Army Reserve Restructuring

[Brad Sallows]

Yes.

Of course you do. So it’s a perk then that an employer gives time off for military service? Just do we are clear on your worldview. One you see no value in?

For the Nth time, I will stipulate that every public dollar spent benefits someone. The things we could do that would provide some value, somewhere, if resources were infinite, is itself an almost boundless set. It's a discussion of no interest. What is of interest is maximizing efficient use of what we have. 5 days' funded time off for what has been outlined (or what can be reasonably be done) is money better spent elsewhere.

Maybe only anti-military types care right now. 30 seconds of evening TV can change that. "Well, you see how we had to close the emergency department here again. And instead of more health care funding for provinces and universities, the federal government wants to give PS workers 5 days' paid leave to play soldier." Whether that's an accurate formulation won't matter. The government will immediately be in the position of explaining, which means they'll be losing.

I'm skeptical the burden of running the training can even be met, so I expect this to die anyways.

 

[Remius]

And yet you don’t understand the net benefit of paid time off for military service. Or refuse to see it.

I didn’t just “play soldier” doing it either. I’ve used LWOP, vacation and LWP depending on my circumstances.

I can’t help you unfortunately if you have decided it has no net benefit.

Fortunately those things won’t be going away anytime soon.

 

[FJAG]

They called ir SSEP when we did it.

All boys age 16 - 17.

We were members of the Service Battalion.

Yeah. I went through in 66 as part of the SSEP (student summer employment program) I had joined in August 65 and had been working with my artillery regiment as a gun number of three live fire exercises before I took my recruit course . I went RegF in 69 and in the summer of 1971 3 RCHA was kept in Wainwright after the brigade WainCon, to run the thing for some 600 kids. By then it was called student youth employment program (SYEP) but was basically the same six week recruit course I did years earlier. My SSEP was all male, about the size of a large platoon and all made up of folks from the various units in the Moss Park Armoury. I presume there were other serials in other armouries. The SYEP we ran in 71, OTOH, had females, not many, but some. If I recall correctly it was called SYEP 5a and I understood that there was also supposed to be a 5b that was for a follow on year and taught basic Jnr NCO leadership. I never saw that course myself. Our 600 SYEP folks came from all over western Canada and was made up of a broad mix of many regiments and branches.

Good times.

 

[Brad Sallows]

And yet you don’t understand the net benefit of paid time off for military service. Or refuse to see it.

I'm unconvinced it's a "net benefit". Fundamentally, what we have is a movement of time use from higher-valued to lower-valued. I would have individuals who volunteer to serve pay the cost (by using vacation time) so that employers (and ultimately customers and taxpayers) aren't paying the cost. Trying to argue "net benefit" is difficult to impossible and isn't really the tack to take.

Big picture, I'm also unconvinced the cost of the Res F has been worth what it has provided in Reg F augmentation for the past 40 years, going back to and beyond the old "flyover" billets for fall ex in Germany. I've heard the "invaluable, critical" assessments all through FRY and Afghanistan, but I doubt any of the assessors were thinking in terms of Bastiat's seen/unseen. One of the alternatives to the funded, not-very-employable Res F we have is a more-funded Reg F. And then would the Res F still be needed for anything short of "total war"?

I've always been emotionally sympathetic to the "net benefit" view, but not intellectually. I've not seen anyone crunch numbers to "prove" these propositions one way or the other. But the high-to-low value use of time is undeniable.

Military leave provisions in law for everyone might be a necessary component of re-working the Res F to be more valuable. That can be true, and it can also be true that it's a net cost. As I perpetually write, mobilization of resources is inefficient. Make the case for the necessity, but mostly* don't try to argue that any costs are saved.

*The significant exceptional principle: a military force that successfully deters conflict is cheaper than one that does not.