250 would allow us to have everything above plus preposition a full squadron's worth in Latvia (200), a two full squadrons in war stock/depot (240) and 10 MBTs for designated training tanks so squadron holdings arent being used up on PCF training (250). I can honestly see 200 as a good middle ground. This is all based on full manning in both tank regiments and lets get real, that aint happening.
I like your numbers but have a bit of a different view of how to use them.
The starting point is that my belief is that Canada should be able to field an armoured division for Europe plus have the backstop to train and replace casualties from stocks at home. My main reason for that is that IMHO, 1 German-Netherlands Corps needs an armoured division for Latvia/Estonia and Canada is the one country in the region that can afford to provide and sustain that. I think the idea of committing just a brigade has passed long ago. When we debate how little Canada can get away with we need to start thinking in significantly bigger terms unless we're courting another Hong Kong.
My view is a two-brigade division with as close to a 1:1 ratio of armour to infantry (~11,000 folks in the division and another ~3000 in a theatre level support brigade.) Two brigades with one tank regiment and two mech infantry battalions each and a divisional armoured cavalry regiment (plus arty bde and sustainment bde) meet the minimum standard (depending largely on how you configure and arm the cavalry regiment and whether your tank regiments have 3 or four tank squadrons) Essentially, you can "get away" with a 44-tank regiment (3 x 14-tank squadrons and two command tanks) - That means the division can be equipped with as few as 88 tanks plus whatever the cavalry consists of.
Again, IMHO, the proper backstop for a deployed division is at least one additional division at home - another 88 tanks. That's 176 allocated to units. The spare stocks over and above that are debateable. 24 would get you to your 200 estimate (that's MBTs and not counting cavalry, engineers, recovery etc) but I don't consider that a middle ground, I see it as the bare minimum. The question becomes how many to preposition to the Baltics and how many are needed at home for the training of the folks that round out the division by flyover as you won't put the whole division on the ground during peacetime. If you commit only a brigade to NATO as Stage 1 or 2 then 200 will do. If the commitment is a whole prepositioned division then you probably need to up the number by another 44 - so around 250 MBT total.
So we don't disagree on numbers much albeit I see smaller but more regiments and a larger NATO commitment by way of prepositioned stocks.
This all disappeared with the loss of the tanks, but we also lost half of our technicians and much of our wheeled echelon in 2004/5.
That was the arty experience when the M109s were removed in 2004. All the M113s, M577s and M548s disappeared as well and were replaced by . . . pretty much nothing . . . a few LSVWs and MLVWs. The techs we'd had were sorely missed.
