarly delete/downsize ROTP and increase DEO? Would this require...

One argument that is trotted out is that reserves are cheaper than regulars — but how much cheaper? I’d like to see the math on that — certainly maintaining heritage buildings as glorified platoon houses to host 40 odd effectives has to be expensive, but I wonder what the actual numbers are.

The 1500 pers mission lead was probably envisioned by whoever wrote the policy as a Haiti/Rwanda type deployment, with a Canadian 1 or 2 star HQ, a light or medium QRF, and the remainder of the force bulked out by the usual semi-random assortment of troop contributing nations. Exactly the sort...

The availability of positions for one thing — the US Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force were all-volunteer throughout the Vietnam era, and could take their pick of suitable candidates.

Probably LFCA. MGen Vernon never commanded Mobile Command.

The most time consuming part of that would be training the squad leader - a USMC Infantry Squad is led by an E-5 Sergeant - who would probably have a minimum of 5 years of service. It would be hard to reduce that timeline much without ‘shake-and-bake’ instant NCO courses, which have a mixed...

Does your local Reserve Service Battalion have a few dozen RCEME techs that know how to maintain Leopard tanks? Asking for a friend.

Large-scale accompanied rotational unit postings to Europe are incompatible with our current policies on screening families for OUTCAN. The medical, social work, and educational worlds are quick to DAG families red, even if the soldier themselves is fit to fight. Our policies were very different...

Sure, why not. Add four weeks of extra training to BMOQ for some of that Miss Manners crap if we want to. But while the Arbour report didn’t mention that RMC produced superior table manners and a classy retro fashion sense, it did rather pointedly mention that RMC was failing at producing...

Turning RMC into Sandhurst Mark 2 seems like an attractive option, as it would eliminate the most expensive bit of RMC (the 4-year degree granting side) while appearing to not actually disband the college. But do we really need to go down the RMAS route? The British Army 44 week commissioning...

I believe we’re encouraged to hold seminars on knife fighting instead, to educate on options other than gun violence.

The P320 is a fine pistol for what it is — but we aren’t going to get 75+ years of service out of them like we did with the Browning.

That‘s what you call a constitutional crisis. The Canadian Constitution simultaneously requires both “a Constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom” and unanimous consent of all provinces and the federal parliament to changes to “the office of the Queen”. The second...

I prefer the traditional interpretation, where the Maple Leaf symbolizes the eternal domination of Canada by the founding provinces over those other, western and northern, provinces where sugar maples do not grow.

General Allard wore pilots wings, and was the first Commander Mobile Command in the 1960’s. Of course, given that he was an infantry battalion and brigade commander in WWII and Korea, he’s probably not best described as a TacHel guy — more like a Van Doo that knew how to fly.

The first person born in what would eventually become Canada to receive the Victoria Cross was Alexander Dunn of the 11th Hussars, for actions during the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava during the Crimean War. Dunn was born in York, in Upper Canada.

There is a bus from Port Elgin to Toronto Pearson Airport — from the airport you’d then take the UP express to Union Station, then VIA. But the bus doesn't run very often, or even every day, https://tokcoachlines.com/schedule-services/ But of all the options you’ve explained, I’d go with a...

With regard to Sudan, it doesn’t appear that there is a very sizeable population of dual nationals. Instead, most Canadians in that country appear to working in either the mining sector or the oil industry. This is ‘legitimate work’ — but it isn’t with the government or an NGO. And in a war...

The two key takeaways I see are that the Phoenix pay debacle clearly didn’t piss off as many people as I expected, or maybe more accurately didn’t piss them off enough to quit, and that the Public Service still knows how to attract, recruit and retain Canadians — which the CAF struggles with.